John K Sutherland

First, my good points: I do not easily tolerate fools, but I am one myself when it comes to certain things. I am biased, arrogant, aggressive, opinionated, prejudiced, intolerant, outspoken and, in general, often wrong. I am also a downright pleasant and easy-to-get-along-with kind of fellow with honest folk of whatever ability, though there are those who disagree. And my detracting points? I don’t have any!

My Briggs Myer profile suggests I am the Field Marshall type, all five foot nothing and 116 pounds of me. My mother once told me, when I was a child and terrified of the dark, that I would never be likely to meet anyone who was more scary than myself. She must have known something I didn’t, rather than sizing me up in a Stephen King kind of way, and as she had been to hell and back during her long and eventful life worthy of a Dickens’ Novel, I guess she did. And she was right. She also told me that one should live life to the full as ‘we are a long time dead.’ She used to regale me with other delightful stories about her childhood and one of the pranks she and her friends played in the early 1900s. The houses all had outhouses without flush or running water, at the bottom end of the yard where she was brought up in Redcar. There was a flap below the toilet, where those who came around the streets at night to remove the solid night soil (Oh, Joy!), could access the pit, and shovel out the waste. She told me that on occasion she and her like-minded misfits, would lift up the toilet flap and if they could see anyone sitting there would apply a sudden wake up slap, or hit them with a stick on the exposed rear parts. Such fun!

I really should not have survived childhood or my young adulthood, considering the various things I got up to, but I seemed to have a dozen or more lives.

I was rocked back on my heels one morning recently, when I listened on the radio to an historian (yes, it is ‘AN’ historian) recount the obvious but disturbing fact, that the normal state of humanity is War and the preparation for War! I was shocked and in mild disbelief until the obvious reality and truth of it hit home. As much as we dislike the thought that we seem to be forever on the brink of war or facing the threat of it, we shouldn't be shocked by this, as our short but tortuous history suggests that it is entirely true. Strangely enough, most of our technical and mechanical progress has also been because of the military preparation to wage a better and more effective war. That is how we got airplanes, computers, communications, radar, lasers, space travel, GPS, the internet, and some of the most wonderfully strong, durable, and tough materials imaginable.

We may eventually be able to regard ourselves as truly civilized when we not only can avoid war, but stop it in other areas as we should, but don’t, and when we accord other species as much protection as we ourselves would like; with a few exceptions like various nasty diseases, parasites and various things that are general unpleasant and harmful, although that is a judgment call that is mostly emotional and ignorant. Every species, even the nasty ones, have some claim to a right to survive (Buddhism) and may serve a beneficial purpose that we are not yet aware of, especially when, and if, various viruses tweak our genetics and make us stronger in a Darwinian sense. After all, nature's way is no less brutal - eat or be eaten! Red in tooth and claw! And we are all on nature's menu one way or another, despite us being mostly off it in our advanced society, until old age, and the last few terminal moments. Mother Nature is nothing less than a bitch!

First, for some boring bits and pieces. John Knox Sutherland (that’s me: good Scottish name) is a Geologist primarily; a Chemist secondarily, and in later years a nuclear training consultant with his own one-man company, and is sometimes also an adjunct professor teaching Nuclear Safety and Reliability to graduate Engineers, and teaching radiation protection to various professional groups. However, the most interesting and enlightening subject that I study and write about, and teach, concerns risks in society, both today and in the past, and perspectives on risk.

I have written for several decades, but I recently decided I had better start to publish something, so I became a novelist with about 50 on the go; six published: (May 2014); Deception by Proxy – June 2010); Fate: The Relentless Hunter. (June 2011); The Year of the Tiger (February 2012); The Elusive Miss Wakefield (June 2013), The Caroline (November 2013), In Love and War 2014, and a seventh coming along (Saving Selena, 2014?). I also have four published erotic short stories (2014), as well as two non-fiction books (also 2014). As you can see, 2014 was a busy year. Most of my novels have an erotic version, as that is how I seem to become diverted from time to time. I suppose this is because certain men seem to think of sex about five or six times an hour (or is that each minute?). I must obviously be one of them.

That’s enough about me for now.