Preserving Our Founding Documents
Al-Jazirah, Saudi Arabia, December 12
I previously wrote about the need to form a national repository that would contain the founding documents of the kingdom, including the correspondences, orders, and documents issued by our founding father King Abdulaziz, may God have mercy on him. As far as I know, most of these documents have been either preserved at the royal archives or made their way into the hands of various academics and intellectuals who collected them and inherited them to their children. The late Sheikh Abdul Rahman bin Abdulaziz, a well-known writer and historian, told me that he held onto some of these documents, which surely exist with his children today. These documents are nothing short of a national treasure that describes the founding story of our country and the great efforts made by the men who built it. These are rich raw materials for those who want to study the real history of the kingdom, and understand the great challeng
By Lenny Picker |
In
The Minders (Berkley, Feb.), Marrs envisions a future in which advances in DNA technology enable massive amounts of data to be stored in people’s brains.
Where did the idea for this book come from?
One evening, I found myself in an internet rabbit hole and stumbled across a website dedicated to conspiracy theories. Some posters’ suggestions appeared quite credible, others were utterly insane. But it left me thinking, what would it be like to know all of your country’s deepest, darkest secrets? And if they were offered to you, but you couldn’t tell anyone else, would you still want to find out? I thought it might make the premise for an interesting thriller.