21-10-2026, 09:20 PM
Hello all.
I’m Jason Carroll Holloway, a novelist in Kansas City. The News board takes announcements of books related to the VMS, so here is mine, with the label up front: it is fiction.
Masters X began as a research project and became a novel. A graduate student inherits his grandfather’s notebooks and is drawn toward Rudolf II’s Prague. Its central conceit is that the Voynich Manuscript, the Ars Notoria and the Codex Gigas are three expressions of one system. That claim is the novel’s invention, not a finding, but I grounded everything around it in as much real research as I could.
What is real, and what I tried to get right: Beinecke MS 408, the 1404 to 1438 radiocarbon range, the Baresch and Marci letters, and the reported 600 ducats from Rudolf. I wrote that history up as a field note. I recently published a corrected second edition after a long continuity audit, and I’d be honored to make a third edition corrected by people here who know the provenance better than I do:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
There’s also a free browser tool on the book’s site that puts 166 Beinecke page images beside the Ars Notoria notae, so you can overlay and rotate them:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
A note on AI: I use AI tools for research and editing, and a book this dense wouldn’t have been possible without them. My background in English literature and data analytics helps me use them carefully. My next book, which I start next year, will be written on an IBM Selectric. I honestly can’t wait.
The book trailer (AI-generated):
Thanks for having me.
Jason
I’m Jason Carroll Holloway, a novelist in Kansas City. The News board takes announcements of books related to the VMS, so here is mine, with the label up front: it is fiction.
Masters X began as a research project and became a novel. A graduate student inherits his grandfather’s notebooks and is drawn toward Rudolf II’s Prague. Its central conceit is that the Voynich Manuscript, the Ars Notoria and the Codex Gigas are three expressions of one system. That claim is the novel’s invention, not a finding, but I grounded everything around it in as much real research as I could.
What is real, and what I tried to get right: Beinecke MS 408, the 1404 to 1438 radiocarbon range, the Baresch and Marci letters, and the reported 600 ducats from Rudolf. I wrote that history up as a field note. I recently published a corrected second edition after a long continuity audit, and I’d be honored to make a third edition corrected by people here who know the provenance better than I do:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
There’s also a free browser tool on the book’s site that puts 166 Beinecke page images beside the Ars Notoria notae, so you can overlay and rotate them:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
A note on AI: I use AI tools for research and editing, and a book this dense wouldn’t have been possible without them. My background in English literature and data analytics helps me use them carefully. My next book, which I start next year, will be written on an IBM Selectric. I honestly can’t wait.
The book trailer (AI-generated):
Thanks for having me.
Jason