Alan Scott

Hi, I'm Alan Scott, a Christian writer and editor living in Boise, Idaho (which is most assuredly NOT the West Coast).

By the time I was 15 years old I had fallen in love with the fiction of Robert Heinlein: Have Space Suit, Will Travel. Citizen of the Galaxy. Between Planets. The Star Beast. They were all so intelligent, so interesting, so entertaining; it became my dream to someday write science fiction myself.

In college, it was Shakespeare, not sci-fi, that led to a degree in English Literature from Lewis and Clark in Portland, Oregon. At 22, raised in the safe, sheltered, insular environs of Portland, I knew I was too young and inexperienced to have anything worth saying. (Even if I hadn't understood it philosophically, it was painfully obvious in my writing. I had no stories to tell.)

So what next? For me, it was a degree in Computer Science at the University of Oregon and off to work. That led me to 25 years with some of the leading technology companies in the world.

At places like Tektronix, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, and several others, I had many "interesting" experiences with business, science, relationships, and company politics. I've written user guides for logic analyzers and I've led software planning for multi-billion dollar product lines. Sometimes it was fun and sometimes it was educational, but most of the time it was corporate nonsense. Dull, petty people intent on exercising their authority rather than exercising their intelligence.

For most of those years, I was also teaching bible studies in conservative evangelical churches. I've lead classes of adults, college kids, high school kids, and grade school kids (and spent some very fun years working in the nursery). Unfortunately, I found much the same thing in church organizations that I found in the corporate world. Even without the piles of money at stake, some people still seek authority, power, and control.

THE LIVING MIND is my first novel. I was inspired to write it in part because I see a war between reductionism and religion and I know that both sides are guilty of faulty reasoning—if not downright prevarication. Both sides are guilty of cherry-picking. Both are guilty of ignoring inconvenient facts. Both appeal to authority rather than insisting that their arguments stand on their own merit. Having retained my faith in both world views, I believe I have a fairly unique perspective.

I hope you find my book entertaining, informative, and challenging. I would LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU! You can write me at graplano@gmail.com and I promise to answer all e-mails. Even the hostile ones.