EDEN

EDEN is two stories: one fictional, one fact.

The fiction: Calif De'Alsace, a man devoted to the dissemination of life across the galaxy, has taken a group of one hundred artists and scientists to a sterile world named Eden for the purpose of bioengineering living works of art. Calif, an Ankh idealist, has decreed that no weapons be brought and that the group create a "paradise of peace where beauty...not the law of tooth and claw...reigns." Unknown to the Eden group, Calif was forced by a powerful man to include an artist, Iamoendi, who has secretly been using drugs to enhance his imaging abilities. Iamoendi, who is descended from Fundamentalist factions that fought in the Religionist Wars, slowly goes insane. Believing himself an instrument of god, Iamoendi turns against Project Eden. He obtains the genome libraries (programmed instructions for bioengineering plants and animals) for insects and arachnids. Subsequently, he creates an army of huge insect warriors, and launches a secret attack against Project Eden.

Thirteen survive Iamoendi's attack. Weaponless, they are forced to create living weapons in defense. With the battle lines drawn, the war begins. The survivors create a surprise defense of giganticized ant lions, trapdoor spiders, and carnivorous plants. They defeat Iamoendi's army, but Iamoendi escapes. Two more battles ensue in which Iamoendi's attacking monstrosities become increasingly bizarre and surreal. More and more survivors die with each battle leading to an ending both poignant and transcendent.

The fact: In the spirit of Coleridge and Poe who used an opiate to enhance their poetic imagery, in the spirit of Huxley whose use of peyote awakened his awareness to the creative use of mind-altering substances, I have set down my own experiences with altered states as they relate to my creation of EDEN. My intent is to share my insights into the creative process as well as the source and derivation of both the philosophy underlying EDEN and the hallucinatory visions used in the telling of this story. It is a first person account of how, after being accidentally introduced to a hallucinogen, my subsequent use and experimentation became the stuff and substance of my novel EDEN.

Ken Wisman's credits include the publication of 72 short stories in a variety of genre magazines including Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, and Tomorrow. His work has been included in anthologies such as Shadows, Whispers, and PULPHOUSE. A dozen of his stories have been picked up by TOR; Playboy Press; Jove (Berkley Pub Group); and Little, Brown and Co. Four of his stories have been translated into German, Polish, and Russian. He has had four short story collections printed, three for Dark Regions Press, (Weird Family Tales I, II and III; Fourteen Tales from a Shop Called Imagination available on Amazon) and one for PULPHOUSE Press (Frost on the Window). A fifteen thousand word novelette called EDEN, upon which the present work bases, was his next to last publication.