Welcome Coast Listeners!

We have stepped across the looking glass and are now all living in a sci-fi movie where novelty is exponential. I relate AI to the archetype I first discovered and wrote about in a philosophy honors paper in 1978 — the archetype that underlies and mediates the parallel event horizons of death and species metamorphosis (the singularity zone we are currently in, especially due to AI).

I submitted the completed manuscript of the third edition of my singularity book, Crossing the Event Horizon: Human and AI Metamorphosis and the Singularity Archetype, to my publisher, Inner Traditions. Their timeline puts the book about a year out. It has an introduction by the great Jeffrey Kripal, one of the best minds on the planet. I’ll send a newsletter once it’s available. So before you forget, sign up for free newsletter so you’ll know when the book is available. I send newsletters very occasionally, every few months, so don’t worry about it crowding your inbox and signing up takes seconds, just fill in your email here.

Meanwhile, for an overview of the Singularity Archetype, you can watch my PowerPoint presentation at the Society for Scientific Exploration earlier this year:

You can read the second edition of Crossing the Event Horizon here for free, but frankly it is a big step down from the upcoming third edition, which is vastly revised, has a 16K-word chapter on AI, and many other major enhancements.

If you prefer a physical book or Kindle, you can find the first edition on Amazon

But you don’t have to wait to experience my very best work on the Singularity Archetype, which is my fantasy series, Parallel Journeys. When I discovered the Singularity Archetype in 1978, the muse commanded me to express it as a science fiction epic. This task took me 45 years, even though I got a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from NYU in the 80s to help me fulfill the goal. I wrote ten versions, none of which were good enough. See the brief history of Parallel Journeys below—it has a prophetic connection to AI apocalypse. The book is available here for free or in any form—paperback, Kindle or Audible (performed by me, the best version for many) (see Amazon links below). The sequel, Parallel Portal, is in final editing and will be published in 2026. If you would like to be a Parallel Portal beta tester, email me at jonathanzap@hotmail.com. Email with comments of any kind, and put Coast in the subject heading. I feel this work is too important to the species for cost to be a barrier, so you can just read it here for free.

 

 

Parallel Journeys can be read free here! If you prefer, the Audible, trade paperback and  Kindle versions of the book are  available on Amazon. Getting the Kindle would be the cheapest way to be able to leave a review of the book on Amazon which would be greatly appreciated. If you don’t have an Audible account and can’t afford one, email jonathanzap@hotmail.com, and I will give you access to a private, free version of the audio version. For those who work well with audiobooks, I think that’s the best version, and it’s performed by the author.

Cover photo by Jonathan Zap of Andrew Warren Anderson in Venice. Cover designs by Jonathan Zap, realized by Tanner Dery. Interior design by Jonathan Zap. Back cover photos by Jonathan Zap

Parallel Journeys is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons (besides the author and Sven), living or dead, is coincidental. Any resemblance of photos to any actual Parallel Journeys characters is also coincidental. No actual mutants were harmed during the writing of this book.

Copyright 2023

BOOK ONE—BIOSPHERE THREE

BOOK TWO—FIRESKIN

BOOK THREE—SNOWSKIN

BOOK FOUR—CONVERGENCE

EPILOGUE

PARALLEL PORTAL (the sequel to Parallel Journeys) beta test version in progress

 

 

unfinished book cover

This website is the product of tens of thousands of hours of work. Making all this content available free and without ads means this enterprise runs at a lifetime six-figure loss. That hurts my feelings as well as my finances! Please help out!

 

Welcome to Parallel Journeys.

To enhance your reading experience, look for this icon in the lower left of  the screen:

 

That will take you to the accessibility menu:

 

This free online print version was published on 5.5.2023, but the Audible, Kindle, and physical book versions are also available. Overall, I think the Audible version, read by the author, will be the best way to experience the book for most people,  but this version is the most visual. Key patterns in Parallel Journeys may only be apparent after a second reading. It is being provided free because stories should be “equipment for living.” This book contains unique content that I want to be available to anyone who wants it, regardless of their ability to pay. Having said that, this website represents, literally, tens of thousands of hours of work over decades. I’ve also spent tens of thousands of dollars to pay the many talented people who’ve helped make this site and its content free and ad-free in cyberspace. If you can’t afford to donate, you can still contribute by spreading word about this site. If you can afford to donate even a small amount, you will be helping Zap Oracle grow. Thank you for your precious time and attention. Besides Parallel Journeys, this site is the home of the soon-to-be 800-card Zap Oracle (a free membership saves all your readings) as well as all kinds of other content.

There is a comment field at the bottom of every page, and you can also send me any sort of feedback to jonathanzap@hotmail.com. 

Note: I’m not a fan of trigger warnings, but Parallel Journeys contains some disturbing content, including suicide and non-graphic sexual assault. I was a high school English teacher for fourteen years, specializing in work with youth at risk, and I think this book has content that could be life-saving for some of them. It’s a major reason why this content is presented free.

You read Parallel Journeys at your own risk and by continuing, you agree that you have thoroughly read and understood all the dire warnings and conditions, stated and unstated, in the:

Parallel Journeys Reader’s Agreement 

WATCH THE READER’S AGREEMENT AS A VIDEO

Share a link with me to a review of Parallel Journeys posted anywhere and a mailing address, and I will send you laminated and unlaminated Parallel Journeys bookmarks for you and for you to gift to anyone you think has the potential to be an agent of evolutionary change. Here are the font and back images:

Best wishes for your parallel journey . . .

 

This website is the product of literally tens of thousands of hours of work over decades. I’ve also spent tens of thousands of dollars to pay the many talented people who’ve helped make this site and its content free and ad-free in cyberspace. So this whole enterprise runs at a six-figure loss which hurts my feelings as well as my finances, so help out if you can to keep this going! If you can’t afford to donate, you can still contribute by spreading the word about this site. If you can afford to donate even a small amount, you will be helping Zap Oracle grow. Thank you for your precious time and attention.

DONATE

Rough word counts:

BOOK ONE, BIOSPHERE 3 (48K)

BOOK TWO, FIRESKIN (95K)

BOOK THREE, SNOWSKIN (47K)

BOOK FOUR, CONVERGENCE (47K)

234,000 words total

Parallel Journeys can be subdivided into three or four Books, but the present division is for the purpose of reading the book as one Volume.

As a single Volume, Parallel Journeys would be roughly 230k words. For comparison, Dune is 183K words. There’s plenty of precedent for books in this genre with longer word counts. Each of the 15 books of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time Series published by Tor, have higher word counts. E.G. Book One of that series is 261K and others are close to 300K.

PREMISE

Parallel Journeys begins in the near future, in an updated version of Biosphere 2, an actual facility in Oracle, Arizona. Tommy, who is eighteen, has been sealed into this biosphere with just one other person, Kyle who is twenty-two for three years following an extinction-level event. An artificially engineered virus, known as “The Whip” rapidly depopulates the earth, and the U.S. Government has only found two people (Tommy and Kyle) who are immune. Tommy narrates his experience in an immersive, cinematic first-person perspective.

Tommy’s journey to the biosphere begins with his idyllic youth in a small intentional community in Vermont. Besides the work he does at the commune, he volunteers at a local hospice, where he has his first paranormal experiences. The paranormal aspects of his life intensify in the months preceding the emergence of an artificial viral plague called “The Whip.” Tommy has a vision of an approaching apocalypse, during which he makes paranormal contact with another boy his age, Andrew, who is at the edge of death after being burned in a horrific car wreck.

As the population rapidly declines, a nationwide search for people with immunity capable of piloting a Noah’s Ark of flora and fauna within the biosphere yields only two candidates. Following a few weeks of intensive training, Tommy, 15, and Kyle, 19, are sealed into the biosphere. Facing extreme isolation and increasing tensions that threaten both his physical health and sanity, Tommy begins his journal. While there’s no sign of other survivors, Tommy hopes someone will find his record, and he continues to have visionary contact with Andrew.  But writing the journal jeopardizes Tommy’s life because it violates a blood oath with Kyle, who harbors terrible secrets of his own.

Optional Reading: A Brief History of the Parallel Journeys writing process.

(Note: The real history of all the paranormal experiences and life events that led to this book would far exceed the word count of the resulting novel.)

In the Spring of 1978, I was 20 and a senior in college. I wrote a philosophy honors paper entitled “Archetypes of a New Evolution” in which I documented my discovery of what I later called “the Singularity Archetype.” In 2012, these findings became my book, Crossing the Event Horizon—Human Metamorphosis and the Singularity Archetype. 

Soon after I completed the paper in 1978, I had a powerful intuition. The most valuable way for me to continue exploring the Singularity Archetype and communicating it to the collective would be through a fantasy epic. This feeling has only gotten stronger over time. In 1978, I realized that writing such an epic would consume me while it was happening, and recognized that I wasn’t psychologically strong enough at the time. This led to a six-year Jungian analysis and all sorts of other work on myself (still in progress).

The first complete version, with the same protagonist, Tommy, was written as my Master’s Thesis at the NYU Graduate Creative Writing Program. It was entitled, Spiral, approved by my mentor and adviser, E.L. Doctorow, in 1985. After that, there continued to be openings, usually four to six months, when I worked on the text, usually starting from scratch each time. While I continued to write and be creative in other media, I always longed to return to Parallel Journeys and felt all other work was less important. The creative well was never dry, but the muse gave me only rare openings into Parallel Journeys. I wrote about this in my essay, “ Path of the Numinous—Living and Working with the Creative Muse. “

Around 1998, I visited Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. Even before entering the facility, I had a completely unexpected,  uncanny, and highly emotional experience. It was as if I was on the verge of remembering a life inside the biosphere. In February 2013, I returned to Biosphere 2. During the short walk from the parking lot to the biosphere’s front entrance, Book One’s essential content revealed itself. This is when the global viral plague element of the story began.

On the autumn Equinox of 2013, I returned to writing Parallel Journeys, and had a much longer opening into the story than ever before. I worked on it seven days a week, and by 2014 had written it to the end. Then I began revising, and in 2015-16 there were lots of interruptions as I had to pack up my parent’s estate in the Bronx, which included driving six Sprinter loads full of stuff from Bronx to Boulder. In 2016, I traveled to twenty-five countries. After this travel phase, I returned to daily work on the book.

On December 3, 2017, I did a kind of focus group, reading chapter one aloud to a mixed-age group at my house in Boulder. After listening carefully to everyone’s feedback, I realized that the story and my style had essential flaws.

Except for rare experimental forays, I stopped working on Parallel Journeys for two years and four months. During this time, I was still writing seven days a week. Mostly I was engrossed in “rabbit-hole” writing sessions about paranormal content related to Parallel Journeys. The sessions had a manic quality and sometimes lasted eighteen hours at a stretch. The result was thousands of pages of private writings I still work on and draw from.

Direct work on the book resumed with the lockdown on April 6, 2020. Since then, I’ve been at it seven days a week, and have finally been able to fully realize this epic that’s eluded me for decades.

The final Book of Parallel Journeys was completed on location in Arizona during a 32-day road trip early in 2022. I wrote the last sentence on February 4, 2022.

 

 

  Parallel Interdimensional Travelers, Collage by Jonathan Zap, 1998.