© 2026 John Healy
Ongoing worldbuilding, research, and scene sketches for Calliope’s Reach may be viewed on my writing workshop page.
Notes on framing, context, characters, throughlines, homages, scientific and literary references, phrases, and terms may wind up in the appendices.
Currently I tend to sketch out scenes as if writing a screenplay.
At the beginning of August, I started writing a story – Calliope’s Reach – set in a future around 2150 – 2200. The narrative is grounded in a landscape of space capitalism. The following week, I ran across the book New Space Capitalism [1], which connected with recent events, particularly SpaceX’s IPO.
What’s the drift? – cautious optimism for a better future. A stairway to the stars. There’s much history here, and Rainer Zitelmann covers the highlights, including the January 1986 Challenger disaster, which I watched on live TV. ( I was particularly interested in that launch because I had worked with one of the crew.)
Continue reading Space capitalism – build it, own it
Teaser
© 2026 John Healy
Draft 8-23-2026, 9-6-2026
Table of Contents
Epigraph
Prologue
Act 1a: at anchor – ready room
Act 1b: anchors aweigh
Act 2: Shakedown
Act 3: the sea of Azores
Epilogue
Notes
Gallery
Here rise to life again, dead poetry!
Let it, O holy Muses, for I am yours,
And here Calliope, strike a higher key,
Accompanying my song with that sweet air
which made the wretched Magpies feel a blow
that turned all hope of pardon to despair
– Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy (1321), trans. Anthony M. Esolen, “Purgatorio”, Canto I, lines 7 to 12.
Ted was mindful of his family line. It was a weight which occasionally surfaced, nagged, butted into his musings.
His genetic code allowed entry into the archives, into the remembrances of some of his ancestors’ long lives, at least the ones that were literary, those who journaled to learn from their pain, to examine the dots and dashes of life. Especially trajectories left unresolved, untidy loose-ends, the indeterminate half-lives of half-cocked decisions.
And he was a child of such a decision. An offshoot of an illegitimate liaison somewhere between the Earth and the stars. He’d always felt like a black sheep. That was the vibe of the voices in his head as a child, reinforced by the indifferent care he received from place to place.
Now, while in a dark patch between jobs, he wondered whether he had a future in space, where his ancestors had gazed.
Continue reading Calliope’s Reach … pathfinder
I’m still building out Clara’s world: framing, context, characters, throughlines, homages, scientific & literary references, phrases & terms. And sketching out scenes (sort of story boarding).
Gemini chats are helpful (sort of workshopping).
Much of this background (like a story in itself) will be part of appendices.
Here’s a chat session about throughlines and characters, plus a touch of seasoning.
Continue reading Clara’s world – context and characters
© 2026 John Healy
Draft 7-28-2026
“Whether good or evil, something wicked has come to stay, changing the face of night and day.”
— Clara Tulegrass, “the stars still so true,” Beyond a Backyard View
Introducing Clara’s world
The sky sucks
(the glittering cage)
(celestial obscura)
“The sky sucks!” – an earworm hissed.
As the swing lifted her toward the sky, Clara smiled, “Oh, Grandpa … your chant’s like a spell over me. How your face glowed when you spoke of the way it used to be. Is your spirit in the sky? Or does it linger nearby?“
She came back to earth; pulled out an antique telescope from her backpack; then cradled it on her lap. She liked to point it toward tiny gaps in the industrialized sky, searching for real stars beyond the mosaic ceiling of orbiting debris. Sometimes to identify dots on one of Grandpa’s charts, picture mythic figures in the cosmic sea.
Continue reading Clara’s world … the sky sucks
a contemporary homage to Jim Croce‘s song Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues
[Host, wearing a large name tag which says, “Hi, I’m Steve.”]
Welcome … welcome … it’s “remember the Jims” night at the Ditbit Detox Zone. No TEDx here – no intersection of latte art with quantum physics … just a place where – phones are off, right? – there’re spirits and Memorex vibes – are they live, or … ? … Just … who’s this guy!?
[AI-generated Jimmy Hendrix style rift plays loudly on a phone.]
[A geeky looking guy – Henry – stumbles onto the stage, out of breath, holding out a phone.]
[Henry] Steve, Steve … I’m ready to share my new song …”
[Steve] Henry, that’s tomorrow night …
[Henry] But, what if I told you that a machine could feel heartbreak before you do?
[Steve] How’s that?
[Henry] Well, I study the intersection of predictive text transformers and dopaminergic pathways in the human prefrontal cortex.
[Steve] Really … [winks]
[Henry] “Yeah, three years ago, my partner left me. I was devastated. I sat in my studio with nothing but an empty coffee mug and an open API token for Suno AI. I prompted it to write a sad song about a broken dishwasher.
As the AI generated a minor chord progression, I felt a familiar shiver down my spine. That is when it hit me. The AI didn’t write a song. It reverse-engineered my nucleus accumbens.
I’ve got slides … one shows a brain scan of someone listening to Taylor Swift.
[Steve] Hmm … Is there a bottom line?
[Henry] Oh, well, when we teach an algorithm to write a bridge, we aren’t just automating pop music. We are building a digital mirror for the soul.
Because in the end, love is just a generative prompt, and humanity is the ultimate training data.
[Steve] That’s downbeat. How about a rain check? It’s a “no phones” night.
[Henry] Oh, sorry, … Do you validate?
[Steve] Sure.
[Henry exits, doing something on his phone.]
[Steve] Folks, that was Henry, a man with a dream.
[Applause?]
[Steve] Well, Henry’s rift wasn’t by Jimmy Hendrix, of course, but we do have a ‘Jim’ to muse on this evening: Jim Croce. Remember him? From a time when digital was like IBM punch cards and Polaroid moments took minutes to see. Croce wrote a song about talking with an operator on a coin-operated public telephone.
Here’s JP.
[JP walks up to the mike as Steve exits.]
[JP] Thanks, Steve. Jim Croce wrote his song “Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues” before there were ‘gig workers’ in a ‘gig economy’. It was a time in the South Bay when Howard Hughes loomed large, and Hughes Aircraft was on the path to becoming the largest industrial and private employer in California.
It was before the meme “fake it ’til you make it” went viral, before “greed is good” became a tagline for success; and before Silicon Valley powered up screens and social media & slop entered our dreams.
Wiki notes that Croce “explained the song as ‘a story about a guy who thinks he thinks he should be ruling the universe somewhere, but he is really working at a car wash.'”
Perhaps robots will take even those jobs. Is the bottom of the career ladder broken?
Here’s my take on finding a groove where you matter, where you don’t feel like a cog in a machine or a commodity.
(AI’s doing my job now blues)
(AI’s going to take my job blues)
Well, …
I had just got out from my jim-dandy college
Doin’ pricey years for a degree
Tried to find me an appropriate position
But no matter what my pitch might be
They didn’t care diddly-squat ’bout any of my views
Their ‘bot say, “we got that in GPUs”
Now I got them socially obsessin’, ditbit hope-crushin’
Gen’bots got my job now blues
The portrayal of holy battles, both earthly and heavenly, often uses imagery of angels and demons, light and darkness, to depict conflicts between cultures, values, and virtues. This imagery, rooted in biblical and theological origins, has evolved over time, with figures like Archangel Michael symbolizing divine protection and spiritual warfare. However, Pope Leo XIV rejects the use of such imagery to justify war, emphasizing the nonviolent power of Christ’s resurrection and advocating for peace through dialogue and understanding.
In an era defined by deep polarization, our cultural conversations often default to a comforting but dangerous habit: ethical dualism. We instinctively divide the world into absolute light and absolute dark, turning every disagreement into a cosmic battle.
This thought-provoking essay unpacks that destructive impulse by weaving together threads from modern television, theology, and consumer culture. Using the character of Michael from The Good Place alongside the historical iconography of the Archangel Michael, the piece explores how easily we rely on militant frameworks to make sense of our world. A powerful counterweight is found in the nonviolent stance of Pope Leo XIV, who famously challenged the weaponization of spiritual icons for worldly “Holy Wars.”
Ultimately, the essay shines a critical light on how easily militant metaphors are commoditized—such as slogans like “Prayer is the Battle Plan”—simply because they offer a cheap, visceral sense of purpose in a chaotic world. Concluding with a poignant poetic call to action, the piece challenges us to resist being reduced to mere data snacks and attention fodder, urging us instead to find ways to engage in necessary struggle without demonizing the opposition.
“Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. …” – Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
“… in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. …” – Mark Twain, “The War Prayer“
“Although prayer is native [natural] to man, there is the danger that he will misuse it. … Never make prayer a substitute for work and intelligence. … [Don’t] make God a cosmic bell hop, a universal errand boy. … Don’t pray for God to help you get even with your enemy. … Don’t pray that your country will win the war. – Sermon: “The Misuse of Prayer” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Holy battle – on earth and in the heavens – is a familiar way to depict clashes between cultures and countries, divisions between moral values and spiritual virtues. Especially in turbulent times, riled by social grievance and religious offense. The tone may become apocalyptic, imbued with militant metaphors and sacred symbols. Angels / demons, heaven / hell, light / darkness, saved / dammed, pure / corrupt.
I recently viewed the 2016-2020 TV series The Good Place. While the series avoids traditional religious tropes & iconography in exploring ethical behavior, its framework is nevertheless one of moral dualities: good & bad, light & dark, angel & demon, heaven & hell.
For example, although garbed in a tailored suit, the character Michael was based on the archangel Michael.
Continue reading Casting out images of holy battle – dueling without dualism
[A chat with Gemini – executive summary]
by nobody+0
I. Executive Summary: The Structural Critique of The Good Place
The Good Place achieved a rare feat in network television by utilizing the bright, high-stakes scaffolding of a sitcom to explore 2,500 years of moral philosophy. However, looking through the dual lenses of advanced storycraft and non-dualistic philosophy, the series hit a terminal narrative ceiling in its fourth season.
The Core Deficiencies identified:
[Segment 1: The Initial Inquiry]
[Prompt]
I’d like to explore the American fantasy-comedy television series The Good Place, all 4 seasons, as if you are an expert (professional) in storycraft and moral philosophy, as well as versed in religious mythology, theology and history. Here’s some context.
I’m interested in key takeways from the series and how effective its storytelling (dramatization, visualization) was in conveying those takeaways, particularly as an on-ramp into complex topics; or, generally, as a tutorial for comprehending the moral mystery of life, making sense of such a “whale” one bite at a time.
Also, what questions really were not addressed (loose ends), as if left as a homework for the viewer or for further discussion.
As well as what simplifications or oversights were made in scripting the series for the sake of accessible, engaging entertainment.
Continue reading Beyond A Good Place 10.0 – transcript
[Draft 6-2-2026 … 6-7-2026]
Copyright © 2026 John P. Healy
oh, …
depart from my doorstep,
leave off your slick righteous spiel,
no need to knock again, babe,
i’m not the type to deal.
you say you’re searching for a soul,
one to share your chosen creed *
to spread your message more & more,
notwithstanding heed or need,
someone to open heaven’s blissful door!
but that’s a stretch, babe
you’re taking more than giving, babe
i’m not the catch you’re fishing for, babe