Most of what I write publicly is about energy and software. This is the other thing. For a while now I have been working on a novel based on real events surrounding Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese doomsday cult that released sarin gas on the Tokyo subway in 1995, and since people occasionally ask what I do when I am not building systems, it seems worth saying plainly.
Where it started
It started with the gap between the English-language version of this story and the Japanese one. In English, Aum Shinrikyo is usually one paragraph: a doomsday cult, a Monday morning, sarin on the Tokyo subway. The Japanese record is enormously denser, and it is full of episodes that never made the crossing, not because anyone hid them but because they did not fit the paragraph.
The first thing I read that I flatly did not believe concerned how far the group got with its own weapons programme, and how many times the authorities came close enough to stop it and did not. I assumed I had misread the source or that something had been lost in translation. I checked it against a second account, then a third. It held.
That is where a research project stops being one. I was no longer reading to check facts, I was reading to find out what happened next.
What the book is
It is a historical novel grounded in documented events. Where the record establishes what happened, I follow it. Where it does not establish what was said in a private room, I write the scene. An author's note will mark which is which.
The question underneath it is one I keep returning to in other contexts too: how do systems fail? A cult is a system. It has recruitment, incentives, hierarchy, an internal logic that is entirely coherent from the inside and insane from the outside. The people who joined were not stupid; a striking number were scientists, doctors, engineers. That is the uncomfortable part, and it is the part fiction can reach in a way a timeline cannot.
The other half of the story is the response. What ordinary people did on that morning, and what investigators, doctors and station staff did in the hours afterwards, is not a footnote to the atrocity. It is the reason the day did not become much worse than it was.
Where it stands
The book is in research and draft. I am not going to promise a date. When there is one, it will be posted here.
Frequently asked questions
Is Jonas Helwig writing a book?
Yes. He is writing a novel based on real events surrounding the Aum Shinrikyo cult and the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack. It began in the gap between the English-language account of the case and the far denser Japanese record.
Is the book fiction or non-fiction?
It is a novel, fiction built on a documented factual foundation, rather than a history or a documentary account.
When will the book be published?
No publication date has been announced. It is a work in progress, and any announcement will be made on jonashelwig.com.
What else does Jonas Helwig write?
Essays on energy systems, storage, grid balancing, AI infrastructure and software engineering, all published in the writing section of this site.