YEARS BEFORE the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, authors prophesized the tragedy in works of fiction. One of the most intriguing is Morgan Robertson's 1898 novella, The Wreck of the Titan, the story of an ocean liner, the Titan, described as the "largest craft afloat and the greatest works of men," which sinks in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg, an account very similar to the real event which took place fourteen years later.

A strikingly similar thing happened with Gerdean O'Dell Bowen's novel, The Zo'oid Mission, published in 2002. In what is either an amazingly accurate foretelling of events or a remarkable coincidence, Gerdean tells of a blackout that takes place on "August 14 . . . apparently spread over the entire East Coast." Now compare this to the Wikipedia description of the 2003 Northeast blackout, which says, "The Northeast Blackout of 2003 was a massive power outage that occurred throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and Ontario, Canada on Thursday, August 14, 2003. . . ."
 

Gerdean says, "I finished writing the book in 1991; it was published in November 2002; the actual blackout occurred in 2003 in roughly the same area, except that in the novel, it went down the Atlantic seaboard while the real-life blackout went up into Canada. But New England, New York, the Great Lakes area ... that was the scene of both the prophesy and the reality. In Chapter Two, Audley drives through the aftermath of the biggest power failure in the history of the United States."

How can we explain Gerdean's amazing ability to produce such a nail-on-the-head prophecy, and in print, no less? In her own words, here is how she came up with the August 14 date: "It is, indeed, an uncanny coincidence, and yet, contemporary New Age advocates of Robert Redfield’s The Celestine Prophesy understand that there is 'no such thing as a coincidence.'

"I needed a date that would guarantee there being a huge drain on resources, in order to virtually force a blackout of that size and magnitude to take place. It seemed to me that the height of summer in the biggest city in our country would be the most likely place for this to happen and so the construct began. August 12 is the date I chose. (Incidentally, this scene was originally written perhaps as far back as 1973, and so the date was a point of issue a full 30 years before the August 14, 2003 blackout in Northeast America took place.)

"The heroine, Audley, would need to be affected by a life-and-death event in order for her to re-think her values, to make those life-altering decisions that would cause her to re-consider her course of action -- thereby leading the reader into a new dimension of perception. . . . Thus, the relevance of Audley stopping in New York and looking out the airplane window at the City below, as it  lifts off, and reflecting on the millions of air conditioners straining to bring relief to the hapless hoards below.

"Although I had selected August 12 as the ideal date, over the years I kept confusing it with August 14. Many times August 14 would pop up where I had intended to make reference to August 12. I found myself protecting myself from that tendency by eliminating the date altogether, or using it as infrequently as possible. When I got my first word processor in the late 80’s, it was easier to make sure I didn’t use the wrong date, but I specifically did not want to use August 14, and I will say why in a minute.

"This propensity for me to choose an idea or a concept and to have it re-written and re-written and re-written by powers beyond my own is one of the reasons I feel this book is the joint effort of Celestial Artisan Athena and myself. She has gone so far as to say it is her book, but that she is glad I was someone she was able to work with in order to get her story told. Many times during the many years of writing this manuscript I would naively write what my mind dictated, only to have it rewritten, as if according to some mind other than my own.

"When, after many years, I began to release my control over the creative process, the book began to write itself.

"The part that gives me pause to consider the prophetic nature of the August 14 date is that the book is "dedicated to Joe and Kuhus and Sally and Debby and those who could not wait for the portal." These people committed suicide, one way or another, all because the pain of this life –- emotional, physical, psychic, whatever –- was more than they could bear. It is for them that I strive to make this world a better place. I am dogged in my determination that we learn to be compassionate and tolerant and loving. It is for those who might still succumb to the struggle, having fought until they were exhausted, that I was driven to finish the book.

"The Joe who is referenced on the dedication page is my baby brother. His birthday was August 14. I did not want Joe’s birthday to be the date of the blackout, but in retrospect, perhaps Celestial Athena did, for it tends to point out, at least to me, the urgency of improving the status quo of "such a life on such a planet." Perhaps it is time for each of us to undergo a personal crisis as an opportunity to review our values, in order to re-direct our course of action, so as to put in the limelight the needs and concerns of those who suffer.

"If it is true that we can do more together than we can do alone, it is also true that we can rise no higher than our weakest members can.  Am I my brother’s keeper? It would seem that I am, and that we are, or Athena would not have deliberately called attention to this date, and the universe would not have supported her stance by permitting the Northeast Blackout of August 14, 2003 to take place. It thus seems that this stewardship we have inherited as conscious children of the living God is also bigger than we might have imagined, in that we have a responsibility to make life at least bearable for our brothers and sisters."

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Gerdean O'Dell Bowen lives in New Mexico with her husband Angus Bowen and is currently working on her second novel.

• Want to read more? You can purchase
  The Zo'oid Mission via Gerdean's website.
   
• Read Gerdean's How I Found The Urantia Book story.
   
• Contact Gerdean