My editor thinks it worthwhile to make note of Hitler’s rise to power through democratic processes. (As well as violence.) If I’m not mistaken while he was Head of the German government, citizens did not have to vote ever again… until after most of their cities were destroyed.
And here is a quotation from Fantastic Travelogue — an imaginative take on how the Führer became the power to end all votes.
On June 30th, 1908, a fiery column shot through the atmosphere above the Central Siberian Plateau, not far from the stone-filled Tunguska River. Whole forests were stripped and blown down on impact. The tiny traveler fell through earth's crust and substratum at a shallow angle—like a bullet piercing through water. Professor Lewis and Mark Twain have piggybacked along, no bigger than a couple of electrons, but being too light in heart to get sucked in. They go ahead of the object to better observe its core.
At that moment, faraway in Vienna, a budding artist (and occasional painter of post cards), having nothing better to do that morning, slept in a sagging cot on the upper floor of a lodging house. Mouth agape, he emitted an explosive
Up through earth's crust, three flights of stairs and the cot roars the invisible black hole. It lodges in the roof of the artist's mouth, awakening him with a searing jolt. As we watch—his eyes bulging, swallowing hard—Adolf Hitler bolts from bed, crashing headlong into the half-timbered wall.
"Ich diene superman!" He screamed, and fell to the floor. Ears abuzz, he lay for several hours. Twixt brain and skull his blood was a-sizzling, and he ground his teeth incessantly.
The rest, of course, is history. In July of 1921 Hitler became president of the jingoistic Nazi Party in Germany. He was a whiz with audiences, had the popular vote. He could mesmerize an auditorium so that each listener was able to see, feel, and enter the glorious fantasies of his vivid imagination. Yes, there was something that drew them—with a thrill and shudder—to Adolf Hitler. But no one guessed that it was simply an excess of gravity.
Quote from Mark Twain and C.S. Lewis Talk Things over in The Hereafter
Here is an image of the latest hardcover edition. It has not yet been released for distribution.
© s. dorman