With the enormous amount of political noise assaulting us on a now daily basis, I decided to take a quiet moment, sit down, and think about thinking.
Mostly I’ve been thinking about division. Much has been made about the debunking the theory on brain’s left and right sides, a theory we based our book Brainwalker on. We don’t disagree with the science—as authors, we just see the value of that theory as a metaphor for a bigger picture. [continue reading…]
It’s not much of a spoiler to say that the real action in Brainwalker starts when Bernard opens the hatch on a particle accelerator and goes through a wormhole into the Brainiverse. The question is just how plausible is it? [continue reading…]
Everyone knows that right-brained people are more artistic and creative, while left-brained people are more logical and scientific. The only problem is that like many other things that “everyone knows,” this is a myth. It’s an attractive myth, it’s easy to explain and even easier to understand, but like many other such beliefs it is so much simpler than the truth that it’s utterly wrong. So why use this myth in the science-fantasy novel Brainwalker? [continue reading…]
Like the quantum world, the human brain is a very strange place. Perhaps one of the strangest things to hear about is that the brain is actually plastic.
Doesn’t seem very flattering, does it? Conjures up the image of Saran wrap around your noggin. But plastic here actually means that the brain is capable of changing throughout one’s life.
In the early part of the 20th century, scientists believed that the brain develops only during one’s childhood. After some time, it reaches a stasis point when it stops changing, much like a clay figure hardening into its final shape. [continue reading…]
In the first chapter of the science-fantasy novel Brainwalker, our hero Bernard has a heated discussion with his dad about how all matter is energy, and all energy matter. This has been expressed years before by Albert Einstein in his brilliant equation, e=mc2. [continue reading…]
On this map of the Brainiverse, you can see the two quasi-symmetrical hemispheres of the brain. Intuit and Reezon are small regions located in the brain’s frontal lobes, in the upper seas of the Brainiverse. The two hemispheres are connected by a giant bridge, the Great Arc, where Bernard and his friends meet the Bridge people. [continue reading…]
One of the most interesting things about reading a novel like Brainwalker is figuring out where the science ends and the story begins. Every science fiction and fantasy story combines elements of reality and imagination; the best ones ground imagination in a foundation of reality that lets the story soar. For Brainwalker, it all comes down to one simple idea: that Bernard’s mind can be elsewhere than his body. For new readers, that’s a hard idea to swallow. Or is it? [continue reading…]
In the science-fantasy novel Brainwalker, Holons are the inhabitants of the Brainiverse, the Mindbrain universe. A Holon is a being, but it’s also part of a larger being. So Holons are part of neurons, and neurons are parts of a brain, which is part of Bernard’s dad, which is part of a world. And this world is part of a galaxy, etc. [continue reading…]
Telamons are prehistoric creatures of the Brainiverse. They lived millions of tides ago, during the Crescer era, and were at the time the only known inhabitants of this world. Telamons are thought to have disappeared soon after the appearance of holons. Occasionally, there have been reports that at high tide, some Telamons have been spotted at the edge between the upper and the lower seas.
Yeah right… Aliens in outer space, fine. But people inside our brain? Come on! Well, so was Bernard skeptical until he found himself inside… his father’s brain. There, he found out that the brain hosts a whole array of life forms. Chief among them are the Holons, who like to live in the very heart of our nerve cells. Frankly, they could care less about us, because they’re not even aware of our existence. But what if what they did influence our thoughts somehow?
