Monday, July 7, 2014

Novel Influences: Athanasius Kircher.

 
 
I've decided to write about a number of influences that went into writing the novel, perhaps to put the whole thing into context and shed more light on the choices to give some understanding.

So, I did consider numbering them, but this is ...not a rank of what was more influential, as they were all equally important.

First up: Athanasius Kircher.

I have one book on Athanasius Kircher and it belongs on a coffee table. If you’ve never heard of him, I wouldn’t be too surprised. However, back in the 17th century he was a phenomenon. He literally studied everything, from Egyptian hieroglyphs, to machines to ocean currents. The only problem was he got a lot of things wrong. Despite this, his imagination seemed to be infinite; comparable to the finest visionaries we have today. So where did his influence come in, you ask? Well, without giving too much away, there’s a device near the end that the Bubble Blower uses that is straight up Kircheresque. And I have to credit his study of maps as an influence on the one in the story.

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