John T. Cullen has authored over 20 books, including The Generals of October (Simon & Schuster, 2004)—pulse-pounding political-military suspense fiction set in a near-future U.S. Constitutional crisis.
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John T. Cullen also writes screenplays, including one for Nebula Express (adapted from his SF novel) and the violent, darkly glistening, utterly strange tale of a serial killer in Scorpion.
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If you like what you read here, please send at least two other avid readers here so a growing readership can enjoy these books. That would be a great, painless, easy way to provide a huge assist. If you'd like to do more...click.
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Mars the Divine
a novel
by John T. Cullen
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29: At The End of Time
Ms. Hirsch, having performed her duties, did not bother returning or saying goodbye, even though we were falling in love with her city and might end up saving her tired ass. Edgardo, on the other hand, was a champ. Renting a jeep-thing, he drove us to a far suburb where we saw the sea of nothingness encroaching on both sides of the causeway. He took us along this narrow asphalt road until we could go no farther. There, on a raised island of gravel ringed by short, squat palm trees, was a restaurant. At first I thought it was a deserted building, for its walls looked gray and crumbling like old concrete. It was one of those structures that looked modern and functional long ago, and now just looked old and tumble-down. "Bauhaus," Edgardo said. "Exact copy lifted digitally from a Roman street corner of Mussolini's time and redrawn here in the fabric of silica." He parked and we walked on crunching gravel toward the restaurant. A cheap moss-green lantern flickered spasmodically in its sunken entrance. We walked down into a perfectly correct din of laughter, dishes crashing in the kitchen, liquor being served at the bar.
Edgardo explained as we sought a table: "Part of it is an illusion brought along with the light-swipe. You're hearing Italians discussing La Dolce Vita and the future of Fascism along with the stringing of violins in Cremona, the creation of a streamlined espresso service in Milan, or the price of hogs in Tarento. Cool how we do this, eh? The place is a juke box, actually. Every week they change the background to something else. Not long ago it was a borscht kitchen near Moscow right before the 1917 October Revolution. My favorite has been an Eric Satie piano concert lifted from an Alsacien restaurant in the Montmartre of Paris around 1887. "
We sat down near a curving picture window. An attractive, tall woman with coal-black skin and violet eyes set in milky orbs took our order. Edgardo ordered the house special—a sort of dark chocolate coffee drink with whipped cream, with a strong undercoating of a nutty brandy with a peppery afterbite. "It's called Odalisque, after the Turkish harem beauties," Edgardo explained as he wiped a little white mustache off his upper lip.
We each had two or three of these things and felt quite light-headed as we watched the roiling fog of disintegration outside on the lawn. We watched a bird fly down from a tree, cross over the parking lot at about 30 feet, and disintegrate into a spume of white dots as if shredded into confetti, which briefly twirled and then vanished into the slowly, silently roiling foggy tendrils of nada.
"I wanted you to see this," Edgardo said, "because I want you to take from here a sense of the urgency we feel."
"We?" Trini prodded.
"We have competing agencies, and sometimes we fall over each other, but we're all working the same problem. You'll learn more about the details later. Right now it's important that you solve your Mars problem because we believe that will buy us at least a few more years, and in that time we can fix the plumbing elsewhere and maybe hit the jackpot and gain a thousand years or more." He took another sip. "I can't describe to you how it fits together, somehow, sipping Odalisque and listening to the slowly evolving architecture of the Gymnopaedies played by their creator while an 1887 crowd of Parisians happily discuss Jules Verne's latest novel (Robur the Conqueror: Master of the World, or Clipper of the Clouds), and the fog of disintegration slowly and ominously churns outside."
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If you like what you're reading, please send at least two other avid readers to this website.
—Thank you! …Your grateful author, John T. Cullen.
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Other gripping books by the author:
Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.
John T. Cullen has been a pioneer in digital publishing since 1996. He is listed by digital publishing historian Karen Wiesner as the sixth digital publisher in history, and the second person to publish serialized chapters on line (starting 1996). His web magazine Deep Outside SFFH was the first to be listed along with the professional pulps in Writer's Market (1999) and was at one time the oldest professional SFFH magazine in the world. John T. Cullen continues to explore new ways to adapt the primordial power of storytelling to emerging new digital opportunities as the Third Millennium springs to light.
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A Walk in Ancient Rome John T. Cullen (Simon&Schuster May 2005) innovative, acclaimed walking & teaching tour—explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history—smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome.
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= Summer 2008 =
A Walk in Ancient Rome, Second Edition John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books 2008)—New! Many new maps; images from the unique scale model of AndréCaron of Quebec. Read this innovative book, with its acclaimed walking & teaching tour. Explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history. Smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome. The new edition is bigger, like an atlas. Some people have carried the 1st edition with them to Rome, and found it greatly enhanced their experience.
Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado, 2nd Ed. John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books, San Diego, Summer 2008). John T. Cullen has tackled the mystery of the ghost at the Hotel del Coronado. He has assembled a dramatic new theory about how and why she violently died on the back steps of the hotel in 1892. A first-class ghost story and whodunit wrapped in one.
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