When I wrote Triangle:False Mirror, I set it a little while in the future. I didn’t specify a year, but there are just enough futuristic gadgets that don’t yet exist to give the book a slight science-fictiony feel. But I wasn’t, strictly speaking, seeking to write a science fiction genre novel.
But between November of 2011, when I wrote the novel, and now, something curious started happening. Things that I’d written stated happening in real life.
Some were fanciful, like the supposed Colbert Bump…
– Steve and Amy go to a San Francisco Giants game to try and contact someone. After the book came out, the Giants won the World Series – and they did it in improbable fashion, too, survivng six elimination games during the playoffs and sweeping the heavily favored Detroit Tigers in four games.
…but others were eerily prescient…
– Steve makes a high-altitude parachute jump out of a spaceplane on a ballistic trajectory from a height of 97,000. Eight months later, Felix Baumgartner makes a similar jump from the SAME HEIGHT as a test jump for his world record attempt that would occur in October. The novel matches the time the real descent actually took within a minute.
– Steve and Amy attempt to hijack the video scoreboard at AT&T Park to signal the person they want to contact. Unfortunately, the attempt blacks out the entire ballpark in the middle of the game. Of course, we all know what happened during Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans…
Today, I awoke to another such intersection – only this one is a lot more beautiful than the others.
If you use Bing as your search engine, then you’re familiar with the daily cover image – a striking photograph or video with four embedded hot spots of interesting information. The image for today (Feb. 13, 2013) in the U.S. is a stunning video of a beach as you emerge from a tropical forest.
(If you’re reading this after Feb 13th, you can go through an archive of Bing cover images here and find it).
When I saw this image, I stopped. And I stared.
Because, you see, I’ve seen that beach before.
In my imagination when I wrote about it in November 2011…
Triangle: False Mirror – Chapter 14:
Ethan and Percy carried their trays from the serving line and sat at a table by the cafeteria’s video wall. Today it was tuned to a camera set back among trees on a deserted beach. They stared for a moment, imagining a warm tropical breeze blowing past them.
Ethan closed his eyes and leaned back. “God, what I’d give for a week in a place like that. Especially after these last few days.”
Percy smiled. “Mine has a lot more people in bikinis on it. And a bamboo beachside bar, where both the libations and the morals are liberal.”
So…what’s going to happen next? I’m not sure. But I’m four-for-four in the inadvertent prediction department.
And given the sudden interest in doomsday predictions, maybe you might just want to read the book…
Just sayin’.
D. G. Speirs - Storyteller and Dreamer 