From a very young age (farther back than I can remember) until I was about 9 years old, I lived with my grandparents.
Despite this, I don’t really feel like I ever got to know my grandfather. He was already at quite an advanced age back then, and at least to me as a small child at the time, it always felt like he was either asleep, or when he wasn’t, preferred not to be bothered. This isn’t to say that he was some grumpy old man who shooed me away, we still did plenty of things. He shared with me his love of puzzles, bought and helped me build many Steel-Tec kits (read: knock-off Erector sets), Introduced me to my very first computer, and on at least one very vivid occasion in my memory, even shared with me some small inkling of the theory he covered in his book.
He passed away some time ago now. I won’t pretend to know the exact date or even year off the top of my head. Death isn’t really a thing I think about. What I do think about, though, is that as an adult it just never so happened that I got to really talk to him, to discuss the sort of things adults talk about. To really learn the sort of person he was, what he thought about things, or even the simple things like why he loved puzzles or his exploits as a young man like I was.
The book he wrote, then, is something I very much treasure. It’s my only real view into his mind. The sort of person he was. Granted, I’m sure his views probably changed at least a little between 1975 when he wrote it and when I was growing up, but he clearly still thought about those things he wrote as a much younger man.
I’d known about his book for a long time, even though our family rarely talked about it. Perhaps I’m misremembering, but it seemed like they really glossed over it when they did. It’s perhaps understandable given its subject matter and a family that was fairly staunchly Catholic, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they’d have preferred it gone and buried. To my knowledge, I may very well have the only surviving copy of it.
It’s precisely for that reason that I’ve digitized it. These are my grandfather’s surviving thoughts and theories, after all. I think they deserve to survive. So, I’ve spent the past few days transcribing it word-for-word and painstakingly formatting it into a relatively faithful EPUB format book. I’m well aware it likely only has real meaning to me, but in the hopes that maybe someday someone might stumble upon it and find some joy in taking a peek inside his head, I’m releasing it here, for free (copyright be damned, if my family wants to fight me on this they are welcome to, I don’t see anyone else with a care in the world about his book up to now).
To be clear, I don’t really agree with his views. It’s a bit of a crackpot and highly-flawed theory if I’m being entirely honest, but I do understand where he’s coming from. This was written after all at a time before the Internet, at the climax of the Space Race, a time when personal computers had only just begun to exist. I can only imagine the whirlwind of thoughts and possibilities he saw around him, and the future world he imagined for his only-recently-born daughter.
I’ll leave you, then, with my favorite quote from the book, taken only very slightly out-of-context so as not to water it down with his more fanciful assertions:
Man could begin now to change and unite his world and direct it not inward, but outward to space. This would mean the conscientious effort on the part of each one of us to change and change drastically, especially on the part of those whom we call “leaders.” Let us on the one hand return to our animal ancestry and live “naturally,” meaning that those things which are superfluous to existence are really not necessary. Food, clothing, shelter—these are the basics. We should take care of our own in seeing that everyone has these basics. The rest of our efforts should then be directed toward the knowledge of discovering truth. Medical science should be assisted in every manner, and these benefits brought to all. The education of the mind should be most broad, so that every avenue of thought may be tested and evaluated. Above all, knowledge of ourselves and our relationship to each other must be pursued. Our mental attitudes must be transformed into those of unselfishness, consideration, logic and togetherness. Of course, disciplined rules of behavior must be enforced, but with an “intrinsic justice,” not rules merely made by man to enforce his will upon others. And last, but not least, our efforts should be ever directed toward the universe and its discoveries.
