Butterflies of the Cosmic Chaos – A Love & Loss Fantasy in Parallel Space-Time by Steve Parks

Butterflies of the
Cosmic Chaos

A Love & Loss Fantasy

in Parallel Space-Time

by Steve Parks

If you could travel back in time and change the outcome of one moment in history – taking the risk of setting off the so-called “Butterfly Effect” – which event would that be?

Synopsis

The Butterfly Effect on Chaos Theory

If the title of my novel raises more questions than answers, maybe that’s a good thing. “Butterflies” together with “Chaos” might stoke your imagination or at least your curiosity. Besides it being an audience favorite in 2004 – nominated for the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films teen choice award – losing to “Eternal Sunshine and the Spotless Mind” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” – its title, “The Butterfly Effect,” lives on in the popular vernacular of cosmic fantasy.

The “butterfly effect” refers to the concept that even the tiniest change in such an incomprehensibly complex system as the universe – not to mention multi-layered parallel universes – can trigger a cascade of unpredictable future consequences. The concept originated with meteorologist Edward Lorenz’s Chaos Theory suggesting that, for instance, something as insignificant as the alteration in the flap of a butterfly’s wing could drastically alter weather conditions. Climate change run amok? Should we blame it on the apparent global decline in butterfly population? Certainly weather conditions have become chaotic.

But what if the change in past events is something far more consequential, say the JFK assassination or 9/11? Theoretically, the effect could spread throughout the cosmos of space-time. Or how about Jan. 6, 2021? We still don’t know what the ultimate consequence might be of altering the events of that date in history. Some of us might believe it would be a good thing. But since, as far as we know, the past has never been manipulated to change the outcome, we can’t foretell the cause nor its effect.

In reading “Butterflies of the Cosmic Chaos” explore the concept of alternate past histories envisioned, if not actually experienced, by the protagonist, Scott Crockett, coincidentally bearing the name of a Newfoundland puppy who figures prominently in “The Butterfly Effect” feature film. The eponymic dog Crockett’s master, played by Ashton Kutcher, is thought by many to be out of his mind. See what you think regarding the sanity or sagacity of Crockett, the sci-fictional human, as he time-trips through the Megaverse.

Press & Reviews

Steve Parks, who has been practicing journalism for six decades, has published a capstone project of sorts: his first novel. It’s called “Butterflies of the Cosmic Chaos” and subtitled “A Love & Loss Fantasy in Parallel Space-Time. ” If the title puts you off or makes you think this book is over your head, fear not. Parks, who covered everything from politics to sports to Broadway shows, as a reporter, editor, and critic for the Baltimore Sun and Newsday, still is a journalist at heart. His writing is earthy and approachable. The novel spends at least as much time on “love & loss” as it does in “parallel space-time. ” It is a rollicking, Rolling Stones-infused tale (Stones fans shouldn’t miss it) that takes place in a golden age of newspapering, chronicles a reporter’s troubled love life, and turns into a murder mystery. The story ends with a baffling journey through the “Megaverse,” where events like the Kennedy assassination and the 9/11 attacks may take different shapes depending on where you are in space-time and what choices you make. Like the author, the protagonist, Scott Crockett, is a farm boy on Maryland’s Eastern Shore who learns newspapering at the state university. He also learns, the hard way, about romance just in time for the sexual revolution of the 1970s. “Sex is not inevitable in life. But it is vital,” Crockett tells us. “That’s why sex plays a central role in this fable about past and present, and whether anything in life or history is really over and done. ” Crockett is a seeker, never satisfied with pat answers. If this novel were a film, it would be a director’s cut. Steve Parks chronicles the good, the bad, and the ugly of Scott Crockett’s journey, with no holds barred and nothing left unsaid. “Butterflies” is a wild ride and one I think you’ll enjoy.

Jim Bock, former Baltimore Sun foreign bureau correspondent and editor at U.S. News & World Report

About the Author

A 70-Something Publishes His Virgin Novel

I am a first-time author publishing his first novel at age 78. But I have written and edited probably tens of millions of words in my 55-year career as a newspaper journalist in print and digital formats – primarily at the Baltimore Sun, the morning Sunpaper for 12 years back when there was also an Evening Sun, and for 33 years with Newsday and New York Newsday before the city edition folded in 1995.

Since my retirement in 2017, I have written this novel and freelanced arts reviews, features and opinion pieces for Spy Community Media, a digital newsmagazine based on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where I was born and raised. Several of the anecdotes attributed to the newspaperman protagonist, Scott Crockett, happened to me more or less as written – ranging from my incidental contribution in the legendary cow-in-the-dorm prank to the foiled investigative-reporting enterprise in which I obtained copies of JFK autopsy photos in possession of the 1976 House Committee on Assassinations to reveal them to physicians attending President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.

In addition to Crockett, names of others involved in either occurrence – except, of course, principle historic figures – have been changed and collateral events described therein are either embellished or made up in my author’s-rights imagination.)

Besides the above disclaimer, how much would you gamble on the verisimilitude of alleged happenings across parallel universes on clocks that may be a decade or two off?

Whatever, I hope you find your ride through my space-time poli-rom sci-fi fantasy a provocative entertainment.