The power of the written word
It is fascinating how powerful books are, no matter what age they were written. Every book even ones that never sell becomes a part of history and may reflect a powerful relevance or eerie coincidence to a time in the future. There are several books out of many that fit today and many people find even prophetic, even to the point of a vast array of conspiracy theories. I find the books to be coincidental and statistically with so many books written all the time even long ago, that there is bound to be one once in a while be very apropos to a certain time.
The first one is Dean Koontz’s 1981 book “The Eyes of Darkness”. This book is about an engineered virus that causes a pandemic. The book calls the virus “Wuhan-400” as it is a Chinese made virus with a 100% kill rate. While that is pretty weird the fact is the first edition of his book had the virus being made in Russia and was called “Gorki-400”. He revised it to China after the fall of Russia.
However, most weird are some books written by Ingersoll Lockwood who was a lawyer by trade and even worked on a special project for Abraham Lincoln. Later in his life, he wrote several children's books called “The Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and His Wonderful Dog Bulgar” and “Baron Trump’s Marvelous Underground Journey” a few years later. Basically about a young boy that leaves his New York castle to go on an adventure in Russia and is guided by a man named Don.
A few years later Ingersoll wrote an adult fiction novel called “The Last President”. In this novel, a businessman from New York City who lives in a hotel on fifth avenue defeats the presumptive candidate for the presidency. The shock ensues into a mass protests in from of his hotel in which police and even military are called in to quell the rioting. Sounds pretty familiar as even though the author was talking about the Waldorf hotel which was built on fifth avenue at the time but now is home to Trump Tower. Even stranger is the book’s president appoints his cabinet and the first person is a man named Pence. The novel seems prophetic but goes on to giant turtles, alternate dimensions, and a person frozen in time. Which this I am sure also fuels the conspiracies.
The point of this article is not to make any kind of political statement but to underscore how important any book is. Ingersoll’s books were not that popular and reviewers panned them badly. It shows though that a book written today may not mean anything but may seem to fit a few puzzle pieces to events in the future and become relevant then. Especially with the future being more technological and artificial intelligence scoping out buzz phrases from all known works. We will see this kind of thing happen more and more.