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Welcome to the free online presentation of 9 Days Falling, a fictional account of the challenges currently facing modern society as a prelude to the next evolution in our
social order. I’ve been writing about one aspect or another of this ongoing evolution for many years now, chronicling issues related to peak oil, the economy, the erosion of civil liberties in the US, and the
vast inequity of wealth distribution. A year ago I began this novel as a way to fictionalize the consequences we might face if radical changes in the way we live and interact with one another are not made
soon--the way we inhabit the landscape, energize our cities and economies, the way we treat one another as human beings. Be it peak oil, global warming, or the malfeasance and fraud of Wall Street, our failure to
embrace real change and reform will have severe consequences as we inevitably move from a life of excess and consumption to one of scarcity and frugality, a drastic reordering of the way we live that will be forced
upon us during a time social prophet James Kunstler refers to as “The Long Emergency.” But difficult as these times may be for many, the world is not ending, as many doom sayers predict, it is changing,
and change can at times be very painful and wrenching to existing social systems, economies, and on the international scene as well.
This is a novel of that long emergency, and the catharsis of change. It is a fictional story where all of these primary forces of climate, our diminishing energy profile, the
astounding collapse of our economies, and the inequity of our wealth and resource distribution will have their role to play, forcing us along a darkening pathway where change may come in sudden, convulsive episodes,
such as those depicted in this novel. It is my belief that we must experience this catharsis before we can give birth to a new order and way of living that is equitable, sustainable and moral. We have already borne
witness to events of this nature. 9/11 in 2001 and the great collapse of the financial world in 2008 are perfect examples. They were said to be “unexpected,” by the powers that be, unanticipated
events in the stream of history. But more reflection will show that they were completely predictable, and that they were, indeed, accurately foreseen by any number of writers on the Internet long before they
happened, myself humbly included.
The novel’s title derives from Dante’s Inferno, and the 9 levels of hell Satan fell through on his descent. In a metaphorical sense, we have all been cast out of the paradise
we have built with our modern societies and miracles of high finance--models which have been proven to be complete failures that required the commitment of over $26 trillion dollars in public funding and special Fed
programs, the wealth of many generations, to simply prevent complete collapse. I have long believed this to be the greatest crime ever committed in human history, the details of which still remain largely unknown by
the general public.
Now we are all falling,
through each successive circle of Dante’s Inferno as this crisis progresses. It began with our indifference and the limbo of comfort we built around ourselves, an easy life where we could have anything we desired by simply using other people’s money in the form of liberal credit. We have made ourselves victims of our own gluttony and avarice, and vented our wrath and anger upon the innocent with deliberate war in Iraq that was intended, not to seek real justice and retribution for 9/11, but to secure vast oil resources in the region. Our failure there was predicted as well, years before events have percolated down to a low boil --and the odd irony is that after 8 years and a trillion dollar commitment there, the most lucrative oil and gas development contracts still went to the Chinese and Russians.
The abyss to which we have fallen is now the province of those who pander and seduce, the grafters, hypocrites, and thieves of high finance on Wall Street who have so plundered the wealth
of our nation, and the false counselors of media and government who remain complicit, counterfeiting false hope as much as anything else with deception and distraction in the media and fraudulent economic reporting
numbers. Many have come to feel that they all now inhabit the deepest regions of Dante’s hell, the realm reserved for traitors, and a growing sentiment of anger is slowly festering in the nation that may
soon present us will real challenges involving social order here.
With these events in mind, I have structured each segment of this novel as one “day” in this descent, with five chapters or scenes in each day. The novel is written in
what novelist John Brunner once coined as the “Innis mode” a non-serial progression of scenes and
characters that eventually make up the threads of various plot lines woven into the story. As such, some characters will appear intermittently throughout the novel, as their experience portrays a segment of the
overall tale. But no single character can bear the mantle of the protagonist. There is no single, unified plot line in this mode of writing either, though events do progress in a loose chronological order. The
story, as such, becomes the summation of all the various scenes and episodes, like a collection images in a montage or art gallery might convey an impression or feeling about the subject.
Here then are my
word pictures, in fictional guise as opposed to the regular non-fiction articles I have been publishing biweekly. The episodes often recount recent events, and project possible new consequences of what we have
already seen.
The key question in all of this remains to each of us: how can we retain our humanity and build that new world ahead as we pass through this time of crisis and forced change? We will each
answer it in different ways, some with courage, ingenuity, assertive innovation, and deep compassion, others with vile thievery and continued selfishness. But no one in this generation will be able to remain
indifferent. Like the people in Cormac MacCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road, we must either be the bad guys on the road ahead, or the good guys, and carry the fire. We all must choose, one road or another.
I have tried to carry the fire all these years with the only weapon I had to bring to the fight--the power of the pen. Many thanks to all the thousands of readers who have spent valuable
time reading my articles. Knowing you were out there was one great motivation that kept me writing, and I hope you will join me on this next turn in the road as I present 9 Days Falling. Just
click on the chapter links above to read any given scene. The story will update each week with new scenes. So come back often!
John Schettler
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