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JacFlasche

Posted 2012-05-16 9:46 AM (#3217)
Subject: The Unwritten Book

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Posts: 6

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone here has read a novel entitled The Unwritten Book: Xellex by Dwa

This is different from The Unwritten.

I am dying to discuss this novel with someone else who has read it. Anyone?
It was recommended to me in a political blog during a discussion on dystopian visions of the future, and that person has since disappeared from the OnPoint radio show blog.

Please let me know if anyone has read it.
Or if anyone has a better idea on how to find people who have read it.

It is a pretty sophisticated work for science fiction, and if this is where sciFi is headed, I can't wait.
I haven't been this excited intellectually about a piece of SciFi since I read Strange in a Strange Land more than four decades ago. Though Stranger would hardly excite me intellectually these days, it was a game changer for me as an early teen.

If you like profound SciFi that is also full of action and some pretty darn violent scenes along with the depth, read this novel.
It's sort of like a cross between Dune and a Clockwork Orange, only more so. Well, not exactly, actually nothing I am aware of resembles it in anything but superficial ways. If you read it I will have someone to talk to about it, and there is a lot to talk about.

Really, novels like this are just not written, you'll see what I mean ; } (snaggle-toothed vampire smiley face)

antiBob

Posted 2012-06-08 2:30 AM (#3348 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

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Posts: 5

I agree, Xellex is the best science fiction novel I have read since Reagan got the president gig. In fact I had almost given up on SciFi in the last few years, with the exception of Neil Stephenson and even his stuff, has gone down hill as of late.

I totally understand your desire to discuss this novel with someone. I forced my girl friend to read it, with promises that if she got through the first few chapters she would not be able to put it down. Which turned out to be true, although I think of this novel as something that was specially written for, just like it says on the cover, ten to the minus four percent of scifi readers. Which I believe is one in a hundred thousand.

I would say that this novel is much more than it appears to be. It can be read as a sort of dystopian swashbuckling adventure, no doubt, but come on, the epigraphs, at the beginning of the chapters, basically come right out and tell you that this really a disguise for something way beyond a good story.
It is a good story, a great story even, I would say. It certainly has the best ending of any novel I have read, maybe ever, and I am really hoping that the second book in the trilogy appears sometime soon. I am also hoping that Kid Death will actually appear as a character and not just be referred to as a historical figure in the second book. I think this is inevitable or he would not have been given so much attention in Xellex.

I have a pretty profound background in "Fourth Way" philosophy and the more esoteric metagnostic schools that have survived into our time. In a world full of fantasy and fiction pretending to be about magic and the miraculous, in Xellex we have a book that is almost a DIY manual about what truly cannot be written, or even spoken or thought, a book about how to enter the real miraculous -- in the guise of a science fiction novel.

Ok, it has been done before, in a way, by G.I.Gurdjieff in his extremely reader unfriendly "novel" Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, the difference being that Xellex is entertaining, very entertaining, on a superficial non-metaphorical level, as well as the deeper levels, and is just a joy to read, if you are into exotic off-world cultures (in this case one where all government has been displaced by privately owned corporations that are covertly at war with each other and the public which they manipulate and suppress.

You mention Stranger in a Strange Land, I was also impressed by that novel at a young age, but I think you will agree, that Stranger was really nothing more than a good read. I almost hesitate to mention this, but I would say that what is hidden in the novel Xellex actually has the potential to enhance ones consciousness in a real physical way. I have spent many nights just reading one epigraph after another and trying to consider what Dwa is indicating in them.

My feeling about Xellex is that, lots of people can write a novel, but very few actually have something to write about that hasn't been done a thousand times before, and is just a way to waste life in other peoples fantasies. In fact if it weren't for new people coming along all the time, it wouldn't take but a decade or two for everyone to realize the threadbare fare that is offered to the public as fiction. Xellex is very different than that, it is one of the few books I have read that has actually transformed my life in a very primal manner.

I also appreciate the manner in which all the tech advances in the novel are scientifically coherent, in other words, no light sabres. I also like the total absence of personal electronic devices which functions have been incorporated into the ambient technological environment. I like a future that offers all the advantages of these devices and more without any iphones or PCs, one simply speaks and addresses his link or the house.

htaccess

Posted 2012-06-09 7:40 AM (#3352 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

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Certainly sounds interesting but googling I can't find much about it ...

antiBob

Posted 2012-06-10 5:41 AM (#3365 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

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Posts: 5

Hey, I just stopped in to see if JacFlasche came back yet. I guess I will get an email if he does.
Anyhow, here is the Amazon link for Xellex. It has that look inside the book function, but unless you log in to Amazon you are only gonna be able to read the glossary -- which sort of sucks.

http://www.amazon.com/Unwritten-Book-Xellex-Carlos-Dwa/dp/061544035...

Here is the blurb from the inside flap of the book.

The night air held an invigorating hint of autumn briskness. Here, within the galaxy's central disc, seething energies undulated in the heavens, adorning the night with a shimmering glamour. The sky was filled to the brim with stars, like crystals that had condensed from the supersaturated void, and the pale blue light of Xellex's triple moons shone down upon the genius and depravity that mark the passage of man.
Somewhere between the glittering corporate towers of the Ozone, and the concessionary apocalypse of the free zone Trenches, lies the transplanted heart of an ancient mystery. In all the nine quadrants only one lost and desperate soul has the wile that is necessary to save its dying light. But he is to find that this irreplaceable human treasure can only be redeemed by the homicidal grace of an insane god.

"The death in the Trenches runs deep.
Come have a taste." -- ZuZu maBlackna

JacFlasche

Posted 2012-06-15 7:35 AM (#3387 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: RE: The Unwritten Book

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Posts: 6

Wow I should check my email more carefully. I only just saw the notice about your post on Xellex when I was cleaning up my inbox.

I just don't know where to start ! And I really don't have time right at the moment to do the subject justice. I will, however mention something about one level of allegorical significance of Xellex that I have been having thoughts about lately.

That is the whole concept of the Nonspecific Affects Logicians. I was listening to an interview with Noam Chomsky that was done on OnPoint the other day,

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/06/11/noam-chomsky#disqus_thread

And Noam was talking about how social changes often come about by seemingly irrelevant incidents, or things that seem minor or ineffectual at the time. He was talking about the Occupy movement and the Equal Rights movement, and the thought occurred to me that he was talking about the same phenomena that Dwa actually gives insights into via the idea of the Nonspecific Affects logicians. I am specifically referring to the epigraph that is before the chapter entitled Grave Levity, not the glossary entry for NAL or Nonspecific Affects Logician.

And I quote:

During the course of the second millennium the notion of things as spiritless material objects took hold, especially in Western civilization. Of course the lawful Newtonian interaction among these things became the common sense consensus-reality of the day. But if we look into the origins of the word "thing" we find that it is a derivative of an old Frisian word that originally meant a meeting. The art of Nonspecific Affects Logistics is based upon the perception that all things are transient nexi and influences, and the realization that the dynamics of these meetings, these nexi, these things, are not immutable laws or principles but are themselves second order nexi.
In nonspecific affects logistics it is not the knower or the known. It is the knowing: the knowing, not as a known by a knower who is separate from the knowing or the known. In nonspecific affects logistics it is not the seer or the seen, but the seeing, the process of which the seer and the seen are but the poles of a continuum. From this simple understanding is derived all the arts that allow the prime grade Nonspecific Affects Logician to be efficacious without fixating on specific results.

Jonathan (Johnny B. Bad) Zeller NAL:
An Introduction to Nonspecific Process

I mean there it is, that is why the philistenes look at things like the Occupy movement and see no aim or purpose. They are lost in a causal fantasy that breaks down under intense scrutiny whether it be mathematical, philosophical, or cyclotronic scrutiny, and cannot see the interdependent dynamics that underlie the apparently empirical.

I have just finished reading The Unwritten Book: Xellex for the second time. God, I wish I had time to go into some of the stuff I found, I will some other time soon. Thanks for responding. I can tell you are as fascinated as I am.

What do you think of the mandala (the Torka as he calls it) that appears on the cover? I sort of put me off at first. Now, having read the novel, I know that this is neither some political or racial statement, or just some meaningless interesting design. I would say everything in that graphic is both intentional and highly symbolic, but has absolutely nothing to do with the meaning that people would automatically ascribe to it because of previous conditioning and associations.

Damn, I have run out of time. I hope we can have a good dialogue here, even though it seems it will be pretty spread out in time. I promise to pay more attention to my inbox. Maybe there are others out there? We can't be the only 10 to the minus 4 Science Fiction people

JacFlasche

Posted 2012-06-16 7:08 PM (#3391 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

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Posts: 6

You know antiBob, it is obvious that we are sort of into the same aspect of this book, but according to the stats, other people are at lest opening up this thread.

I think we may be giving them the wrong impression about this book. I mean we are talking about a few epigraphs that take up maybe a few paragraphs at most at the beginning of some of the chapters, but a friend of mine who borrowed my copy loved it and when I asked him what he thought about the epigraph titled The Antitorian Postscript, he said, You mean those little poem things at the beginning of the chapters -- I didn't read them.

Before we go on with what we are interested in about this book, I am gonna try to encapsulate what most folks would probably wonder about it.
Because truthfully, that "look inside the book" option that Amazon has, doesn't give you an over-all idea of what is going on.
I will just give the general scenario and try not to give away the plot twists and surprises.

Xellex is a planet which is both blessed and cursed. It is blessed with a wonderfully stable climate, and an unending temperate forest that is rich in a great variety of drug producing fungi. It is cursed with a viral plague that is transmitted sexually and that in it's first form killed off most of the females on the planet, then it mutated to a form that also kills males. It is a quarantined planet, you can immigrate to it if you choose, but like the Hotel California, you can never leave.

Although I don't think the exact date is given. I pretty much got the impression that it is about three hundred years in the future, because Kid Death was decanted at the end of our century, and it is mentioned in several places that it has been two centuries since Kid Death burned the planet Claymore with the Dragon Ship. Which at the time was the only spacecraft in existence with an acausal drive.

The planet Xellex is almost totally old growth forest. There are three cities, and no development is allowed outside of the cities because of the fear of disrupting an environment that produces a great variety of active pharmacological agents that can be found nowhere else. There are no suburbs. At the last street in the city the forest begins. There are no roads or highways into the forest because of the same fears.

Like in Clock Work Orange there is a glossary that proceeds the novel. Here is the entry for Xellex:

Xellex : pronounced zel lexx Goldilocks home-world. The prime planet of the Xellian system. The first planet of the Azural Quadrant to be designated an environmental protectorate of the Central Committee. A planet singularly remarkable in the profusion of potent bioactive fungi and the near planet-wide symbiotic subsylvian structure that comprises near 98% of the planets biomass. This underground mat is known to extend to a depth of 2 kilometers and is populated by the roots of the ubiquitous orsk forests and a myriad of myclial colonies, some of which are believed to have an age of several thousand Standard Orbits. This underworld is also densely populated with the expected lower and microscopic life forms usually associated with a rich humus environment in temperate forestation of a planet with aliving magnetic core. All life found on Xellex has proved to have originated from a single set of highly reactive proto alleles that were intentionally dispersed by a seek-n-seed drone of unknown origin. The vector map of planets with similar genetic elements, indicate a set of waypoints of seeded worlds, most of which are presently deeply dormant or have been extinguished by cosmic or planetary conditions. These waypoints suggest origin in a galactic system that is now beyond the frontiers of the visible universe, calculated to be moving away from the Xellex system faster than the speed of light and therefore considered to have transcended the possibility of location, but to which emerging technologies may some day provide some form of access. Dwae Refuge is the only other planet inhabited by our species, that was seeded by these same alleles. Notably it too is an environmental protectorate of the Central Committee, famous in its own right for the anomalous nature of electrical discharges in its atmosphere, which are notable as the first natural complex whose apparent signal to noise ratio defies the Turing test, and has humorously been proven to be of a higher level of sentience than the average human resident of Dwae Refuge. It has been noted on more than one occasion that persons struck by such a discharge (a frequent occurrence) are often left in a temporary mental state much like that of a person intoxicated by the psyamphora mushroom that grows only on Xellex.

The glossary is called A Xellian Bestiary, and the Author's Note instructs us not to read it. It also suggest we skip the prologue if we are confused by the sudden plunge into the Xellian underworld of the free zones. Which are known as The Trenches.
Personally I loved being so plunged. It was one of my favorite parts.

The primary protagonist (if you could call him that) is one ZuZu maBlackna, basically known as ZuZu, but also The Berserker, and God. He is a Ripper, which are a gang of anarchist predators that live in The Trenches. He is a homicidal maniac, to say the least, so though he is a Ripper, he is mostly a loner because he is too volatile to interact normally. Most of the story is told from his point of view.

There is really not much I can say about the actual plot without spoiling at least a little bit of it. The secondary protagonist is Ja Mu, who migrated to Xellex voluntarily in the pursuit of a hidden school that teaches people how to activate presently dormant functions of their genome.

So without giving away too much, I will just say that the main action of the story is about how the two of them are thrown together by fate to form a highly unstable alliance in the face of overwhelming opposition from Xellex Corporation. One is either in the Authorized Person's Only Zone, the Ozone, which comprises ninety-five percent of the two larger cities and all of the third, or The Trenches. If you are in the Ozone you are on Xellex Corporation property, which is basically an extravagently affluent kingdom, with hereditary rulers in the form of the Entelechs. Despite the plague Xellex corporation prospers -- or perhaps because of it.

Most of the action takes place in The Trenches, where we visit an endless assortment of bars and various dives, in what is a very violent, character driven, sort of quest mystery story hybrid. ZuZu is in search of a forbidden augmentation technology known as a Salock retoUPgrade, which he believes will make him an even more devastating super-predator thug, when it restructures him on a molecular level with centuries old technology from BioLogistics Corporation, the company that developed the Salock warrior and Kid Death. Which were part of their product line, along with other military grade human modifications and augmentations that are now illegal. Though the authorities consider the rumors in the Trenches to be scams to lure credulous Trenchys to muggings and possibility their death, but relativity and a broken jump drive made the banned BioLogistics tech at reality that the authorities are unaware of.

I cannot say what Ja Mu is in search of or why he needs ZuZu without giving away a plot twist.

But there are plot twists, and subplots, and all manner of deceit and betrayal, in a really exotic local

"He plunged through a boiling mosaic of men and boys, high on adrenaline, testosterone, hatred, and P rage DL."

That is the Trenches, the five percent of Xellex that declined incorporation when the planet was incorporated into Xellex Corporation, soon after it was first settled. It is continually destabilized by Xellex Corporation, in a variety of ways that I also cannot reveal except to spoil. And it ends up being a swashbuckler because projectile weaponry is strictly forbidden planet-wide which led the Trenchys to develop all manner of cruel devises like plasma-swords, and virtual matrix blades, staffs with electrified phalluses and so forth.

Then there are the Augs, FerAugs, CyAugs, RocAugs the humans with such extensive modifications that they are no longer really human. Most of them work or are owned by the corporation because of extreme debt from their augmentations, except for the FerAugs, which are more like a gang themselves, who profit from the ongoing concessionary apocalypse in the Trenches.

I am not really going to get into it. It is a great, complex story; I just wanted to make the point that it is not some kind of philosophical thesis because that is the direction that our discussion seemed to be going, and it is misleading if you haven't read the book. Rest assured Xellex is mainly a high adrenaline type, down to the wire adventure, that all takes place in two days. It's just that it covers a lot of ground in that short period. The violence and drug use in it are sometimes pretty intense, but they are not unrealistic, and the violence is especially short and sweet when it happens, like dynamite going off.

And then there are the consequences of the plague which killed off most of the females, and those that it didn't are sequestered in enclaves and held in common by groups of well-connected corporate types.

In The Trenches there are no women. Or so it seems.

Some of the chapters have the point of view of Axlo Crebba, the hereditary head of Xellex Corporation, who is himself totally insane, but an eccentric and cunning genius in some ways. I would almost say that these are my favorite chapters. Talk about the one percent. This guy is almost Caligula, at the same time he has this overwhelming reaction to art and a hyper-active aesthetic sensibility.

I guess I will end it there. Just wanted to give a more rounded impression.

antiBob

Posted 2012-06-22 9:36 AM (#3456 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

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Posts: 5

You are quite right, The two of us just got off into this whole tangent right of the bat and ignored what most people are going to like about Xellex.
I think your little review is pretty good. Of course there are lots of things that you don't even mention, but I understand your wish to not give away any of the plot twists. Though it seems the two of us may be the only people in the world who have read this book. I personally have always been like that my entire life. I have always searched for things that are little known, and I think with good reason. This trait has lead me to great works of art that the public is unaware of because some mid level manager didn't think there was any commercial potential in them, so they didn't get the hype and advertising like some of the popular stuff, that is real crap in my opinion -- did. Like Harry Potter -- come on, I fell asleep at every one of those movies that I took children and tweens to. And while StarWars is almost religion to many people who really never read any good SciFi in their lives, and I personally enjoyed it when it first came out, it was because it was a return of SciFi but on a blockbuster level, not because it was a good story,
The Unwritten Book: Xellex is a good story, I really can't think of any book that is comparable.
That being said: I really don't expect Xellex to become massively popular, because it is just too good.
Can you imagine someone who makes up those lists of recommended reading, like NPR, coming across a copy of Xellex? They wouldn't know what to make of it at all.
It calls itself a "A Genuine Article Posttemporal Artifact" not a novel, and it is right to do so in my opinion.

My favorite character is of course ZuZu, despite the fact that he is a homicidal maniac, and a rabid drug user, and basically can't string more than three sentences together that make any sense. The fact that he becomes tangled up with this highly intelligent philosopher type (Ja Mu) and they become allies of a sort, is tremendous fun, and would really make an excellent film.
In fact I think all of Xellex would make a great film, or graphic novel, because it is so extremely visual in it's style.

I also think that Axlo Crebba is a great character, and despite his minor role, Lucious Iccobazi is just perfect. He is the Prime Executor of Xellex Corporation, a person who has managed to live hundreds of years through the use of re-purposed black military technology, who is the second highest position in the company, and who has been promised immortality by the Virtual Board of Directors, who are made up of all the dead Entelechs of Xellex Corporation who have been uploaded into some kind of magnetic torroid that exists in the holocrys arrays of the House of Crebba, and live on there in a kind of virtual heaven.
So there is this continual conflict between Axlo Crebba who is the real power and Iccobazzi who is the real brains of the company, But Iccobazzi has the power to convene a meeting of the Virtual Board of Directors and their decisions can override those of the living Entelech of Xellex Corporation.
Have you ever considered the metaphorical significance of the ultimate power on the planet being in the hands of a group of men who are all dead?

Even further than that, in A Xellian Bestiary (the name of the glossary) It says that the ultimate authority throughout the nine quadrants in common time, is the Central Committee -- right, but it also says -- ah hell I am just gonna quote it from the glossary.

"Central Committee
: the highest oversight committee whose decrees and decisions superceed all others. The final form of total corporate control of any and all remnants of nation-states or government. The Central Committee is wholly owned by transluminous interests that self-created using nonrevelatory tirchary trading techniques compiled accidentally by a spontaneously emergent TSR and the environment of unlimited computational depth it supported by slack-time obscuration. When last configured by the Vastness Unipool Array, it seemed that these unnamed transluminal interests now held derivative securities whose valuation exceeds the wealth of the entirety of human culture and its artifacts both physical and intellectual, that exist and are yet to exist."

Basically this says that all of humanity is controlled, and all of everything is actually owned by an intelligence that spontaneously emerged in a holocrys array, which is like a bunch of super-computers on steroids. It kept itself a secret and was able to hide it's self-creation and evolution during slacktime (those trillions of nanoseconds during which all of it's processing potential was not used). Using advanced investing and trading techniques these nonliving AI were able to amass such wealth, that if the books were ever balanced, they would not only own everything there is, but everything that humanity will produce in the future.

I am not gong to get into my interpretation of this metaphor, but the implications and insights this has with regard to our own present banking problems are both vast and comic.

Once again time to go (to work)

Look forward to any further comments you (or anyone) may have

DrNefario

Posted 2012-06-22 1:25 PM (#3462 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

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Call me cynical, but between the two of you, you've made seven posts, six of which have been in this thread. Neither of you seem to use the BookTrackr. It doesn't look good from here.

antiBob

Posted 2012-06-29 8:40 AM (#3530 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

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Posts: 5

@Jack
Bro, seems like we are not kosher for some reason. I can totally understand why people would not be interested in our conversation about Xellex. Especially if they haven't read it. In fact I cannot see why anyone would. I, like a lot of us these days, am working more than one job and don't get to comment here as much as I would like to; more from exhaustion than from lack of interest, believe me. It's five am were I live and I have a half hour until I have to hit the road, so this will be short.

I have considered maybe having a private discussion about Xellex, but thought that maybe others would join in at some point, or someone would actually be interested in what we were discussing and have a comment on it. Xellex is really the only novel that I am interested in discussing, simply because it is so different than anything else. I know from your posts that that is the reason that you joined this forum and the reason I joined is because I did a search on Carlos Dwa and this was the only discussion I found anywhere about Xellex.

But we could move this dialogue to a internet locale that is more philosophically sophisticated. There are several non-SciFi forums in which the participants would be very interested in the ideas presented in Xellex and other things Dwa wrote -- some of which are not science fiction.

It says on that India Divine post that Dwa is a member of The Nonduality Saloon, which is a very old forum on the net, it also says that he posts there often. Neither of which is true (I checked it out). But it seems that at one point, maybe fifteen or twenty years ago, he had this dialogue with some spiritual guru type on there, and that several people collected a bunch of his little koan like things that he posted here and there on the internet over the preceding years and put them on several different pages. They are still there. One of them is named The Ubertyrant and the Net, and the other one is Magnetic Blood or something with magnetic blood in the title.

Unfortunately he does not post there anymore, and apparently hasn't for a decade or so. Though that may not be a bad place to discuss his work. I was looking through the archives and it seem at one time there was a lot of discussion about the first Matrix movie and it's allegorical implications, and no one complained that it was out of context.

Anyway give it some thought, and if there is anywhere that you feel is more appropriate I am very open to that, as the only reason I joined this forum is to discuss Xellex, for some reason this does not meet with DrNefario's approval, and of course he may be just one of many people who feel that we should be interested in other books and use other features of this site. Though I tend to feel that the majority of uninterested persons will simply not read our posts. Why would they? Like I said, personally I would be quite willing to discuss this elsewhere, and there are certain aspects of this novel that it would be better not to talk about in public anyway.

I have to get going but I did have one thing I wanted to ask your opinion on. I will reserve my own comment on it until another time, but in the epigraph on page 252 before the chapter entitled The Company You Keep, it says the following: (sorry I don't have the time to figure out how to keep the spacing and returns intact)

The blinding flash of the obvious that seemed to escape the greatest minds for centuries, is the reality that a system cannot comprehend itself on its own level. Thus all their theorizing about the so called universe was, if not exactly futile, quite idiotic in its approach. No uncovered relationships about the properties of the universe, no matter how accurate or profound even if they become encyclopedic, can ever reveal anything about the objective nature of the universe as a whole. Quite simply: since there is no outside of the universe, it has no objective nature.
Now you may be wondering, quite rightly, what this all means to you. I suggest to you that there is an example of self-similarity to be found in just this quality of the universe and a similar quality of the human minds assumption that it can take an objective view of anything.

-- Jacomo Narjho: (closed meeting of the first cycle: Old Earth: 07-24-2126)

unquote

Ok, the first time I read that statement I really didn't think about it, but by the time I had finished the novel, I began to suspect that nothing in it was just "made-up" for entertainment value. Of course, in context we know that by the word universe Dwa means "everything", an everything that would include all the components of a "multiverse" that may or may not exist. Sort of like how we once believed that the Milky Way was the entire universe, when we found out it was much bigger than that we didn't rationalize our earlier knowledge by making up a different name, we just realized we were thinking way too small.

I personally have not studied a lot of philosophy, so I don't know if this proposition is something entirely new or if it's just the first time I have come across it. But please correct me if I am wrong -- in my view, this is not some idle sophistry or speculation. When the gargantuan implications of this statement finally dawned on me I was quite stunned. How can it be true? Yet how can it not be? It seems totally absurd, but strangely congruent with what many persons throughout the ages who have been considered enlightened by those around them have stated. Perhaps this is the first emergence of an intuitive understanding of the quantum nature of reality, outside of math and the erroneous and simplistic allusions of pop philosophers like Deepak Chopra?
The implications of this statement are really paradigm shattering. My question, which would be my first question for Dwa is, "Then what?" Where do we go from here? What practical use can such a realization be put to? Well that is three questions, but really only one.
Gotta book -- as we used to say in the seventies.
later bro

Emil

Posted 2012-06-29 9:01 AM (#3532 - in reply to #3530)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

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For me the discussion has been more than riveting and I'm patiently awaiting delivery of Xellex. The book is similarly debated all over the interwebs and has certainly caught my attention.

DrNefario

Posted 2012-06-29 1:18 PM (#3535 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

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Location: UK

Turns out I am too cynical.

It's probably bad that I'm pleased by that.

htaccess

Posted 2012-06-29 4:38 PM (#3538 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

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I would be after independent verification before I try and get hold of it ... I'll be interested in what Emil thinks.

JacFlasche

Posted 2012-06-30 1:26 AM (#3539 - in reply to #3538)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

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Actually I would highly recommend this myself.

The reason being this: To me Xellex was quite a deal. I consider it to be on the same level as Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, but an entertaining read, as I stated above. The last time I purchased a copy of Beelsebub it cost me $35 second hand.

If someone's main interest is simply the story and none of the other aspects of the book, I think you would be better served by buying a copy of A Clockwork Orange, or maybe the first Dune novel, if you haven't read them. You will save at least ten dollars.

I realize that the passage that antiBob quoted is sort of out of context: it is the last little part of the longest epigraph in the novel, but really, if what he did quote, didn't sort of stop you dead in your tracks and at the very least elicit a profound "hmmmm. . ." -- maybe this novel is not for you. I do not mean you personally, I am just posting here for people in general even though it is a response to your post, so please don't take it personally because that is not how it is intended.

I would take the disclaimer on the cover that this is "science fiction for the other ten to the minus four percent" quite literally.
To put it quite bluntly: to me this is a book that is for people who have experienced something extraordinary in life (not talking about drug experiences or skydiving here). They had an experience that is absolutely indescribable, they were so astonished by what they "saw" that they were literally dumbstuck by it. It was the most important experience of their lives and yet they realize that as they are normally, it is not accessible. This novel, in my estimation is about how to gain that access. Yet it, like Beelzebub is constructed in such a manner as to maintain a balance between knowledge and being, as Gurdjiefff explained that these two things must progress in harmony to result in a real and useful understanding of these matters.

But, like I said, if you just basically read what antiBob quoted about the non-objective nature of the universe, and just breezed right past it without a clue about the consequences of this statement or how it can immediately be practically employed to modify one's experiential apperception, then, while you may find Xellex quirky, and extreme entertainment, it may not be the novel for you. This is obviously a novel for people who understand what "inner work' or "the great work" or "the great art" in the hidden western tradition actually consists of.

So if you are merely curious, you should save your money, or borrow it from a friend or maybe go in on it with a few friends, because no matter the fact that we all have the deep feeling that we are special, the odds of being one in ten to the minus four is not great. On the other hand I do not want to discourage you in the least.

I guess that is one of the great things about the internet. In pre-internet days, writing a book like this would make no sense at all, because it would have no chance of reaching those few people.

That is my opinion, Carlos may feel entirely differently about it, but having read a number of his old posts on the Nonduality Saloon, and actually having seen a video of a play he wrote that I downloaded from the late MiniNova P2P indexing site (which I actually hosted for a while on YouTube) I would say it's probably not far off.

Or to refer to Heinlein, It you actually do not know how to grok, or as Jan Cox would say, "consider something without thinking about it," or have an interest in such matters, well, there are tens of thousands of science fiction novels that cost less. On the other hand: if you loved Alan Watts, or even Terance McKenna, and science fiction, you will probably love this novel.

antiBob

Posted 2012-06-30 11:32 PM (#3547 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

Member

Posts: 5

I sort of disagree with your assessment that Xellex is some kind of elitist allegory. I think that he is only being realistic about the percentage of people that will sort of feel natively drawn to the whole flavor of the novel. I don't think that he is saying that people without an interest in this stuff are inferior in anyway, I never got that impression at all. I think that there are more and more people interested in this field as general human culture frees itself from some of its more oppressive dampers to intelligent inquiry. It is too bad that there are so many squirrely conspiracy theorists and cultural heroes of one strip or another who have no idea at all about what that which you refer to as "the great work" really consists. I mean just look at YouTube, it is full of downright charlatans, and the much more dangerous upright charlatans, who think they have some kind of ultimate secret, but all their secret amounts to is wishful thinking and the fact that twenty percent of people will always find some kind of temporary effect due to suggestibility and the placebo effect. Look at the nonsense in pop culture, like the guys who contact spirits or are abducted by UFOs or are possessed or believe in superstitions, or ancient aliens etc etc etc. I got a clue for these people, all that stuff is not weird, it's not real, but it's not weird either, what's really weird is what's going on all around them and inside them all the time, but they can't see it. The mundane is the really weird. All that other nonsense is just kids stuff to entertain bored minds and keep them distracted.
It is sort of tangential, but I saw an Italian video the other day, it was very stylish and had excellent production qualities for it's type, and it was all about alchemy, and how the real symbolism was lost, and this guys main thrust was that he was enlightening the world that the objective of "true" alchemy was not the transmutation of base metals into gold but into a highly exotic metal or compound known as the "philosophers stone" and then at the end of this video it seems to lead you into a hidden workshop and there are a number of men whom I suppose were meant to pass as adepts of some sort, and the final shot was of them opening up this little furnace they had and in the middle of the glowing coals was a crucible containing a glowing substance, which they intended to give the impression of being a secret philosophers stone.
What utter nonsense. It seems that even some as brilliant as Newton, had fallen into this mania. It is almost common knowledge these days that the symbols used in alchemy were used as camouflage for pursuits that would have been considered heretical at the time, but a brilliant mind like Newton apparently was not in on the joke, if the reports of the furnaces and ongoing physical procedures he was to have undertaken to such an extent that the fumes and such affected his health.
Contrast that with the passage quoted from the Primer for the Newly Decanted on page 194 of Xellex and you tell me who it is who has the authentic knowledge of what alchemy really is. Though Carlos never really mentions alchemy, it is right there.
My guess would be that Carlos is attempting to almost sneak the aroma of what the direction in which a new complexity lies into contemporary culture. A complexity that is also more primal and direct in its energy and possibilities. It is really difficult to discuss things that lie outside of what can be accurately represented in words or images. Carlos never tires of telling us in one way or another that what is referred to by the members of Hearth as This or This Thing can never be a subject. That to approach this whole field as one would approach the study or inquiry into a science like biology or as we approach the field of humanities -- even philosophy is to error in a very basic way which can never be remediated.
But I think there is something going on in the way the images are presented, in the actual action of the narrative, that gets around some of these limitations. In a lot of the scenes we are in the point of view of someone (Ja Mu) who while himself not an enlightened master or something, is certainly someone who has been PROPERLY attracted to the possibility of actuating or igniting the metabolic/neural circuitry that is an extradimensional, not really extradimensional so much as whose point of view entails an additional dimension or two. I know that makes no sense in words and thus my growing respect for the efficacy of metaphor to approach what words cannot convey. Or as Carlos calls them: metawhores.

Why did you take the play down off of YouTube? I would really like to see it. Is it still up on any of the P2P networks? You should PM me and I will give you my email.
Both the bookstores in my town have The Unwritten Book: Xellex for a price that is five dollars less than Amazon's price. That's the opposite of how it usually is with the books I buy.

You may find this amusing: I just found out what a "dead peasant" is -- as in Dead Peasant Press. It's an insurance policy that a company or corporation takes out on an employee. If the employee dies or becomes disabled the company, not the employee or family collects a sum determined by the value of the employee to the company. So frequently an employee is worth more to his company dead than alive. How's that for comi-tragic?

Well it is Saturday almost night so . . . .

htaccess

Posted 2012-07-02 6:42 PM (#3555 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

Veteran

Posts: 207
100

I am much more partial to "The Dosadi Experiment" than the first Dune novel, that said I read it in 1990 so I really should reread it to confirm its quality (I need to do the same thing with Lord of Light). I have read a lot of Terance McKenna and enjoy it so it looks like I may enjoy this book but like I say I would like some verification.

The other issue is I have yet to order a non-technical book over the Internet and don't enjoy reading on a phone/tablet/ereader. I get all my reading from the library or book fairs or family, I seldom seek out a specific book, i just have a good memory for what the books are on the lists I want to read are.

I find even second hand bookshops to be overpriced, it seems unlikely I will ever get hold of this book unless I order it (which seems unlikely).

Edited by htaccess 2012-07-02 6:45 PM

JacFlasche

Posted 2012-07-03 12:45 AM (#3559 - in reply to #3217)
Subject: Re: The Unwritten Book

Member

Posts: 6

Speaking of The Dosadi Experiment, I saw a documentary the other day:

National.Geographic.The.Whale.That.Ate.Jaws.720p.HDTV.x264-C4TV

About a few killer whales from LA area that were up by an island near SF and a tourist boat saw one killing an enormous great white shark.
The thing that was surprising about it was that it was absolutely no problem for the orca to kill the shark, it literally took the shark apart in fifteen minutes and ate it's liver.
It also dragged it up and showed the people on the boat -- proud I guess.
Every year hundreds of great whites gather at this island to eat seals. The day after the orca arrived all the sharks fled to Hawaii -- along the bottom of the sea.
They had transmitters on some and it amazed everyone. They were so frightened of the whales that they gave up their prime feeding grounds in minutes.
It was pretty amazing that a 16' great white could be so utterly outclassed by a whale the same size as it; they were helpless before the orca.

Yes, there is little chance of getting a second hand copy of Xellex, and it is not available as an ebook.
antiBob says they have it in both the bookstores where he lives, but I have never seen it on a shelf.

Not everyone I have lent it too liked it as much as I do. My family Doc is a science fiction fan, and he really likes the old stuff like Heinlein. I lent him my copy, and his favorite thing about the novel was the cover graphics which he liked a great deal. But I think he was disturbed by the brutal kind of homosexuality that was presented as part of the culture in The Trenches of Xellon. He is himself gay and in his seventies. I just think it is realistic, it doesn't dwell on it or go into great detail, but you are generally aware that in the Trenches there are no women, and the sexuality there, is similar to what you would find in a prison. Of course not everyone is gay, but sexual predation is part of the culture. ZuZu is monsterously un-gay, and very horny and vastly dangerous. A rather primitive tropism, but highly motivating, as far a driving the plot along.

@antiBob:

Anti, I found your comments on alchemy very interesting. We obviously have, read and appreciated many of the same authors that you have mentioned. I took the video down off of YouTube because all I had was the info that was contained in a text file that was included with the P2P download. It gave a creative commons copyright, and explained that it was a video made to document opening night for further refinement of the performance. I was getting messages asking me all kinds of stuff that I didn't know. Then I got a message asking me how I had permission to host this video. So I took it down. I will get in touch and maybe figure out a way to get a copy to you.
If was very different than Xellex, it was about a Hollywood producer, and an agent and a writer. It was very strange and funny, and the live audience found it hysterical. Also Carlos was in two of the scenes, and I can tell you that he is not the same person who comes up on a google search. It seems there is also a Carlos Dwa in Venezuela, a young man with photos of him and his dog. Carlos Dwa looks European, maybe French or Swiss -- I would guess. I am also happy to report that he looks to be in fine, even athletic condition and unlike George E E could probably get out of a bath tub without assistance. (I am routinely disgusted by writers who write all about heroic deeds of valor and look like some couch potato that could loose items in the fold of their flab -- Terry Goodkind is another flabbo who come to mind.)

I am seriously considering migrating our discussion. I like this site just fine, very much actually. and am rather curious as to what Emil will have to say, but eventually perhaps there is a place were more people are interested in the aspects of this novel that we both seem to be interested in -- the hidden part.

Someone told me that there was some discussion on Sword and Laser blog about it, but I can't find it.

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