Fly
Twice Backward
by
David S. McCracken
Genre:
Alternate History, SciFi
You
wake back in early adolescence, adult memories intact, including ones
that could make you very wealthy now. Your birth family is here,
alive again, but your later families are gone, perhaps forever. What
has happened, what should you do about coming problems like violence,
ignorance, pollution, and global warming? You realize one key
connects most, the fundamentalist strains of the major religions
disdaining science, equality, and social welfare. You see that there
are some things you can change, some you can’t, and one you don’t
dare to.
Fellow
idealists help you spend your growing fortune well--such as an
artistic Zoroastrian prince in the Iranian oil industry, a rising
officer in the Soviet army working to find a way to destroy his
corrupt government, a Bahai woman struggling against Islamic
brutality, a Peruvian leader working for a liberal future, and a
snake-handling Christian minister, grappling with doubts, sexuality,
and destiny. They are supported by an ally who develops essential
psychic powers. The group faces familiar-looking corrupt politicians,
religious leaders, and corporate czars, but there is an ancient force
in the background, promoting greed, violence, hate, and fear.
This
exciting, emotional, thoughtful, humorous, and even romantic sci-fi
novel weaves progressivism, music, movies, and literature into a
struggle spanning the globe. Vivid characters propel the action back
up through an alternative history toward an uncertain destination.
David
McCracken was born in Louisville, KY, in 1940. Raised mostly in
Winchester, KY, he now lives in Northern Virginia, with his third and
final wife. He has three children, two stepchildren, and six
grandchildren.
After
three years in the U.S. Navy following a lackluster academic start,
he graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1963, in Diplomacy
and International Commerce. He then worked as a Latin American
country desk officer in the U.S. Department of Commerce until he
returned to school to earn an M.A. in Elementary Education in 1970
from Murray State University, having always been intending to teach.
Eventually realizing his children qualified for reduced-price lunches
based on his own teaching salary, he studied computer programming at
Northern Virginia Community College and worked as a programmer until
shifting back into elementary teaching.
He
began working on what became Fly Twice Backward in 1983 and finally
finished it in 2019! At 79, David strongly doubts he'll be doing
another novel of such scope and complexity, but is preparing to work
on a children's science fiction novel with a progressive bent, being
a devout progressive in politics and religion, as well as a lover of
learning.
GUEST POST
Why did I want to write about going back in time and living
forward?
When I was a boy, my father read
Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to us,
enjoying the story of a modern man who found himself far in the past,
as much as my sister and I did. It wasn’t until I was writing this
novel that I understood why Dad might particularly have enjoyed
it, as I savored the idea of a second chance at doing something
significant. I came to see this diary of my falling back to early
adolescence and living forward as a perfect medium for bringing to
life many things I care about. Ah, and my body was literally
rejuvenated.
Why did I choose the diary format?
As I wrote, the novel transformed into
a worldwide saga, with a sizeable cast needing to feel their lives,
blending eventually into a great friendship, a noble undertaking. To
keep track of them all, for me and readers, a blended diary let me
economically identify the POV in each diary entry, along with the
place and time. It also let me give immediacy their strands—a goal
that also led me to write it always in the first person, present
tense. I enjoyed, in the process, playing out some events from
different points of view, like the son who had no idea why his mother
broke off with the man he wanted as a step father….
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