Facets of Femininity

Will the nanny state and the media industry in future restrict all types of individual performance? Chance struggles on a capitalist employment treadmill that denies him freedom to take risks. He starts a PhD in science and psychology. His girlfriend Megan is a pole vault champion in training for the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane. With his help, she uses philosophies of De Beauvoir, Nietzsche, Heidegger's phenomenology and Mihaly's flow, to take personal responsibility for her training. Overreach by the nanny state threatens her use of flow. 'Levellers' want all ability levels to succeed in competitions. Philosopher Debord's 'spectacle' has performers' appearances profiting media and investors. Which will succeed: human turkey-like individualism or bee-like collectivism? When Chance and Megan catch Covid, they oppose the collectivists' mandatory vaccinations with non-violent civil disobedience. Will they succeed? This is speculative fiction satirizing athletics, rugby and ballet, exposing dark forces shaping western democratic societies, revealing how individual freedom can be saved. REVIEWS OF MARTIN KNOX'S PREVIOUS BOOKS ANIMAL FARM 2 (2021) Reviewed by Divine Zape for Readers' Favorite. Review Rating: 5 Stars Fans of Animal Farm by George Orwell will adore Martin Knox's Animal Farm 2, a fable with strong hints of political satire set on a farm on tropical Caruba, an island in the grip of the Social Republic.This is a cleverly plotted story with interesting characters, and readers will relate to the animals that behave like humans; the anthropomorphism is brilliantly executed. Readers will encounter animals such as pigs (Lords Napoleon, Natalia), cattle (Tosser, Earl, Henry, Arnold), sheep (Sharon, Trudy, Sophie, and others), goats, llamas, horses, donkeys, mules, and more. Animal Farm 2 is open to several interpretations with political manipulation, abuse of power, superpower interests, and those who bear the brunt of political manoeuvring. It is a fable, but it is the same story that we see being played out too often in the political world. The novel features relevant and deftly written political themes, a debate on climate change, and the effects of totalitarianism. The characters are elaborately written and readers can see in them a portrait of what politicians do. The satire is biting, ingenious, and written in a context that readers can relate to. Martin Knox's satirical novel is a work of great imagination.

A Cold War biography based on Friedrich Nietzsche's fable of self-realisation - his story of the self. A TRANSCENDENT CAREERIt is the journey to enlightenment of a thinking man's spirit. He wants passionately to end the Cold War, in which arsenals of ICBMs threaten and civilians are shot escaping border barbed wire.Self is a self-determined man whose spirit parallels a fable by philosopher Nietzsche in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra, about a spirit that becomes a camel that hastens into the wilderness, becoming a lion with freedom in its own wilderness, struggling with a dragon and at last becoming a child, innocent, curious and playful.He begins life in country UK, with farming, horse riding and shooting. His spirit transcends from farm worker to student engineer, to corporate acolyte, to administrative engineer, to principal engineer, to researcher, teacher and writer.His responsibilities increase, with industrial accidents, hippy stunts, owning a boutique and coordinating computing. He travels in Central and South America, and investigates prospects for socialist governments in the UK. He experiences sailing and in a storm at sea he nearly drowns.His PhD project to end the Cold War is opposed by the dragon spirit of Gretchen, mother of his children.He is stymied in love and again in the academic process when his solution to the Cold War is delayed. Will his contribution be recognised?

The urge to write, whether in poetry or prose derives, at least in part from vanity, but I would also suggest more serious reasons for the endeavour: explicitly to raise awareness around social injustice, environmental destruction, and human suffering. Injustice and suffering derive, in the main, from avoidable catastrophes and resource misuse, which are either planned or are allowed to continue with impunity, by and large through political intrigue. There are, of course, many other reasons as to why writers engage with the craft. This book has been inspired by another contemporary Irish poet, Conor Farrell, who lives and works in Spain. It is also inspiring to read other poets such as Seamus Heaney, Paddy Kavanagh, Simon Armitage, Michael Hartnett and writers in prose and song, namely, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, George Orwell, John Prine and Bob Dylan, amongst others. It is widely accepted now, especially amongst those who reflect earnestly on the human condition, that serious societal inequalities are widespread and that there are significant imbalances casting shadows over our lives. For instance, there are the wealthy, who haven't enough: they are entitled. Sadly, they seem to be utterly indifferent to the plight of children dying from malnutrition, mindless conflicts and preventable diseases. It is scourges such as these that motivate me to write: social disparities ought not be permitted to exist in a civilised world. Where I can, I like to paint pictures with words, as Hartnett does in his poem A Falling Out .....There, on the cobbles of the market square, where toothless penny ballads rasped the air, there among spanners, scollops, hones, and pikes, limp Greyhound cabbage, mending-kits for bikes, velvet calves in creels, women's overalls, she shook my hand beside the market stalls.......... And as if the disregard of inequity and injustice is not enough, it is now commonplace for those in power to denigrate and abuse scientific endeavour. Those at the tiller also try to deceive us by means of the fraudulent use of language as well as through tax concessions for the wealthy. Poor governance also seems to facilitate unjustified privilege for the few enabled by corrupt manipulation of the democratic process. I believe these practices must end through education, rational persuasion, participative democracy and progressive taxation. I sincerely hope that we can succeed in turning the tide before it's too late. *** "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." Bertrand Russell

Animal Farm 2 continues Animal Farm, George Orwell's 1945 political satire, updating it within a broader context of theCold War and its aftermath, with superpowers' environmental movements.Animal Farm 2 - satirical fictionThe farm is on tropical Caruba, an island controlled by the Social Republic near the Democratic Union, who are in a Cold War with them. Pigs lead an animal rebellion then takeover and ruthlessly exploit the animal workers. When the farm animals discover coal on the farm and mine it to supply electricity from a power station constructed on the farm, they become embroiled in the superpowers' climate manoeuvring. When coal mining could be stopped due to global warming fears, the animal workers study climate science and realise that they are victims of world superpower totalitarianism. They prepare to fight for animal liberation, wanting freedom at any cost. The satire is humorous with animal characters based on leaders of superpower nations, animal liberation and climate campaigns.Farm animals investigate philosophies ofclimate science within a new paradigm.A Novel by Martin KnoxANIMAL FARM 2 (2021) Pre-publication review by Brad Ahern, Science Educator.Following Orwell's masterful satire, Animal Farm, Martin Knox continues the story in the aftermath of the Animal Revolution up to modern times, with an insightful account of the progress and difficulties of the Socialist Animal Collective. An action-packed story of farm animals seeking liberation. They mine coal and their work is restricted by bourgeois management and superpower influence. They discover and carefully explain a paradigm shift within climate science. Another prescient and engrossing cautionary fable satirising the threats posed by modern-day totalitarianism and globalism.