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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Robinson Crusoe 1,000,000 A.D.
a novel
by John T. Cullen
Part One: Caves
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2.
Unaware of the horrific danger that suffused this place, a pale young man floated nakedly and motionlessly in a stone tank full of water.
The walls of the tank were smooth like rubbed, bluish-gray slate. The silence was deceptive. The air around the tank was dark—caverns full of darkness, galleries and tunnels full of darkness, ceilings dripping with stalagmites from ages of patient time. Horror and innocence together stalked these corridors.
The liquid in the tank and on the floor all around had a faintly greenish absinthe tinge that blurred the man’s still features. His eyes were closed, his handsome features serene as if he were dreaming in these days before his birth.
And nearby, someone waited. Something. Someone. Breathing hungrily.
The light was dim in the birth cave. Light did not shine here so much as it flowed slowly and thickly, like a turgid polymer up one side of a glass beaker and down the other. The light was thick, a matrix of vivid memory routines that randomly invoked themselves, one now, one then, and just as quickly vanished, in this place where time had lost all meaning.
The air was very still—hardly moving at all, just when a droplet of dew fell from a stalagmite pink as coral, or ran like candle wax down some shimmering stalactite. The echoes of these drippings traveled back and forth in the caves—the sound of a droplet landing above the sleeping man’s face, sending rings outward in tiny lapping waves.
The young man lay in this cool, mossy broth with his arms at his side. Each delicate fingertip was whorled with perfect skin poised against exquisitely detailed thighs, for he was in every way a complete human, down to the very capillaries that glowed in his pale skin. On the backs of his arms and legs were strangely hard, dark patches more resembling wood than skin. Time had lost all meaning long ago, except in the quickening of his pulse. If stones and water and floating slime had ears, they might have heard the growing thunder of his heartbeat while the walls dripped ever so steadily and quietly with the patience of a clock that never lost spring compression.
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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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