Pacific Book Review   

Author Interview with John L. Dunegan

My Half of Tomorrow

Today we have the pleasure of speaking with John L. Dunegan, author of the new sci-fi book titled, My Half of Tomorrow, just released by publisheriUniverse.  John, thank you for taking some time to join us.

JLD:  My pleasure, thank you very much.

PBR:  First, for those of you that may have read the review, you know I really enjoyed your book.  But in the review I did not want to talk about the technique you came up with regarding the “conversational relationship” between your characters, 50 years apart.  Now, I’d like to ask you how did you come up with this concept?

JLD:  Well, as you may have read recently there have been some scientific studies involving magnetic force field and effects such field have on human thought.  As example, two people were placed in two separate rooms, magnetically shield, and both in the dark.  Each was fitted with a helmet like device that created a magnetic force field around their heads.  The force fields were created from the same device so they were identical in every way.  After a while in the dark a light was flashed on and off in one of the rooms. To their amazement the participant in the second dark room was seeing flashes of light.  So, my imagination track down the path that magnetic anomaly may be the mechanism to telepathy.    If you recall in the book, such an anomaly take place.

PBR:  You must be a fan of some of the current thinking of the universe being “uni”, or one, as a misnomer, and a multiverse would be a more accurate and precise description.  What are your thoughts on this topic?  For example some of what Stephen Hawking’s multi-dimensional multiverse has so eloquently articulated in his work?

JLD:  Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein, as well as a few others, are men with minds that we mortals know nothing about.   I believe both considered multiple dimensions as a likely reality.  If you consider the electromagnetic spectrum and vastness of it from one end to the other, and the extreme narrow band of that spectrum that we as humans exist in.  It is like space, there just has to be more to it than what we understand and the possibilities are endless.

PBR:  Farm life played a big part in your book, with good “old fashioned” values.  How was your upbringing?  Did it have this simple, honest lifestyle?

JLD:  Well the truth be known, much of the first eighty pages you mentioned in your review was generally based on my childhood and the poor existence of my family.  As a family we lack a lot but we lack nothing as a family.  We all worked in some capacity and pulled the plow of survival together.  We did live in a rural area of Muskogee, Ok in a tenant farm house.  As the book points out, my father did drive a truck for a living;  my mother did work at a glass manufacturer and my bothers worked at grocery markets in town and we all pick cotton and worked fields during harvest.  It was a tough life but really it was not so bad.  

PBR:  Obviously sci-fi is your cup of tea – who are some of your favorite authors in this as well asother genres?

JLD: As a young boy I love Sci-Fi and loved books like The Red Plant, Mission to Mars and such.   But as I have grown older I find current science magazines like Discover and Scientific American offer the same Sci-Fi though process.  Some of the concepts are truly Sci-Fi but current technology is chasing Sci-Fi and gaining ground.

PBR:  What other books or stories have you written?

JLD:  Actually this was the second book I finished.  The first was thirty years ago and based on communication technology.  Back in those days getting published was more than just difficult and after numerous rejection I finally gave up.  After a few years the changes in technology erase the theme of the book so I just forgot about it.  There was a movie some years later titled ‘The Net’.  That was almost the exact plot of the first book.

PBR:  Are you currently working on any new books?  And if so, can you tell us a bit about them?

JLD:  Glad you ask.  I am currently working on a sequel to My Half of Tomorrow.  My Half of Tomorrow entangles the lives of three people, Lynn, John and Jenny.  Lynn and Jenny live in the same time period and John lives in current time.  The plot of My Half of Tomorrow covers a month or less for John but it covers fifty years for Lynn and Jenny.  The sequel is the exploits of these two and knowledge they gained of the future.  One of the aspects of My Half of Tomorrow that I truly love is the aspect that the trio closes the loop of time before the end of the book.  The sequel will fill the blanks of the fifty year time difference with a much different plot.  A surprising plot I think.

PBR:  Ok, one more question, please, before our time runs out (which perhaps you can adjust if need be).  What are your personal thoughts on UFO’s and extraterrestrial intelligent life? 

JLD:   UFO?  I don’t know, I don’t think specie would travel the distance required to get here then just dart in and out of our atmosphere and not make their presence know.   What sense does that make.  As far as other intelligent life in the universe, I think it is impossible that there not be.  If you just think about our galaxy the earth in located in the next to last band of the spiral.  The out spiral of our galaxy is billions of years older than we are and have offered the opportunity for life out there to be millions of years more advanced.  We are probably virgins in the universe of intellect.  

PBR:  Interesting.  Thank you very much.  All of us wish you the best of success and look forward to much more from you in the future.

JLD:  Thank you very much, it was a pleasure.

Read Review

Author Spotlight