The Great Convergence by Thomas Kast Published by Universe 74-W on August 13th 2021
Goodreads
10,000,002 A.D. A cantankerous scholar slipping into obscurity is out for revenge.
He time-travels to the year 2022 to stop his nemesis, Scott — a successful scientist at a competing university — from thwarting his research into the origin of a mysterious phenomenon, the Great Convergence. Shrewd and ruthless, Scott will stop at nothing to defend his tenure track. The feud quickly spins out of control and the damage to reality grows unchecked.
Caught in the crosshairs are three characters responsible for triggering the Great Convergence: an art-hating professional art critic who, unbeknownst to him, spontaneously switches between universes wreaking havoc as he goes; a talentless artist whose sculptures act as trans-universal portals; and a schizophrenic astrophysicist trying to avert the invasion of alternate versions of himself from different realities. As their paths converge, the apocalyptic event takes place and the inescapable tragedy of human existence unfolds.
A subversive philosophical science fiction and a social satire, the Great Convergence will take you out of your comfort zone, exposing the absurdity of many ethical and intellectual ideals.
Thank you to Kaleidoscope Tours for having me on the tour!
Thomas Kast was kind enough to share a few things about his characters, what makes them tick, and what you can expect from this exciting science-fiction book. Who do you think is the most interesting? Thank you so much, Thomas, for the detailed descriptions!
Five Interesting Things About Your Protagonists
The Great Convergence has several protagonists. Despite being fundamentally different from one another, they all cultivate an inordinately unwavering sense of purpose. As their paths converge, the apocalyptic event takes place, and the inescapable tragedy of human existence unfolds.
1. The unnamed narrator lives ten million years in the future. Stuck in a dead-end academic position, he time-travels to the year 2022 to find a proof validating his research, but mainly to prevail over Scott — his arch-nemesis and a researcher at a competing university. The rivalry between the scientists quickly spins out of control. The Narrator and Scott remain focused on being right, even if this means endangering the universe’s fate.
Through the narrator’s flashbacks, the reader gets a glimpse of the world ten million years from now. It’s a world in which technology is indistinguishable from magic. It is also a world ruled by stupidity, jealousy, pettiness and shortsighted spite — much like our own.
2. Larry is a highly-regarded professional art critic, who projects his frustrations onto the artworks he doesn’t even bother to see. Unbeknownst to him, Larry is a singular. A singular denotes an object or a person that can only inhabit a single universe at a given moment. In other words, there is only one version of Larry in existence in the whole multiverse. Larry often switches between several universes wreaking havoc as he goes. Larry’s spontaneous flings between different realities are exacerbated by the crude creations produced by a tormented sculptor — Geoffrey.
3. Geoffrey is an aspiring — yet essentially talentless artist living in denial. Geoffrey’s sculptures, he cranks out to impress a girl he fancies, act as interdimensional portals, swapping things and people between realities. All of this happens without Geoffrey’s knowledge. A series of seemingly-random occurrences culminate in the creation of a perfect inter-dimensional portal connecting all the universes in existence. Geoffrey’s perfect portal brings about the most dramatic transformation of the multiverse — the Great Convergence.
4. Timothy is a genius astrophysicist suffering from severe schizophrenia. Timothy fights a host of his versions from alternate realities — who want to take over his universe. It remains unclear whether Timothy’s versions are real, or exist in his imagination. One way or another, Timothy’s actions bring about a real-life catastrophe no one could have prevented.
5. The setting is crucial to understanding my characters’ motives. Let’s have a look at my depiction of the distant future. Many sci-fi writers describe the future some hundreds or 1000-2000 years from now. I went ahead a little more and wrote about 10.000.000 AD. I try to create a magical science fiction but without any fantasy elements.
There’s a lab where the scientists grow universes to experiment on. There’s an old, baroque-like fountain spewing streams of time instead of water in the university’s courtyard. There is a site with portals connecting different universes, much like the Four Corners Monument in the US. It’s frequented by tourists taking selfies with their hand in one universe and their leg in another.
Despite having all this unimaginable technology and power at their disposal, the narrator and his competitor, Scott, remain hopelessly silly, self-centred and unable to see the bigger picture. In essence, the Great Convergence shows we can never stop being who we really are.
To alleviate the pretty sombre message of my novel, I tried to infuse the Great Convergence with humour as much as I could, to provide some much-needed air pervading the book’s claustrophobic, at times, atmosphere.
About the Thomas Kast
Thomas Kast is an award-winning independent photojournalist and illustrator based in Zurich, Switzerland and has published a number of photography art books. Thomas spent a big part of his life in Israel, where he taught graphic design, photography, and illustration at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design and other Israeli colleges. An incongruous rhetorician with Asperger’s syndrome, Thomas always knows best despite all evidence pointing to the contrary.
Long time in the making, his debut novel — a philosophical science fiction piece, the Great Convergence — evokes many of the author’s real-life experiences fused with his unhinged fantasies. Currently, the author is preparing a philosophical sci-fi comic series, due to be published in the coming July 2022.
