If you have stumbled upon this page - then:- "Greetings!" Are you prepared to experience a different type of book; one that challenges the little grey cells? An enigma for you to solve. My EarthZoo?"
I am a recluse but not too difficult to find if you Google with intent. I would love first contact with you!Now this is Oct 2018 hence why no real first contact from my readers??
I have created on Kindle Amazon a revised EarthZoo for you to peruse, buy in Ebook or hard copy. Please give reviews if you want first contact to continue?
If you like murder mysteries then Murder By Location, might tweak your buttons. It is a simple easy read but full of intriguing questions which franky still haunt me in their interpretation. Why do we contemplate murder of our own species?
If we are not alone in the universe but are part of a galactic community then where are they these friendly - unfriendly ETs? Stupid question if you analyse EarthZoo.
Until we are properly evolved however perhaps we are caged for our own protection within an Earthzoo environment. Life does not come about easily within the universe - please read my explanation below for details - hence all life is precious. Why are we so cavalier with life here on Earth?
Time's arrow to our perspective is linear and there is no release from its bondage. Our birth, our ageing, our ultimate death, all are linear and relentless. A dropped wine glass will always fall to its untimely death upon the floor. Order to disorder. Come with me then and enjoy a fresh perspective. At the speed of thought we are perched like birds on a bench inside my Transit Station. The galaxy lies below our feet and at a distance of 35.000 light years, it will initially fill you with awe and then wonder. One of its galactic arms reaches and dazzles us with countless multi-coloured pin sharp stars.
My EarthZoo novel might well appear too implausible and I do empathise with that statement – but to be fair it holds substance if studied carefully. So... If you fancy a walk on the wild side, then this page is for you!
I almost envy those who can drive down the motorway of life without encountering any major problems. Such bliss! If you are unfortunate to experience things outside the normality of life, then your dreams become troubled, but you get to run with the hounds; to experience life at the edge - at the brink.
As a complete unknown novelist, getting published was on the par of abseiling down Everest single handed; canoeing down Niagara Falls, or fighting a zombie in wellies. Perhaps you can then appreciate that it was an extremely uphill struggle until fate finally stepped in? However its ultimate success and survival is within your hands – can you come up to the challenge of solving the multiverse problem and save the Earth?
Let us apply some science to my story. Although I will maintain it is SF, scientific fact must still ring true! So hold on to your hats and coat tails and let us adventure: - over the rainbow of life.
Our first topic for scrutiny is travel. Can we travel faster than light? Interplanetary travel is too slow by using primitive rockets. The travel to Mars will take years, and an interstellar journey is out of the question. The nearest stars: - Alpha and Proxima Centauri at approximately 4 light years would take forever and a day to accomplish. Light speed travel sounds attractive, but that too has snags.
Einstein forbids it with his equations. Are you familiar with his famous: E= MC squared? Energy is E, M is mass and C is the speed of light multiplied by itself. Destroying mass like that in a nuclear explosion can release phenomenal energies. However this equation doesn’t explain the whole picture. The complete theory must include our relative velocity in relation with time (time-space and Unity) to give clarity to his equation. So you can see where that leads us: - the walk on the wild side!
We suddenly enter a different perspective. Velocity (V) and that enigmatic C for light are incorporated to create a paradox. As velocity increases so does mass. And if you are travelling at near the speed of light the energy to maintain that increases drastically. Time dilation also occurs so from an observer’s point of view it has slowed down. Ask any physicist at the Large Hadron Collider if you want confirmation.
In my book I use time loops to achieve faster than light travel. I thought that was unique until I realised that the mathematician Kurt Gödel had toyed with the idea with his ‘Closed Time like Curve’, long before me. His privilege was chatting to Einstein for confirmation; lucky man - but bang goes my claim to fame!
Using our quaint rockets, the most we could possibly achieve is slightly below light speed. Travelling to our nearest star even at that speed would take many years to accomplish. To an observer watching our brave astronaut, he or she would not age as fast as those left behind on planet Earth. Moving clocks are unique in time keeping and upon the return to Earth; a distant future would now be presented to our star traveller.
Quantum or my time loops are a phenomenon we must now investigate.
Normally all we are privileged to experience is linear time. Time’s arrow relentlessly propels us forward. Our hot coffee drink will ultimately cool down, and never get hotter! The philosopher Kant gave a fresh viewpoint by suggesting time is relative. When we are enjoying ourselves time sweeps by. Yet at other more boring times it appears to drag, like having lead weights upon our feet. Can we experience time loops? To some Alzheimer sufferers, their past experiences can sometimes be forever looped. Their narratives are trapped repetitively with no join. It is difficult to follow their perspective because this personal time is forever looped within a distinctive time frame. It begs the question though. Who is right: theirs or our own? There is a theory that our sub consciousness can flow between the past and present like a leaky water tap. When we dream, our mortal time frame abruptly becomes released and we perceive past or future events. It is an interesting experiment to wake up before we normally arise and jot down that dream we had experienced. Does it come true? It’s only a theory, but be honest. Can you relate to it?
How would you like a trip into the past? Visit your parents as teenagers, or talk to a famous person! Science of today however can only take you so far, and for the rest we can only speculate.
Professor Brian Cox in his 2014 Xmas Lecture tried to explain how Dr Who’s Tardis could travel back in time. He wanted to visit Faraday’s Xmas lecture of 1860. He illustrated his idea like this. Take a piece of paper and draw a cross upon it. The centre point is our present; the upward line is our future and the downward one our past. To the left and right is space. Let’s now approach a mass concentration, a black hole if you like. Everything is normal for you: our time is standard, but to an observer you will appear to act strangely. You do not age! As you approach the black hole eventually you will encounter the event horizon, from which light and mass cannot escape. This time the observer sees that you are frozen in time. As you become entrapped within the black hole you become stretched, pulled and spagettified so much so that even a vodka martini shaken for comfort will not help. Professor Brian Cox conveniently and sensibly left it like that - because heresy and sane physics do not mix easily!
Let us however be made of sterner stuff: that walk on the wild side. Assistance is at hand. Let us now change this stationery black hole for something different. The politicians do it with ease. We will give our black hole some spin. Now our event horizon has duplicated itself. Not only is there two outer event horizons, there are two inner ones. There is safety in numbers! That gives us four possibilities and one makes our intrepid traveller disappear in our region of the universe and reappear somewhere else; in an instant. That vodka martini most definitely would become stirred. Theoretically now and with a pinch of imagination, our hero resides within a closed time loop. However that is the conundrum of my book because in that environment, there is no escape. Professor Brian Cox will be (or has been?) held forever trapped inside that destiny of his!
An author update from 2018. Looking inside spinning event horizons is still not possible - but I feel it is still exciting to dream!
Let us suppose we do not have a convenient black hole to hand. Can matter be manipulated to such a level that the glue that keeps it together becomes undone? Abruptly now we have an interesting possibility: that of highly concentrated mass in the smallest of space. Nature has however shown us the way to this implausible scenario with White Dwarf stars. A thimble full of their matter weighs several thousand tonnes. If we could but create an iron sun to the density required to form a black hole than there is our answer. The management of stars to achieve that effect is beyond our science at present. Is there a simpler, more convenient way of time manipulation?
We need to apply a force which I do not think has been discovered yet. There are four known forces which are: - Gravity, electromagnetic, weak nuclear and finally the strong nuclear force. We appear to have overlooked one! At the big bang of the universe, when none of these forces were around, this force was showing its muscle. For want of a name I will call it the quantum force. It created us, the four forces and everything we see around us today. And that is what powers my time loops in my book! I hesitate to add this extra bit – but here goes. Physicists – grab a vomit cup.
My experience is walking amongst ghosts, I have even sound recorded them. A friend of mine, Harry Martindale witnessed an army of Roman soldiers walking through the walls of a cellar in the Treasurer’s House, York. There are many more like us who have had experiences equally as bizarre. I believe the science of tomorrow will explain this phenomena and I give a firm bet its quantum physics related!
As for my other predictions in the book let us now briefly investigate them too. Ross (our intrepid hero) when he was aboard the Transit Station observed that our Sun had a ring around it. It could explain why the outer solar surface becomes hotter than that of the nearer surface. He also observed that our galaxy had a closer neighbour. The Andromeda galaxy is supposed to be our nearest one. I began writing this book in 1980 and to my knowledge nothing yet has confirmed my predictions. However in my defence, it is only SF!
For the present, there appears to be no logical explanation to my bizarre experience on that cold winters day when I saw at first hand my UFO. During my close encounter it felt that I held some psychic connection. Our present future was their history – and it was a worrying one. The Cold War was amongst us. Could these beings I saw actually be time travellers? The simplest explanation is that the craft was one of ours and of terrestrial origin. However something that looked far more advanced than our Stealth fighters of today and had the capability of hovering silently takes a lot of explanation! Hence I will stick with the SF viewpoint of my EarthZoo!
Thank you for reading this.
References
Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed!
Music Of The Spheres – Guy Murchie
General Theory of Relativity – Albert Einstein
The Rheinmann Christofel Tensor
A Brief History of Time – Stephen W Hawking
The Royal Institute 2013 Christmas Lecture - Professor Brian Cox
The Iron Sun - Adrian Berry
The four forces of nature
Closed Time like Structures - Kurt Gödel
Time loops – EarthZoo! - P.R. Shepherdson
PART TWO: IS THERE LIFE OUT THERE?
Now we walk the walk upon something even more intriguing. Is there life out there in the universe?
My experience would or should make me biased, but you would think wrong. I work from analytical principles so what is the science behind extraterrestrial life? Apart from our own planet we do not have much to go on do we? So many questions with few credible answers. Life needs be kick started and that could be like walking through the eye of a biological needle? I think we are unique and life is a precious commodity that we must nurture on this fragile planet. Perhaps life did have that kick start - but from 'life clouds' coming from deep space seeding anything in its path. That would explain how life quickly started upon our planet, but as quickly became extinct through the turmoil of that time. And then as quickly re-established itself once more?
If you have read the book then I am here to answer your questions. Your time travel experience within the book will initially cause a sweat or two - but please persevere: it's worth the journey and may be of value to you! My time loops story hopefully, will fill you with intrigue. Can you solve the ultimate puzzle - has our planet been saved from extinction, or are we still within the loop?
The concept behind EarthZoo is all about the human condition and second chances in life. Of course there is more! The reason behind writing my science fiction novel EarthZoo was simple: I needed to offload bizarre experiences that wouldn’t go away
It was a frost laden February morning in 1979 and I was riding my scooter through the winding country lanes near Easingwold. As I turned to look into a field on my left, what I saw there changed my life forever. Hovering close by and silent as a graveyard was a black triangular craft. I paused for a better look. At the time I recalled only thinking why the world had suddenly gone quiet and how ‘nuts and bolts’ this strange craft appeared. There was no ghostly image or flashy lights, but the experience was unearthly. This looked like an unusual aircraft but too small for one. I was apprehensive and then felt uncontrollable fear but was rooted to the spot. I knew that if I told anyone, total ridicule would be the result. My nightmares were the trigger behind this book. I needed a catharsis moment.
It was a simple equation: there was a craft either man made or exo-terrestrial that I had seen. Either way, the solution was this: - Why were they here and what did they want.The simpler explanation of it being terrestrial and man made seems incredible: what government was behind that project?
Originally my story line was like a Hitch Hiker's Guide style: funny and a twist of serious. I had my hero being alien abducted from a toilet seat whilst eating fish and chips. I like to try out all my stunts to see if they worked. This obviously was not well thought out because after the experience, my fish tasted crap and I was wedged within the toilet seat.I refuse to reveal where the chips had finally disappeared to! Just to say I walked with a limp - and I am not saying what.
Hence the change of plan - see below. You must agree that sitting on a No 84 Micklegate doorstep is far safer and what you don't know is that No 84 Sandwich Bar is an excellent cafe. Their sandwiches are the talk of York. A secret not to be shared with anyone else - OK?
The story line...
When Ross sat down on his preferred York Micklegate doorstep, little did he know that this time his life would change forever.
He would fall in love with a women he was yet to meet. She belonged to a mysterious organisation called the Watchers and their mission was to save Earth.
Ross was a man who had hit rock bottom in life and then had discovered there was a basement attached to it. Now he had been given a second chance.
It was to be Earth's too.
EarthZoo is all about the human condition and second chances in life. And sometimes that is all we may have.
Twenty plus years in the conception you will experience my City of York -past and present and my love of Athens and then literally - out in space; almost an unusual tourist guide!
Read the first chapter here.
* Thirsk, North Yorkshire (White Rose Book Cafe).Now you need to order them. Delivery will be within a day or two.
* WH Smiths at York. You will need to order them.
* York Brewery located in Toft Green. Speak to Matt the landlord for orders and his comments as he has read it and approved the book.
* Amazon (Again you need to order it.)
Hope you enjoy the read experience.
P.R. Shepherdson (updated August 2016)
Reader Reviews
Please feel free to give me your views upon reading EarthZoo. Some readers have had life changing experiences after reading it. Here are a few testimonies.
Nick Pope - Ministry of Defence UFO Project (1991-1994)
EarthZoo is a gritty novel about second chances - and aliens! Amateur astronomer Phil Shepherdson's intriguing debut novel deals with extraterrestrial visitation, but steers clear of lazy stereotypes about evil aliens, exploring instead some more thoughtful possibilities. Given that the author has had a UFO/alien encounter himself, the question arises as to how much of this enjoyable and well-written science fiction might actually turn out to be science fact.
Chris Titley:- Yorkmix.
‘It's weird - but then that's what I expect from his writing! I would be disappointed if it was anything else.'
Jackie from York:
I found this book comforted me whilst suffering deep depression which nearly caused my suicide. I found Chapter 33 comforting and gave me strength to carry on with life once more.
Paul from North Yorkshire.
I cannot stand reading books and bought this to give to my wife. Chapter 1 however held me spellbound and I read the book from cover to cover. And then re- read it for more depth! It encouraged me to study science from a previous non academic background. The book has many layers from which to explore different story lines. There is no true synopsis to this book: you discover your own which makes this book truly unique.
John from Tadcaster North Yorkshire.
My first impression was that there were too many characters and it was a struggle to understand the various Time Loops. Finally I got it and realised they created intermixed story lines which I found very intriguing. Watch out for the Green TL - I missed that one!
Author's note.
I feel privileged to have been the instigator of those personal journeys.This is an experience for you to share and as you have just read, is much more than a mere SF novel! Think beyond our linear time perspectives and you will understand and enjoy the EarthZoo unique journey.
