Novels
Writing novels is a very special challenge for the brain. Anyone who has tried or succeeded knows what I am writing about. It requires the construction of a mental structure that can quickly collapse if the statics are not right or the construction elements are floating freely in space. It's very different from scholarly writing, but it gives you a routine of examining and questioning logical consequences in a novel's plot.
Why does one, as a well-utilized scientist, sit at a desk for three hours every evening (except Christmas Eve) for six months to develop an adventurous story that resulted from the further reflection of the research results of the time (as happened with the novel 'The Flight of the Ants ´, FDA). It was the fascination of the topic for a geologist and volcanologist (imagining a volcanic eruption on the Rhine that dams the water masses far into the Upper Rhine Graben), the impossibility of making this real danger clear in a scientific publication that also reaches those affected, and the anger at the non-approval of research funding for what I felt were spectacular new discoveries.
It was a jump into such cold water that I can still imagine the bump on my head from hitting the centimetre-thick layer of ice. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. But exactly the difficulties arose that are reported in detail in the appropriate forums. And of course there was criticism, criticism that builds - and criticism that sandblasts. For the latter I have developed a wetsuit. It was clear to me that you can't offer anything mature in your first. The content was important to me. But it was still a success. The FDA really made waves at the time, because the topic had not previously existed in the public's consciousness. And in fact, it's a serious long-term threat that we shouldn't underestimate. The most dangerous thing about it is that the danger cannot be pinpointed in time and thus falls through the four-year perception grid of politicians.
With the second, I had more insight. Kreuzstein was written before the tsunami hit. The churches will have a hard time, if at all, recovering from this.
