John Dalmas Guestbook

Mike Flynn said: [ Regarding IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND, by Michael Flynn ]

I was living in Colorado at the time the first couple "installments" were written. Part One appeared as a 2-part serial in ANALOG under the book's title. A portion of Part Two appeared as a novelette, "A Rose by Other Name." When I combined these plus the remainder into the novel, I was by then living in New Jersey, where the pizza joint where Red and Sarah are shot at is still in business.

[ See Responses ]

Geoffrey Kidd said: [ Regarding IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND, by Michael Flynn ]

I quite agree with your evaluation of the novel. Flynn has a gift for taking some hard speculation and making it real. The Tor edition was somewhat rewritten from the original paperback published by Baen Books in 1990, and if I recall correctly, some of the supporting background giving aspects of the possible mathematics behind the science of "cliology" was also added for the Tor edition.

The Baen cover was better and more relevant, in my opinion. You can see a thumbnail of it at: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?CNTRYOB1990 It consists of a mushroom cloud in the distance behind a man wearing an eyepatch.

One treasure my wife and I have taken from the book is a comment that "In cliology, distance is a function of frequency and depth of contact." We've used that metric to evaluate relationships, and it's led to a distinction in our lives between "family" (people we see often and talk about things important to us) and "relatives" (people who are *genetically* close, but we almost never see/hear them or from them, and the contact is trivial).

I'm glad you liked the story.

judy depp said: [ See Comment Stimulus ]

hi, i spoke to you this eve. we had quite a wonderful chat. i work at dr. aplings office. see ya, when you get back in town. thank you,
judy depp

Jason Zavoda said:

Thanks for one of the most enjoyable thought-provoking books I've ever read. (The Reality Matrix). I re-read this whenever I feel like clearing away some cobwebs and start poking into the corners of the universe.

Tom Harwood said: [ Regarding A Habitable Planet ]

The chemical in question is NOT 2-4D, it was DDT. Not that 2-4D is benign, contaminants and overuse can have results such as my agent orange diabetes.

Jude Jones said: [ See Comment Stimulus ]

Hi Dad! I am wondering if you remember all the places you lived after your dad died? How did you feel about moving around so much?

Jude Jones said:

Love You

Jude Jones said: [ See Comment Stimulus ]

I admire your ability to summarize so succinctly!!

Jude Jones said: [ Regarding Where you been, John? ]

Howdy! Could you please put the date when you write? Thanky!

Thomas Hazlewood said:

Started alphabetizing my books. I have ELEVEN written by you. That ties you for 1st place in my library. Thanks so much for the enjoyment!

Barbara Hardy said: [ Regarding EVOLUTION (12/06/07) ]

Dear John,

You wrote:

It's been suggested that the soul enters the body with the first breath. That makes as much sense as the belief that the soul began with fertilization. Or was the soul in the ovum from the start? Others, I suppose, would prefer to think the soul is in the sperm, but for every sperm cell that wins the race to an ovum, hundreds are also-rans, and die. What happens to their souls?
Christian clergy in general preach faith in God. Might it might be appropriate, then, to have faith that God looks after the details, and accept the world as it is, to the extent they can?


Just a few ideas.

If we were a little cell in a growing fetus, this world would feel very chaotic.
All sorts of things would be in flux. We go to the effort to grow a tail and then abandon the effort. We would have good reason to feel that it was a pretty random, careless state of affairs.

I think about this in the context of Baby Soul seeking an ordered world in seeming chaos. And there is probably a cycle which starts with fertilized egg and ends with the ‘death’ of life in the womb. And there is probably a ‘Baby
Soul’ stage in all of that.

To us, looking from the outside, the process of making a baby is a predictable process, expressing a repeating order. The cell going through meiosis is not falling apart. The growth that follows is not accidental or random.

Is this an intelligent design? There does seem to be some kind of intentionality about it.

Michael has been channeled as saying that the soul enters the body with the first breath. I think that this argument is too colored by the issues of abortion. I don’t know what percentage of women live their lives with repressed shame and guilt because they have never come to terms with an abortion which they had done in the midst of a crises.

Every consideration of the nature of a unborn child is seen through the filter of a fear that they have committed a murder.

I am pretty much outside this issue - being a lifelong celibate. I can only observe how abortion has devastating effects on women. I have never
had a friend who had an abortion who seemed completely at peace with it. The women I have known who have seemed at peace seemed morally dead to me, utterly self centered. These women have had multiple abortions, and see it as a bit inconvenient.

I don’t start discussion about abortions with women because it seems insensitive. I believe that there are conditions under which an abortion may be the best choice, but I think that regularly using it as a kind of birth control is wrong. In the middle I don’t have any kind of certainty.

If I accept that a body is ensouled at the first breath, it does exclude the notion that it is the end of a process of interaction between soul and the forming human body. I think of the picture of the surgery where the baby raises it’s hand to the surgeon.

In the scheme of the levels of planes from Buddhaic to the Physical, there is no explanation for the protolife? which is occurring in the fetus. Cats have a hive entity - but what is the source of the existence of a living being before birth? This being can die and the mother’s life continues, it is independent of hers.

I propose that the nature/nurture explanation is too simple. There is sperm and egg and a force which gives energy to their union. It is like the person who knit’s a sweater. This force is the part enters and allows or determines the process of fertilization. It begins the expression of the choices that makes the incarnation.
And like the sweater, there is a point where there is just there is just a pair of knitting needles (the force that will make the sweater), the pattern (the DNA), and a ball of yarn (the environment from which the body is spun). As one
knit’s the sweater, it is not possible to wear it - to be ensouled.

When the last stitch is knitted, the knitting needles, which were my connection to the sweater are no longer needed. My relationship with the form of the sweater is utterly different, I can then enter it.

I don’t know about the issue of karma, but if the someone grabbed the sweater I was knitting and damaged it to the point that the sweater could not be made, I would have a range of reactions. I have had a cat do this in the very early stages when the yarn was just too much fun to ignore.

There would be a difference between someone destroying my made sweater and someone interrupting the process. Especially say, if the person who interrupted me was paying for the yarn and decided to stop. I think that this may be more the equivalent of the relationship between the mother and the soul preparing to incarnate.

There may also be an equivalent relationship of knitting needles, plan and yarn in the physical universe. The Tao is knitting it. This is a kind of
Intelligent design. And in the way that a cell in a fetus might feel a kind of chaos in its development, we feel the uncertainly of order in our lives.
This is not proof that there is no God working as creator.


I hope that you see this message in a better context than this teeny box:o)

Barbara Hardy

John Sorenson said:

Laying in my bath here in Yokohama, my mind drifting, I thought of my Northern Minnesota river land and how you once (twenty years ago) wrote me a nice letter, telling me about your experiences with the land - and that you knew of a family named Shadley who lived across the river - and how the man of the house had very bad teeth and left the wife and kids alone there most of the winter while he worked as a logger.

I still own the land, but only get there once a year to hug a tree or two.

Very glad to hear you are still breathing and producing.

Maybe I can help with info for Tea River. I'd certainly like to hook up again and hear more about your memories of the place.

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Chuck Niska said:

Sir,

I just read the piece written re: Egolfs V. Bakuzis. I was not one of his students (Vilis Kurmis was an Advisor for a year), but one of my friends was working under he for her M.S., on his never-ending analysis of synecological coordinates.

At any rate, I read your treatise with great interest... I am a full-blood Finn, and read with great interest of the exploits of those exposed to the travails of WWII, since many of us of Euro heritage have family histories marked by those conflicts, those histories.

Dr. Bakuzis was endeared to we, as students, for his tenacity, his work ethic. As said, I did not know him personally, but in my MS days, I found all staff to be that much more personable, down to earth, and real.

I greatly appreciate your writing.

Chuck Niska
U of M College of Forestry

B.S. 1979
M.S. 1983

Kristen Jones said:

I love you grandpa!

Kitty Howard said: [ Regarding ABOUT AGING: Part 4 ]

I don't know if you remember me, John, but I will never forget you and Gail. I will miss her very much. Many hugs to you from Arkansas.

Dennis Horwath said:

I always enjoy your books...read About Aging 3, thank you!!

I am glade you choose to write, and wanted to thank you..

LyleLyle Phipps said:

New fan. I only recently discoved your books. I have read 15 or so from the library and am trying to uncover locations to purchase more. Many out of print, found 7 at Auntie's 5 more in various used book stores in Spokane.

Bailey Buchanan said:

I was introduced to your style via "The Regiment" - and was instantly hooked.

Thank you for many hours of very enjoyable reading.

~Bailey
~~No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message. However,
a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Don Curtiss said:

Just finished "The Bavarian Gate". Redd the Afterword -- I have a BS and and MF from U of W. I am gobsmacked! Enjoy all of your works. (I was a choker-setter)