Clone and Kork

Mark C. Biedebach received his PhD in Biophysics from UCLA in 1964. (Prior to that, he was the 1st place national winner of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 1955 student paper contest.) After two post-doctoral years (doing neurophysiological research at Caltech and the College de France), he joined the faculty of California State University, Long Beach, where he conducted research and taught physiology and neuroscience for 34 years. Several years before retiring, he began preparing to write in the area of human consciousness. Upon the advice of a friend, he took several creative writing classes at University of California, Irvine. Sitting in these classes, he realized that his readership could be much larger if he were to write a fictional work into which his knowledge of brain function and consciousness could be interwoven. He decided to use his own memoir story (involving finding Irina and marrying her in Russia) as a framework. He then superimposed two fantasy characters to help an obsessed scientist explore the mystery of consciousness. After a five-year incubation period, "Clone and Kork" was born. It is the author's belief that no similar work of fiction has ever been written (in which the neuroscience of consciousness has been integrated into experimental fiction, using fantasy characters.)