Crowdsourcing a Novel of The Resurrection

Here’s your chance to help out a  fellow Visionary Fiction Alliance member with his MA thesis and have a little fun in the process. Robert Springer invites you to, “Add your voice. Explore your new life,” by journaling about your resurrection.

In Resurrectorium 1920, the dead are being given back their lives, but they must find their own happiness.

Robert’s instructions for participation are as follows:

This is my MA thesis, a “crowd-sourced” novel where other writers can write portions of the story. If you participate, you write as if you are keeping a journal upon awakening in a hospital-like Resurrectorium. “You have been resurrected from the dead.” These words welcome you to a different world. It’s a beautiful world. People are friendly. There is work, but not drudgery. Money, but not riches. Eternal life for some, perfect health for all. There are two kinds of resurrected life: Zoë life, the eternal life of God, and Bios life, the life you have now but with perfect health and 1,000 years to reach Zoë life. You can write as a Zoë teacher who has stood in the presence of God in heaven, or you can write as a Bios who, other than perfect health, is exactly as we all are now. But not everyone is happy.

The site, http://resurrectorium.com/, has a Novel So Far link including shortcuts to key events and to a timeline of critical days. Imagine you are at one of these events. What do you think of what is happening?

• Reese, the protagonist, finds he cannot leave the Region to look for his love, Helen (who, unknown to him, is his Zoë guide). How would you feel if you were told you could not travel freely by beings who have superhuman abilities?
• The angel Casiel “unmakes” Reese (after repeated attempts to leave) leaving a crater a mile wide. Reese is resurrected again.
• In what had been a secure world with perfect weather, a tornado destroys much of New Harmony. What if it destroyed your home or business? What if you lost all your belongings but none of your loved ones or pets?
• Eddy, who thinks the Zoë are not humans with eternal life, but aliens, suggests “The People” should be in charge of themselves. Can someone accept being resurrected but not believe all of what they are told?
• The Zoë guides leave, and a third to a half of the town of New Harmony goes with them. Would you join the revolution or the exodus?
• Alex, who ran the hardware, and Zelda, the newspaperwoman, are tried in a show trial and executed for treason.

“But, I’m not a Christian,” some of you may say. That’s fine: Everyone is getting resurrected from the dead. Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, atheists, agnostics… You can comment on this world you’ve awakened into no matter what your faith.

“But, I’m a Christian, and this isn’t my idea of the resurrection of the dead,” some of you may say. That’s okay. It’s my idea of the resurrection of the dead, and you have an opportunity to comment on it from the inside!

You can write acceptingly or as a skeptic. Sarah’s and Asher’s entries were written by other writers. Add your voice. Explore your new life. Join me!

Robert Springer (1953–) a poor (bass guitar) player who once strut his hour upon the stage (in Austin TX and in Indiana) and then was heard (unrecorded bands) no more (after 30 years my fingers cannot remember the frets). The oil paints that illustrated Habakkuk 3:4 are dried up. Gray locks however are still full of Sound and Fury (not a Plymouth Fury actually, it was a ‘63 Chrysler Newport push-button drive gunboat called the “Stratocruiser”), and finds he is a character in a story told by an idiot who after 20 years with a large publisher found his Department was outsourced overseas (nevertheless, I love India). Said villein (lawfully required to pay the death pledge made upon his residence for his continuing occupation thereof) is a returning adult student as well as a spouse, a parent, a grandfather of two, and much to his surprise, a Deacon in his church. And yes, he is full of sound and fury, just get him mad or give him coffee.