I started writing Advances in the Art of Being in 2001. In the time it has taken me to complete this labour of love, I could have set off from Earth and travelled out beyond the orbit of Neptune. I would be wondering, as I sailed past the blue soup of watery ammonia and methane ices of our eighth planet, why the journey had taken so long. 

Crawling through RealSpace using only conventional chemical rockets (with a little bit of useful gravity-assist maneuvers along the way), by now I would have made it into the Kuiper Belt, on my way to touch the outer edges of the planetary system we call home. After brewing a cup of tea with the last of the teabags I had saved for the occasion, and holding the steaming cup in my hands, I imagine I would now be peering out of my spaceship window back at you, 10 billion miles from home. From here, even simple "hello" travelling at the snail's pace we call the speed of light, would take 15 hours to reach you and I would be waiting patiently well into the next day for your "hi, I'm doing fine, how are you?" to come back and rescue me from the solitude of my immense trip, my celebratory tea, drunk or cold by then.

But spin forward one hundred and seventy five years and how different things will be. The same journey will be measured in minutes, communications through j-space, instantaneous, distant suns will be holiday destinations, and asteroids towed into Earth orbit, mere daily commutes away. 

But you don’t have to slip into a cryochamber to wait out the next one and three-quarter centuries, or cross your fingers and hope that medical science comes up with the inevitable longevity miracle us boomers are hoping for and go the long way round to see those miracles of modern science come to life, nor wait the twenty six years for me to finish the story, because right now my book-writing journey is at its end, so your journey into this incredible world can begin right away.

Travel with me now and follow Arkil and his own two week, two thousand lightyear round trip to enlightenment in the amazingly tangible post-scarcity world of Advances in the Art of Being. It's all right here, right now just waiting to be discovered; Neptune can wait for another day.