I’m Jackson Allen and I’m an author of scifi stories. In 2016, I rebooted my life by making three promises to myself:
- I was going to live my best life as someone creates, fosters, and shares the selfless parts of me – my own personal version of effective altruism
- I will use my talent – telling Golden Age Sci-Fi stories – as both art and commerce: I want to be a professional writer!
- Wherever it’s good and prudent, I will use the success of my talent to serve others
These principles guide me on a journey away from being a broken person to a place where I can help heal and support others on their adventures. Because I’m healing, I’m also a private person. Like Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, Bill Watterson and other private creators, I already know that being famous isn’t for me.
About The Stories I Tell
As a storyteller, my process is always evolving and my storytelling has principles of its own:
- Be kind
- Respect the reader by telling stories with integrity and authenticity
- Create dual-control universes where my readers’ imagination can play as much as mine does
Why ‘Golden Age’ Scifi?
Good question! Twenty years of Star Wars, Marvel, and Transformers have left me utterly disillusioned with what people call ‘scifi.’ At the same time, modern head-bending scifi tends to be graphic, and violent. That doesn’t sit well with me. In times past, science fiction was both a window, and a lifeline to otherwise hopeless kids. What kind of future are we helping kids dream of when we reduce science fiction to ‘magic punching people?’
The answer seems to be Golden Age scifi, those stories that bridged the gap between what is, and what can be, in a format that any age can enjoy. I love ‘Golden Age’ science fiction, so celebrate that with my stories. I’ll add to this as I go along. I’d love to be able to tell you the whole plan now, but I’m still figuring it out, myself! 🙂
Kintsugi
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery, treating breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. One of the outcomes of my life is a severe anxiety disorder. Rather than hiding my disabling mental condition that limits the interaction I can have with other people, I’ve decided to live with it openly. Writing is my personal version of Kintsugi. I‘ve recently given a few more details, but please be assured that this a real problem that I deal with every day.
Because of my disability, I limit interaction to emails and social media. This blog post helps explain what I’m dealing with. This one goes into some other detail.
Thanks for reading – grab a free ebook while you’re here.