The Decommission is a work of fiction
Readers of this publication will no doubt be aware of the historical personages whose work – and whose entire existence – has unexpectedly come to light in recent years. All of these personages are linked by the unprecedentedness of their emergence, and by the fact that the years of their activity fall between the end of the 19th century and the late middle of the 20th. Why is it that, at this junction in time during which the assuredness of our conceptions is dissolving, we should discover a previously unknown set of intelligentsia, bearing no personal connection to each other, but all presenting unheard-of perspectives on our universe?
We consider their appearance to be no coincidence. Their works seem to be tracts of alternative histories, yet histories which – by virtue of their arrival in our global awareness – are inserting themselves into our own. We might use these texts to recalibrate our understanding of our increasingly unstable world. We share a conviction that the grip of a false certainty has restricted our perception over the past few centuries, and as we move forward into progressively stranger territory, we must open ourselves to ambiguity.
Where these writings contradict each other, we do not consider them to be in error, we see them instead as revelations and postulations of co-existent possibilities – truths seems too strong a word, and smacks of the cold certainty away from which we seek to move. Perhaps we can think of them as dispatches from once parallel realities no longer parallel. Yet even this is only a suggestion to placate our understanding – that logic-hungry muscle which we have for too long neglected to train in suppleness.
There may be no comprehendible explanation for the coinciding appearance of these texts, and there may be no single reality that they disclose. We invite our readers to join us in acclimatising ourselves to a new intellectual terrain in which multiple horizons might exist.