Behind ‘The Ancient Astronaut’ By Youssef Bortali

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Today I am excited to introduce you to Youssef Bortali, the talented author behind “The Ancient Astronaut.”

In our chat, he shared how a funny incident sparked the idea for this fascinating mix of fantasy, philosophy, and history. Youssef’s background as a writer, passion for these genres, and journey to bring the enigmatic protagonist to life were equally intriguing.

I hope you will enjoy this interview with Youssef!

The Ancient Astronaut by Youssef Bortali

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What inspired you to write “The Ancient Astronaut”? Can you share the moment or idea that sparked the story?

I actually remember the exact moment when I got the preliminary idea for The Ancient Astronaut, and it is a bit embarrassing, but here goes.

About 15 years ago (before smartphones became popular), I had this big encyclopedic dictionary, basically a dictionary that delves deep into all kinds of subjects (like an encyclopedia), and I used to take it to the washroom with me, like some people take smartphones or magazines to the washroom when doing their business.

At the time, I used to mostly read about philosophical and metaphysical concepts, and used to stay in the washroom for quite a long time if I get lost reading an interesting or enjoyable subject.

One day, I was reading either about Spinoza’s worldview of the universe as the creator, or Hegel’s concept of the spirit of the world (Geist), as soon as I left the washroom, the idea hit me: What if this spirit of the world, this philosophical concept of the creator, is not as serious and omniscient a “character” as philosophers imagine it to be, what if it is a simpler, more relatable and in some way “funnier” character who is simply trying to communicate with humans.

The idea kept germinating in my head for more than a decade as I went on with my education and career, until I finally had the time and willpower to actually write down the story.

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background as a writer? Have you always been drawn to writing in the fantasy and philosophical genres?

Well I wouldn’t call myself a writer at this point as this is my debut novel, but I have always enjoyed reading and writing as a kid and young teenager, especially in the fantasy and mythology genres.

My favorite subject in school when I was very young (primary and junior high) was writing, and I was told I am pretty good at it. But once in high school, I became more drawn to science and technology, and picked a study and career path that is exclusively technical (marine engineering and industrial robotics).

I did not have the time or peace of mind to actually start writing stories until very recently, like two years ago or so, but I have always been an avid reader of fantasy and science fiction.

Regarding philosophy, I fell in love with it in my early twenties when I had my own existential questions that I had no answers for, so I started studying philosophy to understand how the brightest logical and scientific minds answer life’s big questions.

I still consume vast amounts of philosophy and comparative religion reading material. Everyone eventually figures out that if philosophy answers one question, it immediately asks ten questions, so here I am.

I currently live in St. John’s, Canada, and I was born and raised in a city called El Jadida in Morocco. I run a small hospitality business in Eastern Canada, and I am in the process of writing my second novel.

“The Ancient Astronaut” is a unique blend of fantasy, philosophy, and historical elements. How do you find the balance between these genres while writing?

The elementary skeleton of the book has been obvious to me as soon as I got the first idea to write it.

The book is about some sort of amnesiac entity who has mysterious superpowers that allow it to communicate with humans through imagery, but can never communicate effectively with various civilizations throughout history, which causes the creation of crazy myths and the building of majestic monuments.

In a way, the character of the ancient astronaut is like the source of imagination and mysteries for humanity as a whole, so I incorporated old monuments like Stone Henge and the Nazca lines that us as modern humans still marvel at how and why these ancient people built them.

I also incorporated unexplained mysteries like the island of Atlantis, the tower of Babel, UFOs, crop circles… and made the ancient astronaut cause these mysteries to exist in the collective human psyche, the same way he caused weird mythological figures to be imagined by ancient humans.

The philosophical and metaphysical elements came into play naturally because the main character doesn’t experience existence like we do, the ancient astronaut exists in another dimension, can read the human minds and project ideas and images into them, so his musings and questions have to be metaphysical and abstract in nature.

How does your writing process look like? Do you have any specific routines or rituals that help you get into the creative zone.

I’m not sure if it is because of my technical background, but when writing fiction, first I write down the basic structure and major events that I imagine happening in a notebook in a schematic way, and I let the idea develop in my mind before typing a single word.

I just live life normally while always having the main idea of the book burning in the background, and letting new ideas pop up by themselves. Once I feel like I have enough interesting ideas and events, that’s when I sit down and start typing.

The hardest part is to get started typing, it is overcoming that first hurdle of “what if(s)?” what if it’s a stupid idea, what if I can’t finish it, what if someone wrote something similar? That takes a bit of willpower, but once I start typing, I find that my imagination starts working right away.

One thing that helps me immensely to get the imagination flowing is to go for long runs while thinking of my characters. Not sure if it’s because of the “running high” people talk about, but I get my best ideas and solve lots of my plot issues while running.

As an author, do you have any favorite authors or books that have influenced your writing style or storytelling approach?

I had two major inspirations for “The Ancient Astronaut” that inspired the narrative style and the protagonist’s character.

The first is Alice in Wonderland, I like how the story doesn’t really have a classic structure of a setup, a conflict, and a resolution. I like how Alice just drifts around in the story with no clear goals, doesn’t worry much, and simply deals with things as they come. I wanted my book to feel like that.

The second inspiration is more obscure, there is a science-fiction movie called “Artificial Intelligence” directed by Steven Spielberg, the story is about an android kid named David who wants to become a real human kid. At some point in the movie, he gets told that Pinocchio became a real kid by asking the blue fairy.

So, David gets in his flying car, finds a random statue of a blue fairy in some abandoned amusement park, and not knowing any better, he lands near the statue and asks the blue fairy to help him become a real human kid.

He keeps asking her for eons, as humanity collapses, robots take over, then aliens take over, meanwhile he is just sitting in his car, asking a blue fairy statue how to become a real human kid. There is a hint of David in the main character of the ancient astronaut in my book, they both spend an eternity asking questions as the world around them changes.

In general, I like fantasy and science fiction books which have crazy and obscure plot twists, examples would be Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, The Dark Tower by Stephen King…

I also enjoy the humorous writing style of the likes of Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Norm MacDonald in Based on a True Story.

The protagonist in your book is a mysterious supernatural being with no memories. How do you approach character development when creating such enigmatic figures?

This was a difficult task in this book as the protagonist is a god-like entity and his interactions with others are not normal interactions that teach him good vs bad kinda lessons.

I tried to keep the character’s nature ambiguous and keep the reader wondering is the ancient astronaut a magical deity or is it an advanced extraterrestrial?

In the beginning of the story when the protagonist wakes up and feels bored because he is utterly alone in the universe, so he starts imagining all kinds of colors and shapes…and boom, he finds planet earth, so did he create it by imagining it? or did his egg-shaped vessel randomly collide with our planet, this is the kind of ambiguity and questioning I tried to maintain throughout the story.

When the protagonist felt hopeless about communicating with humans from his remote dimension and wanted to “enter” the human, physical realm. I tried again to keep it mysterious, did the ancient astronaut enter our world simply by wanting to, or did the “world” help in any way. It is for the reader to discover.

The other layer in character development is that the protagonist’s philosophical and metaphysical musings actually trace the history of philosophy, particularly western philosophy. I will unpack this answer more in the question about the philosophical elements in this book.

Finally there is some meta-commentary about modern fantasy and science fiction genres as the protagonist became a bit disillusioned with the human collective imagination and decides to “leave” at the end to seek more fertile minds.

Research seems essential for a book that delves into ancient civilizations and their mythologies. Could you share some insights into your research process?

Oh God so much research went into this little book.

Some of the ancient civilizations elements has been known to me since I was a kid, e.g., the details of the legend of Atlantis, the mythologies of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece…but I had to research mythologies of other civilizations to find suitable elements to incorporate.

I read few books about world mythologies to get some inspiration of what to incorporate, read about Jungian concepts of archetypes to filter the characters to use and the ones to discard.

And used Wikipedia and various mysteries podcasts and documentaries to research more modern mysteries and events like UFOs, crop circles, the dancing sun in the Portuguese town of Fatima, the disappearance of the ship Mary Celeste …

I made sure that every event, building, or artifact in the story is a real-life thing to give the protagonist a “real” effect on human history.

The themes of philosophical and metaphysical paradoxes play a significant role in your book. What draws you to explore these themes, and how do you ensure they resonate with readers?

I became enamoured with philosophy and metaphysics to find answers to my own existential questions back in the day, and it is still a subject that I enjoy reading about and exploring.

If us a collective humanity with each individual having their own experiences and thought processes want to ever achieve a common understanding of the world or some elements of it, we better agree on what is the optimal way of thinking about life’s big and small questions, that is why I think everyone should at some point explore philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics…

Regarding my book, the protagonist’s amnesia and mysterious powers and existence cause him to ask lots of questions, and I tried to have these questions trace the history of western philosophy, it starts with him wondering how can he be sure that he actually exists if he can’t see or hear anything, only to conclude Descartes’ Cogito, ergo sum.

Then to wonder if the world is simply an imaginary realm in his mind, or is he himself a result of others’ thinking, basically asking the question of mind vs matter that still puzzles thinkers to this day.

I made sure to incorporate Kantian ideas about knowledge and what us as humans can even hope about knowing and what stops us from knowing things with absolute certainty. Several ideas about divine omnipotence, omniscience, and St Anselm’s ontological argument are explored along with the logical paradoxes they cause.

Paradoxes in philosophy and logic are extremely interesting because they are literally unsolvable and fundamental questions so I tried to guide the reader to explore these themes. Also, the ancient astronaut lives outside space and time in the first half of the book, so I tried to visualize that and explore how the protagonist experiences this peculiarity.

Finally, in the first half of the story, the protagonist can be thought of as Hegel’s Geist, or the spirit of the world, existing as a sum of humans’ ideas and imagination.

And once the ancient astronaut enters our physical world, he becomes more like Heidegger’s Dasein, he exists in relation to others, affecting and also being affected.

I am hoping that readers will relate to the protagonist’s existential dilemmas and find justification for the questions he is trying to answer, because ultimately, they are our collective questions.

Apart from writing, do you have any other hobbies or interests that fuel your creativity?

Reading, gaming, watching shows are all activities that fuel my imagination, it is just a matter of finding enjoyable material, and I’m not sure if it is because I am getting older, but new material just doesn’t do it for me anymore for the most part.

It takes more research and delving into older or foreign material to find something enjoyable.

Another “hobby” that fuels the sci-fi side of my imagination is funnily enough money investing. Researching stocks and financial trends pushes me to explore future trends in technology and also makes me think outside the box to come up with new investing themes.

What message or feeling do you hope readers will take away from “The Ancient Astronaut” after reading it?

I hope the general feeling of the reader is that we can and should ask big existential and ontological questions, and we should realize the limitations of our logical patterns and our ways of reasoning about fundamental matters, without feeling anxious about it, and just taking it all as part of a big, collective, enjoyable journey.

I also want the reader to reflect on our amazing capacity of imagination, how our ancestors used it to explain phenomena and tell stories to comfort and challenge them, and how us as modern humans kind of fail at coming up with genuinely innovative myths and stories and simply regurgitate old images and tropes from the past in more modern settings.  

What was the hardest part of writing “The Ancient Astronaut”?

There were two hard parts, the first one was editing: every time I re-read the book to edit it, I find myself modifying a little thing here and another one there, it could be adding a detail, changing an event, things of this sort, then I have to re-read and edit again, It took a long time of editing and modifying to get the story into satisfactory (to me anyway) shape.

The second hard part is marketing, I self published “The Ancient Astronaut” on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and Kobo, then real work starts, I am not a marketer so it doesn’t come naturally to me like writing. I have to really struggle to get into online forums and find readers who are willing to give the book a read.

And most online writing blogs and forums are filled with fan fiction and erotic fantasy, it is not easy to find readers interested in a metaphysical Alice in Wonderland sort of novel, but I will keep trying.

Finally, what are your future plans and where can our readers find you?

I have begun writing my second novel, which I am hoping will be a longer read with several characters and story arcs. I have most of the story elements conceptualized in my head, just need to have them organized and typed down. I am excited to get started on that.

I post some of my thoughts and ideas about various random subjects that range from world religions to investment themes on medium https://medium.com/@yoshiburloni

I hope you enjoyed this interview with Youssef! Happy reading! 📖