This Strange and Precious Thing
This Strange and Precious Thing can be read simply by anyone who enjoys a good read with elements of sci-fi and an amazing love story at its heart. Yet, it is more: Fiction, I believe, enables people to enter more deeply through feeling and imagination into new and incredible-seeming possibilities; challenges which Humanity will face; shifts in consciousness we will need to make as we journey into the future.
The Island (which Plato claimed to be the last remaining tip of lost Atlantis) is the setting for this story. Annya, a feisty, but sceptical young woman, on vacation with her boyfriend, is caught up in a nightmare when he's abruptly called away on a secret assignment. He persuades her to stay on until the next visitors are due to arrive, but limping home the next day after her swim has gone disastrously wrong, she finds their apartment has been invaded. Yet there's no sign of a break-in. Who was the intruder? Is he hiding, waiting?
Alone, now, her bafflement escalates to panic as a series of inexplicable events compel her to seek help from strangers. But who can she trust? And what manner of being is it that appears to be watching her from on high? Her quest for answers leads to ever more disturbing questions which take us on a journey which ranges from present-day Baghdad and a 23rd Century classroom, to the far-off origins of Earth, in the course of which we are introduced to many intriguing characters. The most extraordinary of these is Finn, the radiant youth with the blue curls from 250 years in the future. The narrative weaves their destinies together while exploring with us the very nature of reality, and our power to change it.