Michael R Patton

Soultime Michael R Patton

Like a comic cosmic Blues song, SOULTIME is a story of woe and at the same time, full of joy and hallucinogenic flights of imagination. SOULTIME is two million years of human development compressed into a single lifetime... Into the life of the nerdy Neanderthal Amar......who one night dreams of a ritual that helps the hunters of his tribe find antelope. Believing that Amar has special abilities, his tribe asks him to communicate with their dead ancestors for them. He tries to appease his tribespeople by faking some messages, but when the ancestors actually do appear, they're none too pleased for being bothered. To escape tribal pressures, Amar then flees into the desert, where he enters a painful parallel reality called the Otherworld. There, he undergoes a mythic experience--including an encounter with a dead lover who's been transformed into an antelope. Though Amar returns with boons for his people, subsequent lies lead him back to the Otherworld. Each time he undergoes another horrific mythic transformation and each time, he brings back some new tool for his people. Though these boons help to further civilization, the free and easy lifestyle of his tribe is ruined. Increasingly, their life involves longer work hours, bad housing, conflict, confusion, avarice, and war. Amar keeps trying to bring his people back to center before they destroy themselves--or try to destroy others. But to do so, he must also battle his own flaws and foibles. In both cases, he too often loses the battle. At the climax, the survival of all hangs in the balance. SOULTIME is the dark comedy of our history viewed with both sadness and hope. SOULTIME is part Monty Python, part Joseph Campbell, part Alice In Wonderful, part Old Testament, part mystic hallucination... SOULTIME combines all these parts to create its own separate world, a world unique.