It has been a while since we presented a new author to the wider public so it is a great thrill and privilege to introduce Darryl Sloan – an author, musician, technician, and all around thespian who has developed quite a following in the YouTube vlogging community with a profound and provocative channel. He has written and published two novels, Ulterior (2002) and Chion (2007), as well as two non-fiction works, Reality Check (2009) and the original edition of I, Universe (2012), which was given the inciting tag-line – ‘Demolishing and Rebuilding Spirituality for a Scientific Age.’ Skylight Press will be publishing an all new and greatly expanded edition of I, Universe in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, here is Darryl in his own words:
I was born in 1972 in Northern Ireland and grew up during the Troubles. In spite of the tensions between the Protestant and Catholic communities (which occasionally erupted into murders and bombings), I felt that I had a good childhood, full of fun and creativity. The province’s tribalism never infected me in the slightest. Although fate branded me a Protestant by accident of birth, I always considered myself an outside observer of the madness.
As a child of the seventies and eighties, I was privileged to be present for the birth of the home computer, the synthesizer keyboard, and the portable camcorder – technologies that fuelled my creativity and became abiding passions. An interest in writing fiction also emerged in my mid-teens. Some of my creative accomplishments in later years include composing music for commercial computer games, writing and publishing two science fiction novels and a computer programming guidebook, co-producing micro-budget horror movies, teaching filmmaking and computer programming to young teens.
Christianity played a huge part in my life from age seventeen, but it was always a bad fit for my questioning nature. What promised peace of mind became a source of suffering and confusion, until I finally put it behind me in my mid-thirties, when I stumbled upon a more esoteric view of reality. I discovered that my natural intuitions about God, the Universe, and consciousness were drastically wrong, and this change in perspective had a profoundly life-enriching effect upon me.
The paradigm shift also provoked an interest in parapsychology and the occult. I had the unforgettable memory of bearing witness to a strange phenomenon in my early teens – something I had never fully been able to dismiss as mundane. My new philosophical outlook provided a foundation where extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, even magic, were no longer impossible or irrational. So I undertook my own experiments and achieved small but mind-blowingly real results. This served to reinforce the perspective that consciousness is a much more significant aspect of reality than commonly assumed.
For the best part of the past decade, I’ve been highly motivated to help others overcome their cultural conditioning and get in touch with a deeper view of life. To that end, I am an active vlogger on YouTube, where I discuss religion, spirituality, philosophy, and the occult.
But perhaps the best way to meet Darryl is to watch one of his videos and hear him opine in that beautiful Northern Irish lilt. Here is an example where he talks about some books that have influenced his philosophical ideas.
Darryl’s thoughtful videos, which cover a wide range of subjects, can be found here. You can also learn more about his various creations by visiting his website. Skylight Press is honoured to add Darryl’s wonderful tome, I, Universe, to our list.
Through the Skylight 