Placing the Trailokya Trilogy in a genre was a long conversation I had with my book manager at the time of the release of the first book. Many of today’s books don’t fit neatly into any one genre. Authors are pushing the envelope of creativity and expanding the boundaries that are given them. That is the sign of a healthy art form.
The trilogy spans several topics: Domestic Violence, the human condition, the not so human condition, politics, history and even animal rights. Many aspects of the work (angels and demons) reflect fantasy or paranormal stories. Is Paranormal more science or more make believe. It depends on who you speak to.
Paranormal research is a serious field of study, despite what many die hard scientific fact types might say. The field researches unexplained phenomena. Those things can be anything from hauntings to aliens. There is cryptids studies as well. While we certainly don’t believe in unicorns (at least not as they have been believed to exist), it is possible that a bipedal ape frequents the mountains of Tibet or the forests of the Ozarks. Is it as we have come to believe?
Have you ever played the game telephone? Stories that are told over and over often are distorted by the time they’ve made the rounds. Most folklore around big foot imagines a creature based on vague descriptions by frightened and, until our current and last century, often primitive people. Their powers of description are based on their cultural norms and language. Translations alter the meanings, and trans-cultural transitions do a similar thing.
As for ghosts and aliens, much of our history on the topics is shaded in derision by folks who don’t believe unless the thing is set in their lap, as well as infrequent encounters or sightings that weren’t conducive to recording. Convenient, of course. Did you know that every year scientists are still discovering new species that were only rumor and known in folk tales of the local people? For the most part, those discoveries aren’t part of some folk tale, but there are still animals and plants that are known to small groups, and not widely accepted as real by the larger group. So I don’t pretend to believe that we’ve discovered all there is to know about our world.
Physics makes leaps and bounds that are absolutely fascinating each year as well. I’ve been reading articles over the past decade that describe our world as a hologram, that dimensions are definitely a reality and other such theory. I trust that science will be the tool that succeeds in teaching us all there is to know about our world. Religion is only there to give it all reason. Science never describes the philosophical. That is where atheists veer off. Sure religion has caused a lot of trouble for humanity, but so has scientific discovery…such as the atom bomb (euthanasia) and the combustion engine (green house gasses), oh, and fracking (water/air/land pollution) is another scientific discovery.
So how does Trailokya stack up? Although it contains characters that have been slotted with fantasy, let’s think about how they have manifestation in every culture worldwide. For humanity to create such a similarity cross culture, that hints of similar experience. As the hysterical History Channel show, Ancient Aliens, suggests in some of their episodes, perhaps these beings are as real as you and I but come from another world away. Why not? Do we have a guidebook on what exists in these parallel universes? Science says they are there, but not what is there. The convenience of the shared cultural phenomena of angels and demons fills in the blank. It’s a bit of a stretch. Fantasy, if you will, that helps connect dots. It’s just a theory, but one that populates the trilogy.
The fact that mythology and theology provides names and cultural norms doesn’t, for me at least, take away from the possibility of some nugget of fact behind the existence of such tales. Paranormal studies seeks to make the connections in our real world, despite the discipline often being full of charlatans, desperately gullible people and even loons. It’s really too bad that it can’t be taken more seriously, as that would advance the subject decades in no time.
Taking all of these premises, and adding on a conspiracy to keep hidden this truth, and you have the basis for the Trailokya Trilogy. When both sides are fighting to keep reality hidden, it will successfully remain hidden. Anyone who scratches the surface is viewed as unhinged or untrustworthy for other reasons. You can hide it in plain sight!
So, while fantasy is the glue that holds the ideas together, Trailokya is based on emerging and fringe science. It is no coincidence that Tesla’s theories of free energy and nanotechnology are included in the lineup. They hint at the realms of science one needs to be familiar with to see the underpinnings of the narrative.
