“History is not what you learned in the books — 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue — that ain’t it,” says Neal Rabin, the author of the swashbuckling, historical, satirical adventure novel FLAT, which follows the accidental adventures of a Lanning Delaford, a reluctant explorer at the tail end of the Spanish Inquisition.
Why that time period? “I set it in the 16th century because it’s basically science fiction, right? I mean, science fiction is history set in the future, and it’s just a way to get people to access what you’re thinking about and what you want to convey. You take them out of their everyday environment,” says Rabin.
And why pirates? A history major in college, the former Miramar Systems CEO (who was a television comedy writer in an even more former incarnation), was looking for a story to follow up his 2016 novel 23 Degrees South, “when a 16th century trumpet concerto came on my Spotify feed,” he laughs. “And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s really cool music, what’s the time period?’ And I wanted something that I could live with for a few years, that would make me laugh.”
An exploration of 16th century music bumped into the 2018 news story when Boston Celtics star Kyrie Irving expressed his belief that the Earth was flat, and “that just triggered a story idea.”
In order to write something, “first I have to inspire myself … and it has to have some depth to it, something to say about the larger world,” says Rabin, who became intrigued with the “discovery” period around the Spanish inquisition and had the opportunity to pick the brain of a history professor in Madrid who his daughter had befriended during her study abroad.
“I’m cynical enough to know that it’s all about money; explorers were after money. They weren’t really after planting the flag,” he said. After that, the story began to reveal itself, “And what I learned was that people are people regardless of time period. We are humans, we all have the same foibles and seven deadly sins and all that stuff that has been in existence from biblical times to now doesn’t change.”
This particular tale blends a fictional story and some current day political parallels with a factual setting that includes prominent historical characters like Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, and Bartolomeu Dias, woven into a difficult-to-describe but easy-to-enjoy story that is worth reading for fans of adventure, history, and most prominently comedy.
“In my case, the satirical commentary and the snarky edge that I have percolate through anything anyway, so I don’t worry about it. I don’t worry about what the deeper meaning is either,” says Rabin.
Neal Rabin and Leslie Dinaberg will attempt to take a deeper dive into the deeper meaning of FLAT — or at least provide some additional anecdotes and a discussion of the challenges of a FLAT earth, mixology, pirates, and the written word — with a book launch event on Monday, June 10, from 4-6 p.m. at Pearl Social in the Funk Zone (131 Anacapa St., Suite B). Readers are welcome to join. nealrabin.com
