Marc Lieberman

Q&A
Sign of the Anasazi

1. You embrace modern science with mythical intrigue in your new novel, Sign of
the Anasazi. What is it about?

Sign of the Anasazi is an action-packed mystery, which suggests a

link between the aliens encountered in the Roswell Incident and the
lost tribe of the Anasazi, which seemingly, disappeared without any
trace in the early days of the last millennium.

2. What inspired you to write it?

I’ve always been fascinated with both ancient American Indian lore
and science fiction. I’ve also been fascinated with bears, ever since
my brother Richard and I found ourselves the proud adopted
parents of a baby black bear when we spent a summer working at a
remote fishing camp in the Canadian wilderness. Sign of the Anasazi
was my effort to weave Indian lore with science fiction and feature
the amazing behavior of bears, which are both lovable and fearsome
creatures.

3. You say that while the Sign of the Anasazi is a work of fiction, there is some
truth to many of the events described. Just how real are some of the things that
happen in this riveting tale?

The fiction I like most is that which contains obscure kernels of

truth. So, the Sign of the Anasazi contains many such kernels. For
example, did you know the U.S. Government initially admitted it had
recovered an alien spacecraft in the New Mexican desert near
Roswell? It was only when news of the recovery traveled up the
chain of command that the Government retracted its initial
admission and concocted a cover story about the crash involving a
weather balloon.

Sign of the Anasazi also describes certain birds with ultra-sensitive

hearing used by Bedouin Tribes to warn them of imminent attack,
and explains why bats do not use their radar when flying through
their caves. It talks about ancient burial customs, and how those
have changed over the years between various cultures. I don’t want
to reveal all the bizarre science addressed in the book, but only wish
to say that, if you’re like me, and relish knowledge of strange but
true phenomena, Sign of the Anasazi is for you.
4. Your book delves into the lost underground empire once inhabited by the lost
tribe of the Anasazi. Who were they?

The Anasazi are the pre-cursers of some of the great Southwestern

American Indian Tribes, and all trace of them ceased around AD
1300. They developed wide-ranging agricultural practices, and built
amazing multi-unit cliff dwellings, some of which can be found in
Mesa Verde National Park in southern Colorado. Some archeologists
have traced the tribe back as far as 6,000 B.C. In some Indian
languages, Anasazi means “The ones who disappeared.” In Navajo,
“Anasazi” means “The Ancient Ones.”

5. Could there be other ancient cultures like the Anasazi, who remain to be
unearthed?

Every single day, scientists are discovering new animal, invertebrate,

and insect species, especially in places like the deep ocean and in
remote locales like New Guinea and Northern Australia. But the
Earth is riddled with millions of caves that are unexplored, and I
dare say many of these are in North America. It was only recently
that a major cave was discovered in Southern Arizona (Karsten
Caverns), and who’s to say that ancient man didn’t both seek refuge
in such caves but indeed, decided to live in them permanently,
protected from the outside world?

6. In Sign of the Anasazi, a linguist deciphers the language of aliens and begins
using their technology on Earth. Do you think it may already have happened in
real life?

I think anyone who has seen Men In Black must think, at the back of
their minds, that indeed, alien technology has been slowly introduced
to us to some extent, but like everyone else, I really don’t know. I do
believe that the Government was not lying when it initially
announced it had recovered an alien spacecraft at Roswell in July of
1947, and if the Government can be taken at its word, it is likely
some technology was recovered which may have been put to good
use when authorities had sufficient knowledge to use it.

7. In your story, an alien ship is stolen and an FBI deputy director-turned-bad

enlists terrorists for hire to recapture it for his own wicked purposes. How safe
are we against such a scenario in real life?

I don’t think we can be protected from government agents

leveraging their power to achieve their own selfish aims. That sort
of misconduct is as old as government corruption itself. All we can
do is hope there are other government officials as principled as Dov
Bar Lev, one of the heroes of Sign of the Anasazi, who are willing to
combat their corrupt brethren at every turn, even if to do so
threatens their careers.
8. Do you believe The Roswell Incident really occurred, where the U.S. government
covered up the alleged landing of a UFO by aliens back in the mid-1940’s?

Yes, I think it is clear to most people that the Government told the
truth when the Army officials on the ground at Roswell Army Air
Field announced in July of 1947 that they had indeed recovered an
alien spacecraft. The effort by the Army to later retract that story
was rather ham-handed, when al the facts are examined. However,
remember that Roswell Army Airfield, where the alien debris was
initially delivered, was the home of the only Strategic Air Command
base in America, that all work done out of the base was considered
“Top Secret,” that Americans in those days never thought to
question the Army, which of course, had just emerged victorious in
World War II and was now fighting a pitched battle with the Soviets
over supremacy of atomic secrets and weaponry, and so, the press at
the time was very complacent and willing to believe everything the
Government said, unlike the media today.

9. The hero is a renegade FBI agent, Dov Bar Lev. How did you come to draw his
character?

One of the main characters of Sign of the Anasazi is Dov Bar Lev, an
Israeli émigré who, through dogged hard work, rises to the number
4 position in the FBI, Assistant Director of Criminal Investigations.

Dov Bar Lev resonates with me because when I was preparing to

graduate law school in the early 1980s, I applied to and was accepted
to report to Quantico, Virginia to train as an FBI special agent. I
was seriously considering a career as an agent. However, at the
time, there were very few Jews in the FBI, primarily because of an
institutional bias that Jews “could not be trusted” to be loyal to the
United States since supposedly, Jews were also loyal to the State of
Israel. There was a concerted effort in the early 1980s to recruit
more Jews into the agency and thereby combat this stereotype, and
sometimes, I wish that I had become an agent. At the time, my wife
was stridently opposed to my joining the FBI because of the
stringent travel requirements, and I forwent the opportunity out of
respect to her concerns.

10. You say that young adults or teens don’t read enough books. Why is that so and
what can be done about it? How do you feel your book contributes to getting
young people interested in books?

When I was a boy, I was one of the few kids in my neighborhood who
read books. My other friends just played various sports, or watched
TV. Of course, at the time, there was no such thing as a video game,
but the only fiction my buddies would read was comic books.
Reading was just not valued in their homes., and of course, when my
friends got to college, their lack of reading impaired their ability to
succeed.
 When I set about to writing Sign of the Anasazi, I designed it to
appeal to young adults, and to do that, I knew I needed to appeal to
kids’ short attention spans, which have been engendered by
television formats, which are generally designed in 3 to 6 minutes
segments. To address today’s short attention spans, Sign of the
Anasazi has very short chapters, each ending with high and
unresolved tension to motivate the reader to move to the next
chapter.

Most young people, and especially young boys, don’t read fiction.
The only way to attract their attention is to design books that will
give them the same thrill as they get from TV and video games --
non-stop action, intriguing characters, riddles upon riddles, and
chapters sufficiently small to allow them to put the work down and
return to it without much effort to remember the plot. This book
does that in spades. I made a conscious effort to design the type of
book a modern-day child would find as interesting as a comic, video
game, or TV show, and thereby promote reading as a real form of
recreation. Among modern children; at the moment, books are
losing that battle.

11. Part of your story revolves around a kidnapping of children. Is that not the
greatest fear of any parent?

Yes, of course, but I think it is also a child’s greatest fear as well. So,
the kidnapping of a child is a universal fear shared by parents and
children alike.

12. Your story takes place in the bleakest deserts of New Mexico. Why there?

New Mexico is one of the most beautiful and truly magical places on
the planet, and if you’ve never explored New Mexico, you need to do
so without delay. You have a sense, wherever you might be in New
Mexico, that there are ancient relics, and signs of ancient peoples,
everywhere you look and tread. And so, New Mexico was the perfect
place to set the story, especially since it has a wide variety of terrain,
from the bleakest deserts inhabited by fascinating Indian Tribes, to
snow-capped mountains, azure blue lakes, and some of the longest
and most varied cave formations in the World.

13. Oddly, your story includes a role for a couple of grizzly bears. What do they do
to help save the day?

As I mentioned, my brother and I had a pet bear as teenagers, and

the bond we shared with our bear was quite close, especially so since
I had been forced to kill its mother when she rampaged through our
encampment. Sign of the Anasazi was designed to appeal to adults,
families and teens, and one thing all of those can relate to are
amazing animals who both care for their masters and protect them
from harm. That’s the role the Grizzly Bears play in Sign of the
 Anasazi; protecting their master and his charges from the evil
clutches of those bent on doing them harm.

14. You have an adventurous spirit, which includes climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Do
you find you now channel that action-packed side of you into your writing?

Well, it’s no big deal to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro; thousands of people

scale it each year; it is the spiritual journey you undergo to get to the
top, not so much the physical effort you endure to get there, that’s
important. I do think writing is a sort of catharsis for me, and
indeed, I tend to feel like I’ve done some exercise when I write a
particularly action packed sequence. Perhaps like more than a few
authors, I sometimes wish I was really leading the life about which I
write, rather than my far more drab existence.

15. You motorcycled the Baja 500 and breaking all of your ribs in the process. Did
you get back on the bike again?

Each year, my two long-time friends and I take a trip somewhere

we’ve never been before. We alternate choosing where we go each
year, and I was the victim of one of these choices. I had never ridden
an off-road motorcycle before, and the race consists of everyone
speeding through the Baja desert at as fast as possible, and there is
no one to care for you if you crash. I had 10 separate crashes the first
day of the race, and about 10 each remaining day of the race, and I
later learned I had broken all of my ribs, as well as collar bone and
sternum, in the process. But since I had no choice but to continue
the race or be left behind to fend for myself, I continued on until I
finished, although I was in a great deal of pain. When I finally got
back to the states, my doctor advised I should be dead, and frankly, I
felt like that for many months until all my bones healed. My only
consolation was my friend who had suggested we undertake the race
had been knocked unconscious during the last day, and unlike me,
had not finished, giving me the opportunity to gloat a bit

16. How does your background as a lawyer with a renowned law firm shape your
writing?

Well, I certainly hope I don’t write like a lawyer, for as a profession,

we tend to be a dull bunch, as many a judge will attest. I do think
lawyers are often successful authors because we’re trained to
critically examine what we write and perhaps, we see many things in
our daily professional life that gives rise to interesting fiction.

17. What kind of people did you consult with to lend guidance on arms, ammunition,
and military tactics?

My closest friend in Phoenix is the real life personification of one of

the characters of Sign of the Anasazi, Dr. Michael Anthony. In real
 life, Michael Anthony is a trial lawyer with an encyclopedic
knowledge of motorcycles, arms and ammunition, and indeed, has
written several books on gun laws. I’ll tell you a funny but true
story about when I first began riding motorcycles with Michael
Anthony:

It was a very hot, humid August morning in Phoenix, and Mike had
driven his motorcycle over to my house to accompany me on my
Harley to a local coffee shop. I thought it was too hot to wear a
helmet, and after announcing that, Mike lectured me that, if it was
too hot to wear a helmet, it was too hot to ride, and he fastened his
helmet to this head. I declined his advice and refused to wear a
helmet and we took off on our motorcycles. After we left my
neighborhood and accelerated up to around 60 miles an hour, a herd
of large boars (which in Arizona, we call Javelinas) charged across
the highway. As luck would have it, I shot between the boars but
Mike was not so fortunate; he hit one of the boars head on, which
caused him to be launched over his handlebars and onto the
highway. He managed to pick himself up and walk to the side of the
road, When I got there, he said, casually, “Well, I hope you have
taken this demonstration to heart; see how wearing a helmet has
saved my bacon?!!”

18. Sometimes the characters in your story don’t know who they can trust. Why does
dealing with the government make people paranoid?

I think we have good reason not to trust the Government, for it’s
peopled with good people and bad, and unfortunately, the bad
government officials have the power to make our lives miserable
under color of law. And besides, the way the Government handled
the Roswell Incident is just one indication of how our Government
has sometimes deceived the public and in the process, has lost
credibility with its citizens.

19. One man has unbelievable power in his hands—the controls of an alien
spaceship. What responsibility goes along with it?

One of the tensions in Sign of the Anasazi is that a truly good man—
Dr. Marcus Aaron, has naively tried to use the fantastic power of an
alien spacecraft to combat oppressive forces throughout east Asia
but in the process, he kills many people and starts to become the type
of person he once loathed. It is this realization, and his conscious
effort to cure his mistakes, that leads to his redemption, of sorts.

20. At one point some of the characters gain the ability to live in a slightly different
dimension than other characters. How is that possible?

I certainly do not know if this is possible, but current scientific

thinking in the quantum mechanics community is that there might
be up to 23 different dimensions from our current reality, and
indeed, there are ongoing efforts at the new particle accelerator just
 opened in Switzerland to demonstrate this. So, perhaps the “fiction”
I present will someday not be fiction at all, just like the
“communicators” in the original Star Trek series are now daily
fixtures of our reality.

21. One of the characters is a newspaper reporter who risks his life to get a scoop. Do
they make journalists like that anymore?

I think there are many ambitious journalists out there trying to get
at the truth, and indeed, the new blogisphere is a testament to that.
Despite the fact that the mainstream media often is too lazy or
deadline driven to really pursue a story, I believe there are plenty of
journalists out there trying to do so, and the Internet has allowed
them a new venue to air the fruits of their investigations.

22. A part of your story involves the ability of deploying lasers designed to disable
ground and air troops. If true, what would it mean to nations who have such a
weapon?

Actually, several years ago, the U.S. Government announced

it was developing lasers to blind satellites, pilots and
ground troops, and I have read that weapons of this ilk
have already been deployed. Again, this is yet another
example of fiction becoming reality.