Doppelgangers

Henry Fitzgerald Heard, commonly known as Gerald Heard (1889 - 1971), was a historian, science writer, philosopher, and influential forerunner of the consciousness development movement.

This work is a macabre novel of the not so distant future focuses upon a man caught within the duel between the despot of the underworld and the tyrant of the upper world.

The future world of 1997 is held in the grip of a benevolent dictator who runs it, willy nilly, for its own good with the full measure of aid and control which science by then can afford. Yet to every dictator there will always be opposition, an opposite drive, in this case, literally underground, and organised ruthlessly as the world of light despotically driven forward overhead. A willing victim is selected by the dictator of darkness who shall assume the habits and physical characteristics of the upper world's ruler through rigorous training and extreme grafting operations so painful as to require the greatest fortitude for their endurance. The author traces the fate which awaits this victim once he is ready to ascend into the light and has become the double, the doppelganger, of the upper world's dictator.