Catch 22
Twenty-five years ago I wrote a novel, CLOFA, which involved terrorists capturing a nuclear powered electrical generation plant in the U.S. and threatening to blow the reactor up, putting at risk some seven million Manhattanites. At the time, the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] was hijacking commercial planes, making bomb threats, and putting at risk the lives of hundreds of passengers.
I felt compelled to write CLOFA because I was then working in the nuclear power industry and knew what was possible technically and what was not:
>One could take over a nuclear reactor site with little more than a can opener,
>A really good outcome for a nuclear ‘incident’ was the China Syndrome,
>There were simple actions the U.S. Government could take to significantly mitigate
circumstances.
OK, so you don’t believe the bit about a can opener. How about box cutters?
Fortunately Yasser Arafat was as clueless as many members of our own government about the technical possibilities for blowing up a nuclear reactor — and we were spared this particular disaster at that particular time.
Osama Bin Laden himself is more savvy technically [civil engineering degree 1979] so there may be an opportunity for CLOFA 2007. Of course I’d have to go through and globally change relevant dates. In other words, sadly nothing significant has changed in the passing quarter-century except the date on the calendar.
In attempting to publish CLOFA, I encountered the classic obstacles:
>Well- known publishing houses only talk to well-known agents,
>Well-known agents don’t talk to Virgin Novelists,
>With the exception of vanity presses, only publishing houses made books,
>Vanity presses were the ‘kiss of death’ for authors,
— and decided to put the project aside. There were other fish to fry, and living in Princeton, NJ my own family was not at great risk from a terrorist attack on a nearby nuclear reactor site.
I had run into the Catch 22 of traditional publishing and decided to gracefully withdraw from the fray. Having grown up in Jersey City during Frank Hague’s reign, I knew: ‘One doesn’t fight City Hall’.
Fortunately for readers, brave souls like Ernest Hemmingway, John Steinbeck and thousands of other authors over the years persisted in the face of incredible odds to bring great books to the public.
Twenty-five years ago I wrote a novel, CLOFA, which involved terrorists capturing a nuclear powered electrical generation plant in the U.S. and threatening to blow the reactor up, putting at risk some seven million Manhattanites. At the time, the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] was hijacking commercial planes, making bomb threats, and putting at risk the lives of hundreds of passengers.
I felt compelled to write CLOFA because I was then working in the nuclear power industry and knew what was possible technically and what was not:
>One could take over a nuclear reactor site with little more than a can opener,
>A really good outcome for a nuclear ‘incident’ was the China Syndrome,
>There were simple actions the U.S. Government could take to significantly mitigate
circumstances.
OK, so you don’t believe the bit about a can opener. How about box cutters?
Fortunately Yasser Arafat was as clueless as many members of our own government about the technical possibilities for blowing up a nuclear reactor — and we were spared this particular disaster at that particular time.
Osama Bin Laden himself is more savvy technically [civil engineering degree 1979] so there may be an opportunity for CLOFA 2007. Of course I’d have to go through and globally change relevant dates. In other words, sadly nothing significant has changed in the passing quarter-century except the date on the calendar.
In attempting to publish CLOFA, I encountered the classic obstacles:
>Well- known publishing houses only talk to well-known agents,
>Well-known agents don’t talk to Virgin Novelists,
>With the exception of vanity presses, only publishing houses made books,
>Vanity presses were the ‘kiss of death’ for authors,
— and decided to put the project aside. There were other fish to fry, and living in Princeton, NJ my own family was not at great risk from a terrorist attack on a nearby nuclear reactor site.
I had run into the Catch 22 of traditional publishing and decided to gracefully withdraw from the fray. Having grown up in Jersey City during Frank Hague’s reign, I knew: ‘One doesn’t fight City Hall’.
Fortunately for readers, brave souls like Ernest Hemmingway, John Steinbeck and thousands of other authors over the years persisted in the face of incredible odds to bring great books to the public.
posted by jakeane at 4:12 PM
0 comments
