FICTION / NON-FICTION BOOK BY T. THACHER ROBINSON

The dual work CONVERSATIONS WITH A COLORFUL COMPOSTER and 
UNDERSTANDING WHAT'S HAPPENING was published shortly before the 
author's death in the summer of 1994.  The volume has, in effect, 
two front covers.  One carries the reader into the informal and 
reader-friendly fictional work CONVERSATIONS WITH A COLORFUL 
COMPOSTER.  Here, fluid dialogue between the author and an extra-
terrestrial visitor leads to fresh perspectives on the contemporary 
human situation.  Flip the book over, and cover two takes you into 
UNDERSTANDING WHAT'S HAPPENING -- a succinct exposition of the key 
ideas presented in CONVERSATIONS....  The two works present a range 
of insights and helpful ways of looking at things that touch on 
many topics, but the book's primary focus is the relationship 
between today's troubled human society and its sophisticated and 
powerful technologies.


A few comments on the book by Copthorne Macdonald*

We grow in knowledge by gathering facts and information.  We grow 
in wisdom by viewing the facts we already possess in more 
illuminating ways and from more enlightening vantage points.  
CONVERSATIONS WITH A COLORFUL COMPOSTER and UNDERSTANDING WHAT'S 
HAPPENING offers that sort of wisdom-fostering read.

CONVERSATIONS... is a wide-ranging, thought-provoking book.  It 
leads us to ponder the question of universal purpose, the nature of 
knowledge, and the relationship of our technologies to the wellness 
of body, psyche, and planet.  The book explores fundamental issues 
and deals with them in illuminating ways.  The author effectively 
argues that, both as individuals and a society, we embrace new 
technologies with too much naive ardor and too little appreciation 
of the unexpected and unwelcome side effects that are sure to arise 
whenever a technology comes into widespread use.  

>From Thacher Robinson's vantage point, humanity is in the midst of 
a capital-T Transition between two realities.  On the past side of 
this Transition is a world dominated by technology-facilitated 
pleasure seeking and massive ecological impacts.  On the future 
side is a world where our most powerful technologies will 
increasingly be devoted to the search for understanding of how the 
Universe and its evolutionary processes work, and be less and less 
devoted to destructive uses.  

The Author feels that the demands placed on us by this difficult 
Transition will lead to a higher level of spiritual understanding.  
The need to find the elusive balance between 
  -  our desires, 
  -  our technological capabilities, 
  -  the limits to what we know (and can ever know), and 
  -  the earth's ecological needs 
is the challenge we face.  He feels that in successfully meeting 
that challenge the higher-level understanding will emerge.  As 
Thacher Robinson put it, ``Our own powers are forcing us into a new 
level of wholistic and spiritual awareness and concern.'' 

               * Copthorne Macdonald is author of TOWARD WISDOM 
                 (Hounslow Press, Toronto, 1993) and the forth-
                 coming GETTING A LIFE (Hounslow Press, Fall 1995).
                 He is a former columnist with THE MOTHER EARTH 
                 NEWS and developed the slow-scan TV system used by
                 radio amateurs to send pictures around the world 
                 using voice radio equipment.  


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