Late last year I noted that 'alternative history' author Graham Hancock had written a science fiction novel, titled Entangled, which is due to be published in the UK next month (pre-order from Amazon UK). If you're keen to learn more about the book, you'll definitely want to watch the following clips, which feature Graham reading Chapter 1 from his impending novel (warning: some NSFW language):

I haven't heard anything about a US release as yet - will keep you updated if I hear any news. Mind you, it's not that hard these days to just order it from across the pond...

Wow, this piece of news just slid right by me while I was head down upgrading websites and writing books. One of our favourite writer/researchers, Graham Hancock, has finished writing a novel! Entangled sounds like a wild ride involving ancient history, time travel and questions of reality:

Time is not what it seems…

When a drug overdose causes Leoni, a troubled teen from twenty-first-century Los Angeles, to have a near-death experience, her soul is lifted from the modern world and flung into a parallel time 24,000 years in the past. There her fate becomes entangled with that of Ria, a young Stone Age woman fighting for her life against the ferocious Illimani, an army of evil led by the vicious Sulpa, a powerful demon determined to destroy humanity.

As the invaders annihilate Ria’s people, inflicting torture and human sacrifice, Sulpa moves ever closer to his ultimate goal: to manifest physically in the twenty-first century and doom all of mankind to perpetual slavery. The hour is late and all hope of stopping him seems lost. But there is still hope, if Leoni and Ria can rise to the challenge fate has set them. Uniting outside the flow of earth time, they must venture forth into regions of wonder, master their own deepest fears, and fight battles they could never have prepared for, if Sulpa is to be defeated …

Entangled will be published in the UK in April 2010 (pre-order from Amazon UK), and no doubt publication dates in other territories will follow soon.

I mentioned the other day about the release of the cover for Dan Brown's new book The Lost Symbol. Welp, I spotted some codes hidden on the cover, which I wrote up quickly over at The Cryptex. Anybody have any ideas for possible solutions? I'm of the opinion that we'll probably need the actual book to test a few theories though.

Also, how good is your knowledge of symbols and esoteric alphabets? Check out this large image of the cover and see if you recognise any of the symbols they've used in creating it...

I know many readers of TDG are big fans of the late, great Robert Anton Wilson. If so, get yourself over to eBay pronto, because at the moment pieces of RAW's personal memorabilia are on the block, and going for cheap prices. Bob's daughter Christina explains why they've currently got 23 items available for sale:

He was happy and he was very loved. In his extraordinary life he also suffered deeply, loved passionately and cared profoundly, and it was an honor to grow up with him.

And he left some hefty debts behind that must be dealt with so that we can move on and do what he truly wanted, which was this: help his disabled son, keep his works alive and available, and of course keep the lasagna flying.

My parents were not very material, but they truly enjoyed the items around them. Over the years, such an eclectic collection of things appeared, often taking up every spare nook. So many of them have stories! I hope the sale of these items will help manifest RAW's dreams and help to put his debts to rest.

So here's a fantastic opportunity to have an authentic RAW artifact, in your own reality tunnel, to inspire, generate conversation, and most of all to connect with the quintessential insight, humor and brilliance of a great human being!

Over the next few weeks, I will be listing items in batches, so I do hope you keep your eye on this site and visit often. It would mean a lot to Bob to know that the things that gave him joy are out and about the world, in homes of folks who cared, and would garner some enjoyment from them. We are starting with 23 items, of course.

Currently some of the prices are waaaay too cheap, so get your auction suit on and head on over there. (h/t to Greg Bishop at UFO Mystic)

In Darklore Volume 3 (Amazon US and UK) there's a fascinating article on the crossover between the infamous 'Philadelpha Experiment' and some of the greatest sci-fi authors of the 20th century, by our good friend The Emperor (from the Cabinet of Wonders website and blog). In that article, Emps mentions a modern group of sci-fi writers - which includes names like Larry Niven, Greg Bear, Ben Bova, David Brin - that goes under the name 'SIGMA', and which "provides a significant pool of talent for volunteer pro bono consultation with the Federal government and other organizations which need the imagination that only speculative writers can provide."

What's interesting is that the founder of SIGMA, Arlan Andrews, is a long-time TDG reader and has communicated with me personally for many years now. So I thought it would be interesting to chat with Arlan about the group and some of the issues which go along with working closely with government groups.

(Synchronistically, as I was posting this I noticed that the Washington Post has posted a story on SIGMA.)

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TDG: Arlan, can you give us a bit of background to your history with sci-fi, and how SIGMA came to be founded?

Arlan: I began reading SF (preferred term) with Robert A. Heinlein's Red Planet in 1950, and have been a fan ever since. My first sold writings appeared in the esoteric fields covered by TDG: Fate Magazine (1972), Ufology, Psychic Dimensions, and others, including tabloids.

I sold my first SF, a poem, "Rime of the Ancient Engineer" to Asimov's Magazine in 1979, and over the next 25 years published about 50 short stories and poems in a range of magazines, including Analog, Amazing Stories, Omni, Pulphouse, Science Fiction Age, Science Fiction Review, and others, plus anthologies How to Save the World, Amazing Stories Two and Nanodreams. I was a co-founder, playwright and occasional toastmaster for Inconjunction, the Indianapolis SF convention, for its first 20 years. I attended fifteen Worldcons and have been on dozens of panels at those and other cons.

In 1992 I was selected as a White House Fellow for the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), serving as a staffer in the Engineering Directorate there. In that capacity, I often attended meetings where technology forecasting was the subject, and I was completely appalled at the lack of imagination demonstrated by government bureaucrats and invited industry representatives. I commented to a fellow attendee that I had seen much better futurism at any given science fiction convention than in all the futurism meetings in Washington, D.C. That evening, I wrote down that quote for future reference.

The final two steps in my disgust with the government came over two issues:

In one particular meeting, a forward-looking minor player suggested that MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) and nanotechnology would become very important in the time frame of the early 21st Century. The meeting's host laughed at him, and said they would be sure to create a footnote about his little robots. At the second meeting, this one in the Roosevelt Room of the White House itself, when President George H. W. Bush's science advisor suggested that virtual reality would play an important role in future computers, this same sarcastic bureaucrat laughed again an told him that his video games would never amount to anything.

That night I went back to the apartment and wrote a manifesto that began, "The future is too important to be left to futurists!" I further stated that since SF writers had been exploring the future, we owed it to humanity to report on what we had discovered there. I came up with the name SIGMA (not an acronym) to indicate that we writers would provide a summation of our visions for the good of civilization. We would offer these visions without cost to the U.S. government, which was in dire need of forecasting ability outside the hidebound Establishment.

After almost five years of delays, the publication date and (new) title of Dan Brown's sequel to his blockbuster The Da Vinci Code has been announced. No longer is it going to be The Solomon Key; instead, the title is The Lost Symbol, and it will hit bookstores on September 15 this year (already available for pre-order and in the Top 10 at Amazon US and UK, at absolutely mad prices for a hardcover):

The Lost Symbol will have a first printing of 5 million copies, and it will once again feature Dan Brown's unforgettable protagonist, Robert Langdon. The announcement was made today by Sonny Mehta, Chairman and Editor in Chief of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

"This is a great day for readers and booksellers," said Mehta."The Lost Symbol is a brilliant and compelling thriller. Dan Brown's prodigious talent for storytelling, infused with history, codes and intrigue, is on full display in this new book. This is one of the most anticipated publications in recent history, and it was well worth the wait."

Brown's longtime editor, Jason Kaufman, Vice President and Executive Editor at Doubleday said, "Nothing ever is as it first appears in a Dan Brown novel. This book's narrative takes place in a twelve-hour period, and from the first page, Dan's readers will feel the thrill of discovery as they follow Robert Langdon through a masterful and unexpected new landscape. The Lost Symbol is full of surprises."

"This novel has been a strange and wonderful journey," said Brown. "Weaving five years of research into the story's twelve-hour timeframe was an exhilarating challenge. Robert Langdon's life clearly moves a lot faster than mine."

Of course, having written a book called The Guide to Dan Brown's The Solomon Key, I'm a bit disappointed with the title change. Not least, because it makes me feel that I've misled readers (though to be fair to myself, the title was my publisher's decision, not mine). However, it is worth noting that The Solomon Key was not a guess. It was always planned as the title until recently - 'The Solomon Key' was announced as the title by Brown's publisher back in 2005, he has website domains for that title listed under his name until 2016, and he has maintained a trademark claim on the title since 2004, updating it most recently in December 2008.

The question is: Brown has changed the title of the book. Will he change the content as well? That would be a bold move, considering that his publisher has run website competitions which overtly stated many of the topics to be discussed in the DVC sequel, and Brown's website has also stated the setting (both of which I expanded upon in my book). On the other hand, both my book, and things like the National Treasure movies and Brad Meltzer's The Book of Fate, may have stolen much of Brown's thunder when it comes to revealing hidden aspects of American history - so he still could have been tempted to change the setting and themes on that basis. Though today's press release keeps the book's themes secret, perhaps the most revealing part is Dan Brown's statement that he had weaved "five years of research" into the book. This would suggest that many of the original topics are in the book, rather than a late change of theme in the last couple of years.

One more mystery worth contemplating: last year, Brown's then-publisher Stephen Rubin (who originally announced the title The Solomon Key a few years previous) talked to the press, saying "Dan Brown has a very specific release date for the publication of his new book, and when the book is published, his readers will see why." Now, it's only been a few hours since I've heard the publication date of September 15th, but at this stage I can't see the significance of the release date (the only possibilities I've thought of thus far couldn't be considered obvious: the Feast Day of Our Lady of Sorrows, the birth date of William Howard Taft, the founding date of Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, and some of the more significant Nuremberg Laws instituted by the Nazi regime in 1935 and the adoption of the swastika on the German flag). Was Brown originally aiming at a date linked to the Presidential election or inauguration (which would have tied into the originally-claimed topics in The Solomon Key), but simply missed the boat? Or have I missed something significant about September 15?

In any case, I do apologise to anybody who feels misled by my book. I'm pretty sure though that, regardless of the title and content of Brown's upcoming novel, The Guide to Dan Brown's The Solomon Key provides a fascinating look at the 'hidden history' of U.S. history which stands by itself as a fun read. I'd be inclined to say as well that it still provides some good background to the material likely to be in The Lost Symbol. Peruse the articles on my Dan Brown-related site The Cryptex for plenty of free content on these topics - for example:

• The Masonic Foundations of America
• Dan Brown and the Ku Klux Klan
• The Udjat and The Solomon Key
• Solomon Key Hints - From Dan Brown Himself

Feel free to share your thoughts on the new title, and likely content, in the comments.

Update: It has been pointed out to me that the significance of the September 15 release date could well be that the Constitutional Convention voted to approve the U.S. Constitution on that day in 1787. Not only would this tie in with the original topics announced as being in Brown's next book, it's also a neat 222 years since that day - seems a likely candidate. Thanks Clay.

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Director Ron Howard may have just spilled the beans. Talking to Entertainment Tonight on the set of Angels and Demons, Howard said that Dan Brown...

...had finished writing the long-awaited third book featuring Langdon, and that the author was "very excited" about the novel.

But still DB's US publisher Doubleday are refusing to make anything official, saying only that he was making "great progress" with the book and that there was as yet no title or publication date to share.

In other news a longer Angels and Demons trailer - with shots from the actual movie this time - has been released on the movie's official website. Looks like some good fun.

For those interested in learning more about Dan Brown's next book, check out The Cryptex for a bunch of helpful articles, and of course take a look at this book, written by some guy. Thanks for the heads-up Perceval.