FAQ (no spoilers)

Aeon's Surreal Renaissance FAQ (no spoilers)

Welcome to the FAQ for Aeon's Surreal Renaissance! At the time of publication, this and the following page have a few questions and answers made entirely by the author so that there is a bit of content for you to read. But what we really want are your questions. Anything you'd like to know about the book and the story behind it? Drop by Discord to let us know - #general is a good place to start - or email the author at dave.macleod@surrealdb.com!

Where did the idea for the story come from?

I originally wanted to write a textbook that followed the story of the Enchanted Knights, which was so beautifully illustrated in this book in the early 1900s. But it isn't long enough to make for a full textbook's worth of content, and the story itself isn't that well known either.

I then began thinking about a library of books instead of a single book, and whether the book could be based on the construction of a library using SurrealDB. That felt a bit closer, but even that would just end up being a single project that would be tough to stretch over a full textbook.

At that point my imagination kicked in, and I began thinking about what sort of library it could be...then all of a sudden the story began to take form and I knew I had found it.

Why the word renaissance in the title?

Renaissance means rebirth, and there is quite a bit of that in the book.

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  The story itself involves bringing back the world of the past (that is, the world of the late 21st century), similar to the Renaissance in Europe which involved rediscovering a lot of the knowledge that had been lost.

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  It's a surreal (lowercase) Renaissance because the knowledge in this case was straight up given to the main character.

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  It's also a Surreal (uppercase) Renaissance, because SurrealDB is finally being used again after centuries.