This book began as a four-page short story titled “Castles in the Air,” which I wrote in 1971. At that time, I was working as a reporter/copy editor at the Valley News (predecessor of today’s Los Angeles Daily News). In fact, the newsroom scene in the Prologue is based on the city room of the old Valley News offices in Van Nuys, CA.
For some reason, the story idea stayed with me, but it seemed incomplete. So in 1985, I started filling in some gaps and expanding the story into a novel. I finished the first complete draft sometime in 1986, but I didn’t actively pursue publication at that time. Life took me in a different direction.
Then one day, I mentioned the novel to a friend. She asked to read it; so I started reviewing chapters before I sent them along. That’s when I re-named the book “The Reality Matrix Effect” and started working actively to get this book published.
Although this novel is fiction, some things in it are real.
—As noted in the Acknowledgments section, Nitinol exists. It is a “memory metal” that was developed at the Naval Ordinance Laboratory.
—Modern interpretations of quantum physics (including the Many Worlds theory) suggest the existence of multiple realities (at least on a quantum level).
The concept of reality matrix theory and shifting from one reality to another, however, is a fiction of my own invention. Or is it? What was once considered mysticism, religion and Eastern philosophy seems to be merging with hard science. So at this point, who among us truly knows the nature of reality?
January 15, 2013