Dare you awaken to Darkest Dreams? The second instalment of the Darkest Dreams e-periodical, Gift of the Dark, has been unleashed upon the world. And... oh boy, was this a tough one! Not in that the story fought me or was a pain to create, but just because of how dark it is! It's probably the most disturbing thing I've ever written, with a protagonist who's utterly despicable. Set in the late 1700s, this one is chronologically the earliest of the Tragic Silence timeline. It connects The Libelle Papers and Sepia and Silver, and lays the foundation for the Bernstein family legacy which influences the entire series. The framework of the plot is very loosely inspired by something I studied at university. My course was in animal behaviour, but I also had to take a module to help me understand ethical arguments, philosophy, what constitutes intelligent thought and the ability to feel pain, etc. And that meant looking into the history and ethics of early scientific method. While no animals are featured in Gift of the Dark, they unfortunately were in the real Scientific Revolution. One of the major schools of thought came from the French philosopher Rene Descartes, who coined a phrase I'm pretty sure you're familiar with: "Cogito ergo sum." "I think, therefore, I am." But Descartes also came up with the idea that humans were divinely different from animals, and everything animals did was essentially the workings of a machine. Animals ate, slept, mated and vocalised not because they were conscious, but because it was what they had to do to ensure their own survival and nothing more. In short, they had no souls. As a result, this provided early scientists the justification for performing experiments on animals, often while they were still alive and without any kind of anaesthetic. And it was just as horrible as you'd think. While I was repulsed by some of the stuff I learned, I can't deny the impact this time period and its mentality left on me. I found myself thinking about it a lot when I was writing The Libelle Papers in 2013, and it did eventually work its way briefly into the story. But that was from a modern viewpoint which knew how barbaric it all was. This time, with Gift of the Dark, we're in the thick of the Scientific Revolution, when such practises were deemed not only necessary, but ethically sound. So switch out the animals with the study of vampirism. Now imagine what you could get away with if your laboratory was beneath the streets and never saw the light of day... You can read Gift of the Dark for FREE by clicking the button!
But maybe don't read it after sunset. Just saying...
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