Inventing Reality: towards a magical technology
May 2007: Grey House edition: ISBN 0-9540531-7-6 ~ Paperback ~ 106 pages ~ £7.95 - includes new chapter: 'Round the Bend'.Gateway Books (Bath, England), 1986/1990; ISBN 0-946551-64-2
Now back in print... if you prefer a physical book, get one now from Grey House!
The entire content of the older 1990 edition of Inventing Reality is available for browsing on-line on this site. Or, if you prefer, you can download the
.ZIP file of that edition of the book for viewing on your own machine.June 1996: This rather odd little book is in many ways a key predecessor to the Wyrd series, and is perhaps the one of which I'm still most fond, even though it took off like a lead balloon... It was an attempt to weave together a new approach to science, technology and magic: like quite a lot of what I've written, it was way ahead of its time, and people seem to be discovering it now, just as it's about to drift into publishers' oblivion! Originally published as Towards a Magical Technology, the cover was so awful that most people thought it was supposed to be a joke-book, and eventually the publisher ripped the covers off and started again... a pity, because it's well worth reading.
[May 2007 update: the book is now back in print, thanks to some very hard work by Graeme Talboys at Grey House. Hooray!]
The cover-copy states:
Have you ever wanted to be really original - to be more creative? This novel book describes how the minds of geniuses work - how new inventions are often born.
The trick is to abandon the plodding methods of the logical mind, and allow coincidences to happen. Inventing Reality is about putting these coincidences to use; rather like learning how to sense when some trouble is developing with your car, rather than relying on the handbook.
Ecology is teaching us to think of ourselves as part of nature, part of the environment. Magical technology is a way of working with the world as an extension of our own mind and awareness.
Through practical exercises using our everyday experiences, and through fields as diverse as computer programming and water divining, Tom Graves presents a framework in which synchronicities become a meaningful part of the reader's creative life.