This is the sixth installment of Lory Kaufman’s World of History Camp Back Story

This is the sixth and final installment of Lory Kaufman’s World of History Camp Back Story.

Darlene of Manitoba Canada has won the 5th copy of the
The Lens and The Looker.
Congratulations Darlene!

Enter today, one more copy to be given away!

The Lens and the Looker and The Bronze and the Brimstone. In addition I have interviewed Lory. I enjoyed his books and I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that he is making history palatable to young people. Lory and I have emailed back and forth and he has been kind enough to allow me to “plumb the depths” of how he created his World of History Camp. Please note that I have no financial relationship with Lory, nor do I reap any benefits from posting his back story. I am making these posts because as a reader and an author I find the novel building process interesting and informative and I hope you will too. Plus you have the opportunity to garner a FREE book. (more on that later)

The World of History Camp and Time Travel

Lory questions the origins of his own ideas. From my perspective unless you are a total Luddite hermit; you will be influenced by things in your environment. How we translate those perceptions into our own reality is the defining aspect of humanity. In Lory’s case he translates some perceptions into his World of History Camp. Time travel is a slick way to truly impress readers as to the importance of history. The adage of walking a mile in another’s moccasin takes on serious implications if you are forced to live in those same moccasins. This wraps up the back story of Lory Kaufman’s World of History Camp.

After finishing the first drafts of The Lens And The Looker, I realized this was not such a new idea in science fiction. While watching a rerun of the 1951 movie The Day The Earth Stood Still, I saw how the race of aliens in the film, represented by the character, Klaatu, had recognized his race’s inability to control itself and gave control of their long-term well being to a race of “robots”, such as the one in the movie, named Gort. I can’t honestly say if I reinvented the idea or subconsciously adopted the concept from watching the movie as a child. I suspect the latter, but it really doesn’t matter. Orson Scott Card does a similar thing in his new series Pathfinder, but in a very different and wonderful way.

A last thought on this theme; we can’t really blame humankind for being aggressive and individually greedy. Any creature that has had to fight its way out of the primeval ooze and survive by consuming others and protecting its offspring by destroying and consuming other creature’s family units over billions of years cannot be expected to change its instincts quickly, if ever. Was it a mistake by nature to give us human’s an intelligence that would cause it to outstrip our biology and not be regulated by the immediate environment? Was it a divine plan (or joke on the creator’s part) that gave humans the ability to destroy ourselves and much of the planet’s life forms much quicker than the evolutionary forces that usually bring down species? At this point, we can’t know.

Time Travel:

At the beginning of The Lens and the Looker, humans in the 24th-century can’t time travel. They can in the 31st-century and History Camp counselors from that future come back and kidnap spoiled “hardcase” troublemakers from the 24th-century. They then take these kids back in time to where there is no social safety net and abandon them. That’s when the dystopian-like fun and adventure starts.

So, as a writer whose stories depend on time travel, do I actually believe it’s? Actually, I don’t, not in the way it’s used by me or most speculative fiction authors. Am I suggesting that in the foreseeable future it’s possible? Gosh, I don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter.

So, why do I use time travel? Well, it’s a great literary device that allows characters from different times to be thrown into the same arena of life to compare notes and to knock heads – and the more outrageous the situation, the better. You see, for me, the art and fun of writing is to make the impossible seem real and truly plausible, to craft words in a way that the reader will want to suspend disbelief.

One last thought about time travel and the one thing I am certain about. We shouldn’t hold our breath about it coming soon enough to help fix and save the world. We’re on our own for that.

Lory Kaufman has spent a lot of time developing plausibility and originality in his world. I think to successfully craft a series or even a good novel you need to see the world in which it exists. I believe authors who ply their craft in the genres of science fiction and fantasy are more creative than those who plod along in the mundane real world. Good speculative fiction demands the creation of a new entertaining reality.
Kudos to Lory Kaufman for taking the time to craft his stories, for letting us post his back story and writing stories that make history more exciting and palatable to those resistant to learning from it.


The FINAL FREE book for each section of Lory Kaufman’s back story will be given away this month. Did I mention it is a FREE book?
How do you qualify for a FREE book?
Fine Print
Simply read the post and fill out the form below. Each entry will be assigned a number and those numbers will be input into a random number generator to choose the winner. I will email the winner. The winner’s address will be sent to Lory Kaufman who will be sending out the autographed books. If you have a specific name or nickname you wish the autograph to mention, please submit it with the form. Each winner will be announced at the posting of the next segment of Lory Kaufman’s back story. No purchases necessary and your email address will not be given to anyone else.
The winner of this month’s book will be announced next month on Feb.9th. As an additional incentive for those of you who are actually reading the entire post, if you comment on any of my blog posts throughout the month I will input an additional entry to the contest.