What does this (jewel like structure at the centre of the universe - according to some physicists)...
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Illustration by Andy Gilmore
Rendering of the amplituhedron, a newly discovered mathematical object resembling a multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions. Encoded in its volume are the most basic features of reality that can be calculated — the probabilities of outcomes of particle interactions.
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But something troubles me about my first book, "the best book ever written about The Father of Our Country", The Education of George Washington.
I finally got the stats for the first six months of sales the other day. I was shocked. It's almost 100% hardbacks (well it looks to be over 90% hardbacks). The report is too early to show Audio Book sales yet, but...about 20 to 1 ratio of hardbacks over e-books, if I read the report correctly. (My first book report that's not, like, a book report in school! So....)
This told me that, primarily, what I refer to somewhat disparagingly (although with great affection) as grownups comprised the bulk of my audience.
I'm all for grownups, don't get me wrong. But, the fundamental years that changed George Washington - that set the course of his life - are 15 to early 20s, or so.
National television shows, national radio shows, newspapers, magazines, prominent placement in all Barnes & Nobles, speaking to historical societies, and more, led to...grownups buying the book.
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| Austin Washington with his best selling and critically acclaimed book, The Education of George Washington, featured prominently in Barnes and Nobles across America. |
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My best decisions are always the worst decisions from a logical point of view.
Physicists, y'know (off on a mild tangent, which are always the best part of the journey, but you still need to hold on, though...) now posit that space and time are illusions, much as heat is. (Heat is molecules - or atoms? not really sure - moving quickly. So there is no fundamental "force" of heat, per se.)
I read about a current theory the other day that the entire universe - (our universe, all universes? not sure, really) - is, fundamentally a multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions.
Hmmm.
I say that to try to explain how, when I do profoundly ridiculous things, miracles happen, whereas when I do level-headed sensible things, I have middling to poor results.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Just as heat is (demonstrably and incontrovertibly) not real at a fundamental level, sometimes I think sensible and clear-headed plan-making is based on an illusion, too. The illusion of causality. Causality might be just as untrue on a fundamental level as heat is. Which is to say it may well be an illusion that level-headed planning is useful if the thing you are interested in is above and beyond the ordinary. (Heat works fine for cooking eggs, and sense and sensibility work fine for getting jobs at Goldman Sachs.)
But what if you want more...?
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Which is my long way of saying:
I'm making Growly the Monster because it's easy to do, it feels right, and it just kind of happened. But somehow I believe this will expose more people to the ideas in my first book than would be exposed to them if I actually did something with the overt intention of bringing that about.
Is that clear?
I didn't think so. But once you are capable of seeing things from all twenty-seven dimensions, it will be clear as clear as a multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions.
And that's about as clear as I wish to make things, on a Wednesday.
STAY IN TOUCH
