Production dates set April 13 and 14, 2012. This is a musical with the same fun aliens featured in "U.F.F.D.U.H." produced in 2001 by Los Alamos Little Theatre.
In the far far future (3020C.E.) a young woman with an identity problem defends the personhood of her extraterrestrial and Earthly animal friends, as humans tackle their most difficult challenge--a conference with friendly aliens to discuss solutions to overpopulation. Read More
Rediscovering AnimalsĀ
New Musical "Petra and the Jay." Book by Cary Neeper. Music by Alice B. Kellogg.
A Place Beyond Man--The Archives of Varok
This book was written in 1973 or so, published in 1975 by Charles Scribner's Sons, Dell and Millington, London and is now back in print as an Authors Guild Backinprint.com Edition. Its sequel is updated with current ideas about steady state economics and complexity and will be available in 2012. The others will soon follow.
When we confront intelligent life unlike our own, how do we react? Inter-species contact plays against a backdrop of Earth confronting its limits.
All five books of the Archives of Varok are set in an alternate solar system that includes 21st century Earth and her undiscovered neighboring planets--Ellason (Which is plummeting toward Earth on its eccentric way to perihelion) and Varok (A hidden moon of Jupiter populated by marginally conversant mounts built like monster kangaroos, tiny light-hopping mystics, box kite-shaped insectoids who enjoy a good insult, right-brained, intuitive great-fish, the emotionally volatile ellls, and varoks, who learn the hard way about trust, faith and espionage.
An Oz For Our Time
The five novels of "The Archives of Varok" listed on this web site have been in development for 35 years. The first in the series, "A Place Beyond Man" is available as an Authors Guild Backinprint.com Edition for all major book outlets. Its sequel "The Webs of Varok" will be released this fall by Penscript Publishing House. Others will follow in the next few years. All model steady-state economics and complexity issues and deal with the place of Homo sapiens in the larger universe--how we might deal with intelligent life nearby. The setting is an alternate solar system that includes Earth of the 21st century and two other planets orbiting "our" sun, inhabited by a delightful set of species too challenging and living too close to be ignored.
See the books' concepts and excerpts here.
No-growth Economics
Herman Daly defines a steady state economy as "an economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance throughput, that is, by the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production to the last stage of consumption."
(from CASSE's website steadystate.org)
In "The Webs of Varok" (second book in the "Archives of Varok," I have woven the features of Varok's steady-state economy into the setting. It is disrupted by the villainess MAHNTIK in ways that were "business-as-usual" on Earth in the 20th century. The ellls and varoks, with the help of the human heroine TANDRA, must find ways to re-build the no-growth economy in the hopes that Varok can provide a sustainable model for Earth to follow.
For Varok's model click here.
For recommended reading
Click here.