ne of the least influential and hence unknown philosophers of modern literature (except to a small group of people living in or with some connection to Ireland), de Selby’s historical and philosophic tracts were instrumental in making the 21st Century possible. (One of the reasons he was a neglected thinker was that almost everything he wrote and thought was irrelevant to the 20th Century.) Born into an English peasant family in the 18th Century, somewhere near what is now Stevenage (the date of his birth is placed somewhere between 1702 and 1712), de Selby’s early work was dedicated to the explication of goat communities (between the age of 7 and 17 he wrote his “Society and Goats”). He later turned his attention to the Industrial Revolution, time, space, bicycles, telekinesis, death, and history, in rough order. Some argue that de Selby single-mindedly thought the Millennium into existence. The power of his thoughts were so powerful, these noncritics say, that he successfully retroactively inserted the “idea” of the Millennium into the minds of a number of 9th, 10th, and 11th Century swordsmen, who traveled throughout Europe and as far as China spreading the word of this future along with death and their seed—and thus making it possible. Prior to that, the Millennium as we know it was nothing more than a puff pastry recipe in the minds of a large family in Gaul. Others charge that de Selby was a crank, although they acknowledge that he masterminded a method of distilling Irish whiskey in less than an hour (he disliked all English whiskeys and actually studied Gaelic for two years on the West Coast of Ireland not far from Doolin), although the process required a special crock. (De Selby’s was destroyed by an explosion.)

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