X-Novo
Author
Ken Hagdal
Author Bio
Ken Hagdal was trained as a control engineer, worked as a programmer and moved on to artsy endeavors and non-academic psychology research, with a focus on coercive persuasion and its manifestations in every area of life. He’s very familiar with victims of abuse in all its forms (sexual, emotional, physical); an experience gained from running a support group on late msn groups, RL involvement and observation, forum moderation, and long-term immersion in fringe groups.
Past Writings: Screenplays, including a dark comedy finalist in the 13th edition of the Write Movies contest.
Interests: History, Mythology, Sciences, Psychology, Music, Writing, Web Development, Runes, Nutrition, Paranormal, Dream Interpretation, Gender Issues, Woods, UFO’s, Gaming.
Favorite books: Death on Credit, Journey to the End of the Night, Ham of Rye, Catch 22, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Elder Eddas, The History of Rome, Nationalism and Culture, The Ego and its Own, Brave New World, 1984, We, Beyond Good and Evil, Fahrenheit 451, Malleus Maleficarum, Psychology and Alchemy, Psychology of Women – A Handbook of Issues and Theories
Description
“20#6 AD. Following the discovery of the genuine Dead Sea Scrolls, women learn it’s a tampered-with version of the Old Testament which was used to keep their foremothers in submission for nearly two millennia. Hilarity fails to ensue.
After a first, scorned, attempt at enforcing the female-friendly precepts, the not-so-weaker gender ends up revolting and snatching the reins of the US administration from the callous hands of Patriarchy. Two novelties will be born out of their reforms towards a healthy and peaceful society: the Collar, an electronic device for suppressing violent impulses in men, and the Pool, the State-run dating service for women.
The first Anniversary of the Revolution is now only a few days away. As the head of the Department of Information, Lisa Fenrich is all too aware of the stakes for her government. What she’s about to discover is that the holes she’s been plugging were trifles compared to the one about to open under her feet.
Disgraced yet unbowed, she will set out on a quest to recover the last secret fragment of the Holy Scriptures. One that would spell the end of the age-old rift between men and women if revealed to the world, but that the Presidentess she so staunchly supports intends to tweak around for her political survival; and maybe more.”
Book excerpt
To whomever is reading this,
For some reason, Goddess, in her mysterious ways, has enabled you to unearth my journal from the soil of this sun-battered desert. Hopefully, it will allow you, or one of your thought leaders, to draw a moral from the events it recounts. There has to be one. There always is when one flips through the darkest pages of Humankind’s history. I would just be at a loss to tell you what ours was. Too involved, and still too fresh, I guess.
The seminal idea for these pages came to me when working on the speech for our Revolution’s first anniversary. Back then, some of our sisters were going down the slippery slope and I thought it would help re-ground them if I addressed you, one of our remote descendants; an audience who may have forgotten the reason for our struggle or wasn’t feeling directly concerned by it. An audience who, until recently, was assumed to be female. If this isn’t the case, I can understand that you may find my standpoint occasionally disturbing, but should you take it in stride, I also want to believe you could benefit from some of my insights into your gender’s quirks here and there.
The other possible ground for reproach is having chosen the form of a personal journal, to have aggregated to objective, historical, facts all my thoughts and comments, as well as personal events, and so, in the most ingenuous manner. In response to these misgivings, I would like to ask: what priceless data would we have gained from a probe inside Hitler’s mind as he was waiting on a reply from the Vienna Arts Academy, or Napoleon’s as he was sitting beneath a chestnut tree on his twentieth birthday, watching French troops crush his people’s will into submission? Wouldn’t we now have an inkling of what laid the groundwork for mass bloodshed?
Of course, our endgame caused far fewer casualties as you must know. What I’m alluding to is this failure to break the cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations. The eeriest part is some of history’s pundits had brought us an acute knowledge of the symptoms, especially the likes of Machiavelli and Gibbons.
Maybe that was it… We might have been distracted by the glare on the surface and missed some dark ooze festering deep within; the roots of it all. Something we might even have nurtured through our good intentions… Someone should dig that out.
Lisa Fenrich,
Secretary of Information of the USA (07/20#9–08/15/20#0)
Disclaimer: Years, decades, or centuries after the events, you might have heard about me in official history in a non-flattering manner. In my defense, I want to bring to your attention that the purpose of mass media in my time, which I suppose to be your historians’ main source, wasn’t exactly to offer the most accurate information. I know; I had been in charge of them long enough. But then again, there might be certain patterns I might not want to see, unconsciously. I will leave you free to form your own opinion. My only request is that you do so after acquainting yourself with my own version to its full extent. As to the truthfulness of my account, all I can point out is it was written for neither a prince nor an honorary title. For all I know, it may never be more than a speech to maggots…
