Journalist, poet, teacher, novelist, computer game designer, futurist, author of archaeology novels-as-textbooks, grandparent, and sometime urban rambler (modern and ancient). Continues with one or more of these, and still hopes to unlock the secrets of consciousness.
Here are my favorite books about the big questions of consciousness, the future, and the universe that will expand your mind on BookDNA.com
And here are the best books that blend science with fiction yet are not entirely either, also on BookDNA.com.
Interview about gaming with Soraya Murray, Professor at the University of California Santa Cruz.
Wikipedia
Latest
The Rune Harmonic: Number 4 in the Lisa Emmer Series, MEΛΛON BOOKS, 2026
Deep inside the Vatican, in the secret and well-secured Archive, an archbishop with unholy methods and associates invokes ancient Norse gods in order to overturn the world order and wreak havoc with the balance of Nature.
It’s all in a day’s work for Lisa Emmer, the Pythia, the modern-day manifestation of the Oracle of Delphi. And as soon as she puts a stop to this “Destroy the World” thing, she’ll get on with the pressing business of preparing the young boy she has selected as her successor.
Felix, the “Miraculous Child” she rescued in an earlier adventure, is a charming blend of the wisdom and compassion of the Dalai Lama and the brilliance of Young Sheldon – with the power of prophecy. And he has a technological leg up on earlier Oracles: a wearable search engine. But the tools of the forces of Evil have evolved also: drones, toxic chemicals, highly volatile explosives, radiation . . .
Even as the world sinks into chaos, Lisa and her Delphic companions can only eliminate the threat by first identifying it from twelfth-century runes carved on a scrap of bone.
Swigart’s genre-bending Pythia has never been more fascinating: a thoroughly modern woman with one foot in the ancient world and one foot solidly rooted in a future no one else can see, with the exception of her young protégé. The Rune Harmonic is the unexpected answer to the wishes of ancient and medieval history lovers, readers of women’s adventure fiction, ponderers of the fate of humankind, and all those hungry for a peek into the future.
Featured
Latest News: Portal for Virtual Reality. In 2023 students at Washington State University in Vancouver created a Virtual Reality reanimation of Portal, a game developed in 1986. This new demo is called Data Entry: Portal. You can watch the video or download the demo and try it out.
Mixed Harvest: Stories from the Human Past, Berghahn Books, 2020.
Golden Nautilus Award, Multicultural and Indigenous
Harvest follows planting. Among the benefits are soaring cathedrals, orchestral music, printed books, long-form television series, chocolate mousse. Unintended consequences include plagues, pollution, climate change, overpopulation, inequality, and war. Thus the harvest is mixed.
After millennia of wandering the earth with little impact, a universal, if inadvertent transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and pastoralism was complete within a few thousand years. Mixed Harvest tells the story of the Sedentary Divide, the most significant event since modern humans emerged. Before the Sedentary Divide, humans followed their food; afterward, the human diet had abandoned wild foods by domesticating, and irrevocably changing, plants and animals. People remained in one place and kept their food close. Agriculture was so successful that religious and social belief systems evolved to enforce its consequences: social inequality, exploitation of resources, constrained gender relations, and increasingly devastating conflict.
For those interested in learning more about the Paleolithic caves around northern Spain, Charles Schwalbe at Northernexposurespain not only provides reasonably priced personalized tours but sends out a regular newsletter with links to the latest archaeological research. He is extremely knowledgable about the region (including Iron Age and Roman archaeology) and was invaluable for some of the stories in this book. To sign up for his free newsletter, follow the link.
Recent
From the Publisher:
EVERYONE WANTS A PIECE OF HIM…HE HAS A MILLION
VIDEO FOLLOWERS AND HE’S ONLY SIX YEARS OLD—
To his mom, he’s just sweet Félix, a very special six-year-old. She doesn’t understand him, but she loves him to bits.
To his million young video followers, he’s their beloved science teacher.
To the little-known Delphi Agenda, working, as always, for peace and harmony, he’s not only a prodigy, he’s a prophet with the potential to become more powerful even than Lisa Emmer, the current Delphic Oracle. Perhaps even the power to save the world from humanity’s dumpster fire.
But to a few others who understand how enormous his powers are, he’s a pawn they could put to their own use.
The Thriller in Paradise series is also available on Kindle.
Stories and Essays
Essays
Satisfying Ambiguity, essay written just after 9/11. The Wizard of Oz meets the Delphic Oracle. George W. Bush needed a brain. Dick Cheney needed a heart…
Past Futures, Future’s Past, essay: The emergence of the concept of linear time and the beginning of history during the Sedentary Divide.
Not Just a River, essay: Denial, according to Mark Twain, is not just a big river in Egypt.
Anomalies, essay: Three books that investigate the anomalous, address the unexplained, and answer the impossible. The truth is in here.
The Tale of Genji, an essay on sex, death, and translation delivered in Tokyo in 1984 available on Academia.
The Hegemony of the Straight Line, How agriculture changed the way we see. Also on Academia.
Stories
Dispersion, short story. Digital media fragment us.
Seeking, short story. Personal ads have never been this complicated.
Water, short story on Fictional Cafe. A bath in broad red strokes.
Mine, a short story in Jet Fuel Review. A night on the town with Dante…
The Memory of Charles Babbage, short story about a day at the beach. Mikrokosmos, Mojo 19.
A Kind Word Alone, short story; Jack A Ridder, Deconstructionist Detective, August 23, 2021, Nonconformist Magazine. Print version: Issue 1, Winter/Spring 2022.
Sigrid, a fable, in Sublunary Review.
A short letter to the future I wrote to my grandson.
Published stories whose links have died:
The Factory, a short story about one aftermath of the Vietnam War, was published in The Deadly Writers Patrol, Spring, 2020. Alas, the magazine is gone now.
Disappointment, Salomé’s career after John, a short story in Stonecoast Review #14, Winter 2021.
Floater, a short story of drowned hopes, was published in the South Carolina Review. Volume 53.2, Spring 2021
© 2025 Rob Swigart