Title: Immanuel's Century. Volume 1
Description: There are 2 volumes of this novel. The author's (Adrian Shortall's) identity appears only in the copyright notice. Seneca of Ohm is not his pseudonym.  Immanuel's Century is a fictional novel set in the near future. Neal Badham is the first volume's fictional editor. Volume 1, called 'The Caretaker', consists of the central character's recollections of pivotal events in recent world history. Technology has advanced to the point where tourists can vacation in orbiting space stations. The central character, Andrew Barcombe, adopts the name Seneca as a nom de guerre during his training as a contest dialectician, an intellectual gladiator in a largely decadent era. Ohm is the name of an artificial country established within Europe by the EU as a free trade country to counter the financial power of Asia and the USA. Ohm and neighbouring Verne aside, all other nations are real and depicted as the authour imagines they might be at this time. The novel is very elaborate, detailing Seneca's training in an arcane system of wisdom, and involving many other characters, especially the militarist Djunan DeLysle. The novel culminates in the Eight Hour War, a conflict between DeLysle's aerospace force, the Mariners, and the corporate colossus, InterCorp.

Volume 2, called the Gateway School, is narrated by Neal Badham. It deals with Seneca's successors, and the effects of their published philosophies upon the global contemporary society. In many ways it is the antithesis of Volume 1, whereby intellect is again in the ascendancy, despite global economic woes, a pandemic, and the usual political conflicts between and within nations.

The novels took 20 years to complete, between 1981 and 2001. They were released gratis in .pdf format on the website Immanuel's Century, which evidently has closed. Hard-copies were sent to several university libraries, etc. Requests from this site might inspire the author to re-release his work.
Subjects: Social philosophy, wisdom system, contest dialectics, Philosophy, Fiction, Social evolution
Places: Ohm, Verne
People: Adrian Shortall. Seneca of Ohm. Andrew Barcombe. Neal Badham
Time periods: Near future.