Category Archives: Time is Gold
WHY I WROTE SEVEN NOVELS
TURKEYS NOT BEES
I wrote this during the pandemic, because I was concerned about government overreach, within a spectacle of profit and votes from health, sport, food, employment and education. My purpose was to expose the bullying and racketeering.
ANIMAL FARM 2
I have updated Orwell’s 1945 political satire, with a sequel in which descendents of the farm animals suffer more totalitarianism, as the World reverberates from events controlled by Russia and the superpowers. My purpose was to reveal bullying and science fakery.
TIME IS GOLD
I wanted to celebrate human success using science, at the frontiers of athletic endurance, with the story of a marathon runner who in the future is able to use Einstein’s Special Relativity in her neural performances and break the World record.
SHORT OF LOVE
The story was conceived as a satirical love story which riffs on the usual conventions of commitment and monogamy, against his career as a high-powered executive, when her activism converges on the same ethical space. It is partly autobiographical.
PRESUMED DEAD
I wanted to celebrate the honesty of most public servants. An iconic politician confronts a self-seeking government and she mysteriously disappears. A novel transparent forensic investigation strategy is used to find her, exposing and arraigning the culprits.
THE GRASS IS ALWAYS BROWNER
This is speculative fiction, curious about Australia 250 years in the future, during dark times when the outlook for the people seems compromised by exigencies of population growth, energy supply, world trade, climate change, immigration, religion and political conflict. The epic story tells how indigenous national leaders deal with these creatively.
BRISBANE RIVER ANTI-MEMOIR
Coming. I investigate effectiveness of management river flooding.
Available from Amazon. Excerpts and reviews at martinknox.com
CHANGING THE AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION
Australians will vote shortly in a referendum for alteration of the constitution to have an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. There is no argument for a Yes or No position following. My intention is to draw attention to considerations that do not seem to be acknowledged in the official Referendum Booklet where the cases are compared. Novels I have written expound on three issues omitted from this official guide.
Is the proposed change overreach of Australia’s nanny state? I have presented disadvantages of our nanny state in my novel Turkeys Not Bees. A nanny state can benefit people but it can also lead to totalitarianism. My novel Animal Farm 2 is a satirical sequel to George Orwell’s expose of totalitarianism. The proposal is for more control of our democracy, reducing individual freedom.
Recognition in the Constitution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would increase their collective access to Parliament and Executive Government, reducing relative access of other other individual Australians. A case for Australian individualism is presented in Turkeys Not Bees. The referendum proposes a new social spectacle, described by De Bord, 1967. It could appear to have solidarity within the Aboriginal and TSI community, which could result in exploitation by organisations and politicians, unless checks and balances would be adopted later.
Athletes’ access to government support should be equal for all Australians. Establishing affirmative action by this referendum could prevent performances by all Australians from being potentially equal. We need more Cathy Freemans, not an underclass of performers selected by race. My novel Time Is Gold makes cases for competition and innovation in sport.
In summary, the referendum could affirm nanny statism, collectivism, social exploitation and segregation.
My novels are available on Amazon. Excerpts and reviews are at martinknox.com
PERFORMING FASTER IN TIME
In my novel Time Is Gold, Maxi is an elite marathon runner who controls her performance time to improve. She learns to use the technique ‘flow’ helped by her partner Jack, a physics PhD, who researches time dilation in ‘extreme flow’, according to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity. Her intense training raises her neural transmission speed near to the speed limit, causing her time to dilate, by analogy with travel in space.
Her willpower and physical ability are strengthened by practice and she gets more running done in longer seconds. Maxi’s training is epistemological, based on self-coaching. Her preparation for races is advised by her entourage of experts in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and Zen. Maxi’s winning performances on the international marathon competition circuit cause jealousy and she is falsely accused of taking performance enhancing substances.
Many performers in time stop improving when they reach glass ceilings set by others’ time agendas. If their performance time is referred instead to times they have experienced in practice, they can feel their way to improvement.
The book is on Amazon and chronicles Maxi’s running career and results in competition.
See reviews at martinknox.com
OLYMPIC PERFORMANCE WITH FAITH
Maxi’s story is a novel about a marathon runner who uses science to contest the Olympics. She competes on the international marathon circuit with elite women, steadily improving her performance time. Her training regimen is inspired by her ascetic faith in ‘extreme flow’ to hone her skills to automaticity and stretch time to achieve her performance goal. She learns by self-coaching to centre herself with Zen and flow’s timelessness. Maxi learns to control her performance time and is not held below any performance ceilings set by coaches, competitors or records. Guided by her team of experts, she explores her endurance to stay inside the edge of bonking, when her muscles would be functionally depleted of glycogen.
Her boyfriend Jack is a physics PhD who encourages her, explaining to her scientific techniques she can use to improve. Extreme flow requires full mental engagement, to achieve neural impulse speeds close to the maximum electro-magnetic speed in the neural medium’s faster time framework, causing her time to dilate as explained by Einstein’s special relativity.
When she travels to contest championships, Jack and her retinue of specialists attend to her physical, nutritive and social needs and to her business interests. Maxi is fun-loving and enjoys time out from her training schedule and social activities. She seldom self-indulges, because her goal is to succeed in the marathon and it is always before her.
This is a story of athletic achievement by serious training in physiological, psychological, metaphysical and Zen disciplines. Jack helps her, explaining several techniques, but she is the one who controls her training. Will she win at the coming Olympic Games? Will her relationship with Jack survive if she does? What if she doesn’t?
Time is Gold is an exciting science fiction story of a woman’s bid for fame. Martin Knox has authored six novels in various genres. He is an engineer and science teacher with an abiding interest in philosophy and explaining complex ideas simply, who in this book describes the phenomenon of performer endurance, for practical application.
The book is available on Amazon. For reviews see martinknox.com
