SubscribeIf you somehow learned exactly how and when you would die, what would you do? Would you continue your current path in life, or would you make changes in an effort to prevent your death from happening? What if you knew you would die doing something extremely important for all of humanity? Would you still do it? Douglas Cole has to answer these questions.
Douglas isn’t your typical guy. As a child, he causes something to happen that should be impossible. Twice. No one can explain it. After a family tragedy, Douglas finds himself haunted by a seriously scary entity, that no one else can see. Driven to the brink of insanity and the depths of drug addiction, Douglas is given a choice. Stay and die, or go with a mysterious friend of his, and fight a battle he is just beginning to understand.
This is a very deep book, that entwines concepts from Physics and Eastern religions into the story line. It is both basic and complex at the same time, which makes it hard for me to describe in detail. The second after you finish reading the last page you are going to want to flip through, and read it all over again. It’s just as good the second time around.
Author Paco Ahlgren was kind enough to do an interview with me, and answer the questions that went through my mind as I was reading Discipline.
Jen Thorpe: When I write, I find that listening to music, the right kind of music, helps me. When I read a book, I often wonder what sounds were surrounding the author when he or she was creating the story. What music did you listen
to while you were writing Discipline?
Paco Ahlgren: Patty Griffin got me through a lot of the tragedy, Erik Satie taught Douglas Cole how to play cello and helped with Taoism, Silversun Pickups carried me through the chess and subatomic physics, and the Bad Brains inspired a lot of the fight scenes.
JT: The cover of your book is beautiful, and when I first picked it up, I was immediately drawn to the intricate, circular, design that sits, subtly, behind the title. Parts of this symbol also appears at the start of each chapter. In a book where nothing is random, this makes me wonder, what does the symbol mean? Did you create it, or is it from something else?
PA: I’m not sure where the symbol came from, and I’ve come to love the mystery surrounding it. When we began the process of creating the cover, I asked for “simplicity, born of complexity,” because that’s really what Discipline is all about. I don’t think anyone could have captured that spirit more than the designers.
JT: Your characters play chess, often for hours and hours on end, and the result is that large parts of your book are spent describing the various chess games. In my experience, reading about people playing chess is rather dull, or done in an instructional manner. Not so in your book! You have made reading about some guys sitting around playing chess as exciting as watching a fast paced sporting event. How long have you been playing chess, who taught you, and who did you spend the most time playing chess with? Do you still play?
PA: I’ve been playing chess since I was six, when my neighbor Dianne DeBruyn taught me. Since then, I’ve played both casually and seriously. I’m sure it will come as no surprise to find out I used to spend a lot of time in Austin coffee shops, playing chess and drinking beer.
I don’t play as much as I used to, because now I spend all my time in bookstores, shaking hands, and signing copies of Discipline. Maybe I should set up a board… [Paco purses lips and rubs chin, staring at ceiling.]
I’ve tried to Google Dianne Debruyn, by the way, and I can’t find her. I think she was a “chess angel.”
JT: One of the concepts emphasized in your book is the idea that “experience is everything”. Is this idea just part of the story line, or a concept that reaches over into “real life”? Can you elaborate a bit more about that?
PA: At one point in the story, the mentor-figure, Jefferson Stone, tells the student-figure, Douglas Cole:
“Knowledge means nothing without experience. You can read a thousand-page book about how to ride a bicycle, but until you actually get on the seat, the information is almost meaningless.”
I have a big problem not only with the emphasis we place on organized education – both public and private — in modern society, but also the methodology behind both these institutions. Mistakes aren’t tragedies to be swept under some proverbial rug; mistakes are stair steps to progress and the growth of knowledge. Yes, this concept is part of the story — inasmuch as Discipline should force us to question our perception of reality, as well as our intentions. Unfortunately, we tend not to see our mistakes as assets, and so “real life” becomes a cesspool of shame — full of secrets and skeletons — rather than an open universe of knowledge we can all share and benefit from.
JT: What can you tell my readers about “the entirety?” I get the feeling that there is something more to it than just a piece of a science fiction story.
PA: One of the most difficult tasks I faced with Discipline was creating an adrenaline-charged thriller while subtly weaving all these different concepts into the story. Fortunately I had a great team of editors helping me – again pulling simplicity out of complexity, creating a story than anyone can read. My dad was my most vociferous editor; he called the book “a cornucopia of paragraphs pregnant with intricate hogwash and scientific rigmarole.” My dad can’t operate a remote control with any measurable degree of efficacy, but by the same token, I don’t really know what “rigmarole” is, and I respect my dad, so I took out the hard parts.
Yeah, there is a lot more to the entirety than mere science fiction.
In the mid-twentieth century, Hugh Everett proposed something called Multiverse Theory, in which certain scientific anomalies might be explained if our universe wasn’t alone, but rather was part of a collective of infinite universes – in all of which all possible outcomes of any event in space and time would occur. His work was advanced by David Deutsch, whose book The Fabric of Reality influenced me tremendously. Maybe the best way of looking at the entirety is to take the calculable aspects of the Multiverse (I know, I know… how do you calculate infinity? Just suspend disbelief and pretend I know what I’m talking about for a second), and to combine them with the sheer nothingness that seems to be the cornerstone of Taoism. If you can wrap your mind around that – or rather let your mind go – you’ll be closer to understanding what I was going for when I described the entirety in Discipline.
JT: Part of your book describes acts of terrorism, and how the general public responds to those acts. Are those parts of your book written as a reaction to the acts of terrorism that really did happen in the United States on September 11th 2001?
PA: I actually finished those sections of the book in the spring and early summer of 2001 – months before the September 11th attacks. I also wrote about the failing dollar, and it’s potential link to economic terrorism in 2001. And I hope it doesn’t look like I’m proud of myself; I don’t want to be known as some sort of reincarnation of Edgar Casey or Nostradamus, and I definitely don’t relish the idea of the tragic things I write about becoming reality.
JT: Can you elaborate a little bit more about some of the physics concepts that you touched on in this story? It seems to me that some of these concepts are a large part of the story, and, since I know only a teeny bit about Physics, I think I might be missing something.
PA: I think the place to start is distinguishing between traditional, Newtonian physics (which describes the world around us – everything at the atomic level and larger), and subatomic physics (which describes the way forces act on each other at levels smaller than the atom).
Newtonian physics, with some minor exceptions, is fairly straight-forward and mathematically explicable. Subatomic science, on the other hand, is exceedingly mathematically uncooperative, and often causes nuclear physicists to abuse controlled substances, throw furniture, and/or fight fat people.
I could go on about all this for hours, but suffice it to say that it all boils down to a philosophical conundrum no one has been able to resolve adequately: no one can figure out why certain things don’t act the way they’re supposed to at the subatomic level.
At the subatomic level, a thing can act like a particle. Or a thing can act like a wave. Do you care? No. Do you care about neutrons, protons, electrons, quarks, or photons? No. Do you care that they don’t act the way they’re supposed to? No.
Okay, well, what if your dog suddenly started acting like your cousin? If it happened long enough, (like all the time), the philosophical conundrum would undoubtedly cause you to abuse controlled substances, throw furniture, and/or fight fat people. And it may be that your cousin and your dog do act a lot alike, and you might very well abuse controlled substances, throw furniture, and/or fight with fat people. But that’s not normal. Which is precisely the problem.
You don’t have to a physicist to see that this has epistemological and social ramifications. Enough said.
JT: What’s next? Will there be a sequel to Discipline? Do you have another book in the works?
PA: I am definitely working on the sequel, but I’m not forcing any deadlines on myself. Unlike too many sequels, this one is going to be right.
JT: Where can my readers go to learn more about Discipline, and keep up with you and your future book signings and readings?
Any of these sites will get you to sample chapters, the Discipline trailer, all the reviews, and a lot more.
JT: On your web site, and also at the back of your book, you list several “suggested reads”. Which of these should someone start with, and why?
PA: This is a fairly common question, and my answer is always the same: Tao Te Ching. I consider Taoism to be the connecting factor between all the schools of thought in the book.
JT: Thank you so much for doing this interview with me!
PA: Thank you, Jennifer! I’ve never done anything quite like this before! I hope we can do it again soon…
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