Eden

EDEN
is two stories: one fictional, one fact.

The fiction: Calif
De'Alsace, a man devoted to the dissemination of life across the galaxy, has
taken a group of one hundred artists and scientists to a sterile world named Eden
for the purpose of bioengineering living works of art. Calif,
an Ankh idealist, has decreed that no weapons be brought and that the group
create a "paradise of peace where beauty...not the law of tooth and
claw...reigns." Unknown to the Eden
group, Calif was forced by a powerful
man to include an artist, Iamoendi, who has secretly been using drugs to
enhance his imaging abilities. Iamoendi, who is descended from Fundamentalist
factions that fought in the Religionist Wars, slowly goes insane. Believing
himself an instrument of god, Iamoendi turns against Project Eden. He obtains
the genome libraries (programmed instructions for bioengineering plants and
animals) for insects and arachnids. Subsequently, he creates an army of huge
insect warriors, and launches a secret attack against Project Eden.

Thirteen survive class=SpellE>Iamoendi's attack. Weaponless, they are forced to create
living weapons in defense. With the battle lines drawn, the war begins. The
survivors create a surprise defense of giganticized ant lions, trapdoor
spiders, and carnivorous plants. They defeat Iamoendi's army, but Iamoendi
escapes. Two more battles ensue in which Iamoendi's attacking monstrosities
become increasingly bizarre and surreal. More and more survivors die with each
battle leading to an ending both poignant and transcendent.

The fact: In the
spirit of Coleridge and Poe who used an opiate to enhance their poetic imagery,
in the spirit of Huxley whose use of peyote awakened his awareness to the
creative use of mind-altering substances, I have set down my own experiences
with altered states as they relate to my creation of EDEN.
My intent is to share my insights into the creative process as well as the
source and derivation of both the philosophy underlying EDEN
and the hallucinatory visions used in the telling of this story. It is a first
person account of how, after being accidentally introduced to a hallucinogen,
my subsequent use and experimentation became the stuff and substance of my
novel EDEN.