The mystery of Life isn’t a problem to be solved.
It is a reality to experienced.
― Frank Herbert, Dune
From 2003 to 2008, I researched and wrote a biography of a man named Thomas Townsend Brown. Or just Townsend Brown. Or ‘Dr. Brown’ to those who knew him.
This was going to be the follow-up to my first published book, a biography of Philo T. Farnsworth. When The Boy Who Invented Television was published in 2002, I felt like I had found my new calling as a ‘biographer of obscure 20th century scientists.’ The Townsend Brown bio was going to be the first sequel.
Until I was visited by the dreaded ‘sophomore curse.’
In 2009, I abandoned the Townsend Brown project – because after 6 years of research and writing, I still had no fucking idea what I was writing about.
Countless times over the ensuing years, I have had conversations that go like this:
Listener: “You were writing a book. What happened to that? What was it about?”
Me: “Have you ever heard of the Ionic Breeze Air Purifier?”
Listener: “You mean the thing that was advertised in the Sharper Image catalogs?”
Me: “Yes. The one that circulates air without any moving parts….
The listener nods in recognition. And then I start:
“The Ionic Breeze is based on an anomalous electrical effect that was discovered by Thomas Townsend Brown when he was a teenager in the 1920s…”
In my research I encountered what I can only describe as a cult1 of people who believe that Townsend Brown’s discovery, when applied in a slightly different manner and with different materials, produces what might be described as an ‘anti-gravity’ effect (though Brown himself decried the term).
Let’s just say for argument’s sake that he did just that. Continue reading
