The Future Catches Up

A mind-blowing thing happened to me today. I saw a new review on Amazon, and it had a piece of information that simply amazed me.

Here is the review:

"Amazing debut! I would have given this book 6 stars but took one off because the author didn't seem to know that the Gsh-18 pistol does not have a safety. There are already several reviews which tell about the book and the story so I'll just mention one of the really stand-out qualities that sets this book apart from lesser efforts. The characters and their interactions are layered in ways that subtly hint at a very mature and developed sensibility on the part of the author. He doesn't beat you over the head with it but, I came to realize the depths of the characters about a third of the way through the book when I wondered what it was that kept drawing me in. This quality of recognizing relationships and histories in the characters and bringing them out without spelling them out was an amazing feat by the author. I'll be looking for more by Ted Cross."

Zoya, Illustration © Stephan Martiniere

Well, first of all it's really great to see someone view the development path of the characters the way I meant it to be. But it's the mention of the GSH-18 pistol that blew my mind. You may not know this, but I began writing the The Immortality Game quite a few years ago. When I reached the part where I needed to use a newer model of gun, I decided I wanted it to be 'old' from the perspective of the characters in the year 2138, but I also wanted it to be 'in the future' from our perspective. So I looked up some models of pistol and chose the GSH brand, and I then added some numbers to it so that it would be a 'future' model.

Now it is possible that the GSH-18 was already being mentioned at that time and I simply missed it. But as far as I recall, there was no GSH-18 when I wrote that part, and yet it now exists today. I didn't expect the future to come whipping by so fast!