The Helianx Proposition/cover

The Helianx Proposition is a cosmic fable, a creation myth that floated down to me one late night in 1979 in an unbroken six-hour stretch of writing. I'd been contemplating the deeper symbolic meaning of the traditional Christian Garden of Eden scene and wondering, yet again, what on earth the Serpent was doing there. Since the creature's impact on the two humans was apparently so profound, my intuition was telling me that the Serpent, too, had a divine origin and a valuable function to perform. At that point The Helianx Proposition started writing itself.

I spent the next 20 years illustrating and calligraphing the story using graphite on parchment as the medium. I always knew in my mind that I wanted to do them in color and that when the time was right computing technology would allow me to apply color to my black and white images.

By 2001, the technology had arrived in affordable form and I started to have the black and white pages digitally photographed and then printed on watercolor paper using a high-end ink jet technology called Giclee printing. I set out to learn Adobe Photoshop with the idea of using software to color the images. I soon realized it would take me even more time to color the pages digitally than to do it by hand--and not half as much fun. Having to use a computer to write my books, I really didn't want to spend any longer in front of a screen. Consequently, I then chose to add color to the printed image using dry pigments, rephotograph the image, and then clean it up and make any minor adjustments using Adobe Photoshop before finally printing the page.

The Helianx Proposition will be available at some point in the future in three forms. I plan to do a limited edition of handmade books on materials designed to last many generations; to create a boxed set in which interested readers might build themselves by purchasing archival prints page by page; and finally I plan to create a traditional coffee table edition which I'm hoping will be picked up by a publisher of such books. If not, I shall publish it myself, printed on demand.

Because of the fluid and seamless way in which the Helianx Proposition came through originally I'm inclined to believe that there may be elements of considerable interest to the contemporary cosmologist, and which will perhaps add some insight into the odd persistence of the presence of dragons, cosmic snakes and rainbow serpents in the stories we have told ourselves over the thousands of years of human history.

For more information, see: Helianx