Today I would like to welcome author, Alex Hughes to Literary Escapism, who is celebrating the release of her second Mindspace Investigations novel, Sharp.
HISTORY HAS A WAY OF REPEATING ITSELF, EVEN FOR TELEPATHS.…
As a Level Eight telepath, I am the best police interrogator in the department. But I’m not a cop—I never will be—and my only friend on the force, Homicide Detective Isabella Cherabino, is avoiding me because of a telepathic link I created by accident.
And I might not even be an interrogator for much longer. Our boss says unless I pull out a miracle, I’ll be gone before Christmas. I need this job, damn it. It’s the only thing keeping me sane.
Parts for illegal Tech—the same parts used to bring the world to its knees in the Tech Wars sixty years ago—are being hijacked all over the city. Plus Cherbino’s longtime nemesis, a cop killer, has resurfaced with a vengeance. If I can stay alive long enough, I just might be able to prove my worth, once and for all…
Make sure you stick around to the end. We’ll be giving away a copy of the first novel, Clean.
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On Physics and Thank Yous
When I was in high school, I took two physics classes with a brilliant teacher named Dr. Clark. Dr. Clark told fascinating stories, gave you crazy problems with math that made the difference between a two-year-old living or dying, and showed us videos of crash tests before they had dummies. They used pigs, if you’re wondering. Pigs. (To this day I will never, ever forget why calculus and speed of deceleration matters. I will also never ride in a 1950s truck designed with a steering wheel on a freestanding post.)
Dr. Clark often told the story of the student who’d had a very unusual answer to a physics problem. The test had said that “you stand at the top of a tall skyscraper with a highly accurate barometer.” It then gave the air pressure and temperature and other measurements and asked you “how tall is the building?” The student had proposed going down to the basement of the building and finding the building’s superintendent, and saying, “Mr. Superintendent, I have here a very fine barometer that I will give you if you will tell me the exact height of this building.” Dr. Clark had given the student an A. This story, for years, inspired me to be needlessly creative with problems in front of me; there’s always a superintendent somewhere waiting to be asked.
Dr. Clark was much given to long stories and lectures that only loosely tied to physics, as you can see. In one of his lectures, he talked about “why astrology can’t possibly be true.” According to Dr. Clark, all known forces in the universe operate by what’s called the inverse square law. The farther they get apart in space, the weaker the forces act on one another in a very predictable way. According to Dr. Clark, this is as true of magnetism as it is gravity. It was a universal law. (This is not quite true, I found out later.) So, according to Dr. Clark, even if the planets had a strong force of Fate operating on you, they are so far away that any small influence of Fate the midwife was carrying around would clearly outweigh the Fate force from the planets. We should be tracking the midwife’s output of Fate on babies routinely!
That lecture got me thinking. I’d been reading books on various fictional telepathy systems, and I wondered: if all known forces in the universe operated by this inverse square law, why not telepathy too? Why wouldn’t it be weaker the farther away two people stood? After all, our minds interact with the rest of the world this way. Sounds that are farther away are weaker, for example, and we pay far more attention to things close to us. How would this Telepathy Force interact over space? And I got to thinking, slowly, and just as slowly, Mindspace was born.
So today, many, many years later, I owe a debt to an amazing teacher by the name of Dr. Clark, who made physics fun. As I write about science and pull out my math to solve problems, I think of him occasionally, and hope that I might make science just as fun and just as useful for my readers as he did for us students back in high school.
Thank you, Dr. Clark. Thank you.
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Meet Alex Hughes!
Alex has written since early childhood, and loves great stories in any form including scifi, fantasy, and mystery. Over the years, she has lived in many neighborhoods of the sprawling metro Atlanta area, including Decatur, the neighborhood on which Clean is centered. Her work is dark, complex, action-filled and a little funny. Her Mindspace Investigations series has been called “A fun blend of Chinatown and Blade Runner” by James Knapp, and Publisher’s Weekly called her “a writer to watch.”
When not writing you can find Alex in the kitchen cooking gourmet Italian food, watching hours of police procedural dramas, and humming to delightfully obscure music.
Contact Info
Website: website
Blog: Blog
Social Media: Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads
Want to purchase Alex’s novels?
Mindspace Investigations
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Contest Time!
Thank you Alex for taking the time to stop by Literary Escapism!
Alex is giving away a copy of the first novel, Clean. To enter, all you have to do is answer this one question: Do you think the laws of telepathy should be restricted to the same laws of physics? Are they a power unto themselves or is there a telepathic science? Remember, you must answer the question in order to be entered. (US only)
Even though I’m not giving the additional entries any more, you can still help support the author by sharing their article, and this contest, on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere you can. After all, the more people who are aware of this fabulous author ensures we get more fabulous stories.
The winner must post a review of the novel someplace. Whether it is on their own blog, Amazon, GoodReads, LibraryThing or wherever, it doesn’t matter. Just help get the word out.
The contest will stay open until May 31st at which time I’ll determine the winner with help from this snazzy plug-in that I have.
Hmm, I understand telepathy as the ability to read others’ thoughts and/or communicate through thought, so I don’t know that the laws of physics would affect that, unless buildings caused interference (think AM radio). BUT teleportation would have to defy the laws of physics, because how else would you move mass safely? I suggest we experiment with pigs.
An object at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by a force. So in the case of Mr. Newton his telepathic neighbor who owned the orchard would cause the apple to drop in his basket thereby saving the apple. Leaving Mr. Newton unaware of the forces of physics and high school physics classes would never exist which means that telepathy would not be subject to the laws of physics nor could it be defined as a law of anything.