Jeffrey Melvin Hutchins, author of Perpetuonics, has been honored as one of the pioneers of the closed-captioning service that makes television accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. He was responsible for the development of the technology to caption live programs.
Born in New York City, Jeff grew up in Saudi Arabia and attended high school in Beirut, Lebanon, before earning a degree in broadcasting & film from Boston University, where he met his wife, Diane. In the 1970s, Jeff was a TV producer at WGBH in Boston, and later was a founder of VITAC, the captioning company.
Since retiring, he has been the creator of a collection of children’s stories, songs, and videos about Denton the Dragon. In 2022, Denton the Dragon the Musical!, a stage show he wrote with Matthew Gould, debuted.
Perpetuonics is his first book with Pisgah Press. His new novel, Jerome v. God, was released in April 2025.
Perpetuonics
In the very near future, young tech entrepreneur Declan Marchand invents Perpetuonics, a method of digitizing a living person’s character, knowledge, emotions, and memories — and then bringing that person back into existence after death.
These “Digital beINGS”— Dings in shorthand — can theoretically “live” forever. They reside in massive servers, where they communicate with living people with the help of a living Compadore. They are also, of course, subject to rules and restrictions . . . until they begin to discover their own power.
Perpetuonics presents an intriguing, disturbing possibility for the future of life on earth.
Jerome v. God
Jerome Light is a happily married middle-class family man whose house is swallowed one evening by a sinkhole. Gideon Calhoun is a televangelist who for years has claimed to be “God’s agent here on earth.” When Jerome’s insurance company rejects his claim because the sinkhole was “an act of God,” Jerome—an atheist—decides to sue his agent for damages.
Now the atheist must prove the existence of God to claim recompense, while the evangelist must argue that he is not God’s agent, because God may not even exist! Jerome v. God is an ironic, humanist novel of the two men’s epic battle.