- Schantz, Hans G.
The Hidden Truth.
Huntsville, AL: ÆtherCzar, 2016.
ISBN 978-1-5327-1293-7.
-
This is a masterpiece of alternative history techno-thriller
science fiction. It is rich in detail, full of interesting
characters who interact and develop as the story unfolds, sound
in the technical details which intersect with our world,
insightful about science, technology, economics, government and
the agenda of the “progressive” movement, and
plausible in its presentation of the vast, ruthless, and
shadowy conspiracy which lies under the surface of its world.
And, above all, it is charming—these are
characters you'd like to meet, even some of the villains because
you want understand what motivates them.
The protagonist and narrator is a high school junior (senior
later in the tale), son of an electrical engineer who owns
his own electrical contracting business, married to a
chemist, daughter of one of the most wealthy and
influential families in their region of Tennessee, against the
wishes of her parents. (We never learn the narrator's name
until the last page of the novel, so I suppose it would be a
spoiler if I mentioned it here, so I won't, even if it makes
this review somewhat awkward.) Our young narrator wants to
become a scientist, and his father not only encourages him in
his pursuit, but guides him toward learning on his own by
reading the original works of great scientists who actually
made fundamental discoveries rather than “suffering through
the cleaned-up and dumbed-down version you get from your
teachers and textbooks.” His world is not ours:
Al Gore, who won the 2000 U.S. presidential election, was
killed in the 2001-09-11 attacks on the White House and
Capitol, and President Lieberman pushed through the
“Preserving our Planet's Future Act”, popularly
known as the “Gore Tax”, in his memory, and
its tax on carbon emissions is predictably shackling the
economy.
Pursuing his study of electromagnetism from original sources, he
picks up a copy at the local library of a book published in
1909. The library was originally the collection of a respected
institute of technology until destroyed by innovative
educationalists and their pointy-headed progressive ideas. But
the books remained, and in one of them, he reads an enigmatic
passage about
Oliver
Heaviside having developed a theory of electromagnetic
waves bouncing off one another in free space, which was to be
published in a forthcoming book. This didn't make any sense:
electromagnetic waves add linearly, and while they can be
reflected and refracted by various media, in free space they
superpose without interaction. He asks his father about the
puzzling passage, and they look up the scanned text on-line
and find the passage he read missing. Was his memory playing
tricks?
So, back to the library where, indeed, the version of the book
there contains the mention of bouncing waves. And yet the
publication date and edition number of the print and on-line
books were identical. As Isaac Asimov observed, many great
discoveries aren't heralded by an exclamation of
“Eureka!” but rather “That's odd.”
This was odd….
Soon, other discrepancies appear, and along with his best
friend and computer and Internet wizard Amit Patel, he embarks
on a project to scan original print editions of foundational
works on electromagnetism from the library and compare them
with on-line versions of these public domain works. There
appears to be a pattern: mentions of Heaviside's bouncing
waves appear to have been scrubbed out of the readily-available
editions of these books (print and on-line), and remain only
in dusty volumes in forgotten provincial libraries.
As their investigations continue, it's increasingly clear they
have swatted a hornets' nest. Fake feds start to follow their
trail, with bogus stories of “cyber-terrorism”.
And tragically, they learn that those who dig too deeply into
these curiosities have a way of meeting tragic ends. Indeed,
many of the early researchers into electromagnetism died young:
Maxwell at age 48, Hertz at 36, FitzGerald at 39. Was there
a vast conspiracy suppressing some knowledge about electromagnetism?
And if so, what was the hidden truth, and why was it so important
to them they were willing to kill to keep it hidden? It sure
looked like it, and Amit started calling them
“EVIL”: the Electromagnetic Villains International
League.
The game gets deadly, and deadly serious. The narrator
and Amit find some powerful and some ambiguous allies, learn
about how to deal with the cops and other authority
figures, and imbibe a great deal of wisdom about individuality,
initiative, and liberty. There's even an attempt to recruit
our hero to the dark side of collectivism where its ultimate
anti-human agenda is laid bare. Throughout there are delightful
tips of the hat to libertarian ideas, thinkers, and authors,
including some as obscure as a reference to the
Books on Benefit bookshop in Providence, Rhode Island.
The author is an inventor, entrepreneur, and scientist. He
writes, “I appreciate fiction that shows how ordinary
people with extraordinary courage and determination can
accomplish remarkable achievements.” Mission accomplished.
As the book ends, the central mystery remains unresolved. The
narrator vows to get to the bottom of it and avenge those
destroyed by the keepers of the secret. In a remarkable
afterword and about the author section, there is a wonderful
reading list for those interested in the technical topics
discussed in the book and fiction with similarly intriguing
and inspiring themes. When it comes to the technical content
of the book, the author knows of what he writes: he has
literally written the book on the
design of ultrawideband antennas and is co-inventor of
Near
Field Electromagnetic Ranging (NFER), which you
can think of as “indoor GPS”.
For a self-published work, there are only a few copy editing
errors (“discrete” where “discreet”
was intended, and “Capital” for “Capitol”).
The Kindle edition is free for Kindle
Unlimited subscribers. A sequel is now available:
A Rambling Wreck which
takes our hero and the story to—where else?—Georgia Tech.
I shall certainly read that book. Meanwhile, go read the present
volume; if your tastes are anything like mine, you're going to
love it.
December 2017 