The followers of Dr Korn have become influential, wealthy. The army of followers devoted to a person. Not content with what they have, the member of the board of the Society have great plans to build an edifice grand enough to satisfy their ambition. So, when they are introduced to visionary architect, Herr Nachtman, it seems a marriage made in heaven and yet it takes barely a stumble along the path to find yourself in hell…

The Architect (160 pages) is a new, written by Brendan Connell.

The story starts off fairly conventionally. The Society, I’m guessing it is standing in for Hubbard’s Scientology cult. The two have much in common, based on the writings of a single man and organisations which expect blind obedience, preferring their members never to engage in any critical thinking.

The Society has become both powerful and extremely profitable and in their hubris they intend to build another Tower of Babel, because that worked so well last time. They turn Herr Nachtman to fulfil their dreams.

Nachtman has, by his own estimation, a brilliant and misunderstood mind with the flamboyance of a Guadi and the moral compass of a devil.

The story is about the interplay between these two forces and it was interesting to see the Society, who, by their very nature, discourage critical thinking to slowly descend into a situation worthy of a Clive Barker novel.

While it is short, it is eloquently constructed and Connell slowly and smoothly brings his reader along to the point where even the grossest elements somehow seem to have some vague valid reasoning.

We take the same journey as the members of The society, realizing a little too late that there is only a thin veneer between genius and madman.

8

Charles Packer