THAT'S ME IN THE (D2D) SPOTLIGHT

I don’t do a lot of interviews. As a career radio show host I did hundreds, but always as the one asking the questions. It’s different being on the other end of things, but my friend Mark Leslie Lefebvre, writer of horror fiction and spooky non-fiction, also works for the book distribution service Draft2Digital and invited me to be his guest in the live-streamed D2D Spotlight. The spotlight features interviews with authors and other people in many areas of the publishing industry.

We had a great chat about my radio career, how it led to my first novel Dead Air, and my transition to science fiction writer, with a whole lot of other ground covered along the way. So if you want to know what it’s like to work toward a career as a writer, or about recording audiobooks (I do that too), or you’re just interested in learning more about me, have a look on YouTube or on Facebook .

And thanks to Mark who’s not only a great guy but also a generous interviewer.

(Note To Self: Next time don’t do it under bright sunlight without a soft-focus lens!)

HOW MUCH WILL COVID-19 CHANGE OUR WORLD?

Articles are popping up everywhere with speculations about how Covid-19 might change our world, and you can expect a flood of fictional treatments along the same lines in the months to come. Because we all have the sense that the world has changed—it will never be quite the same even once this pandemic has finally died out. Will the change be large scale? Maybe even the collapse of our civilization?

That’s a bit extreme, but many countries will be facing record-high deficits and badly-hobbled economies, so a return to the status quo is not a sure thing. And history has shown that pandemics do have the power to trigger such big changes.

• An early pandemic is thought to have spread from Spartans to Athenians during their 5th century BC war and helped give Sparta the victory.

• When the bubonic plague appeared in the 6th century CE, now known as the Justinian Plague, it not only killed between 30 – 50 million people—nearly half of the world’s population at the time—but it ended Emperor Justinian’s attempts to revitalize the Roman Empire. Trade faltered, sources of wealth dried up, and the empire became vulnerable to both internal rebellion and external invasion. The so-called “dark ages” soon followed.

• And when Spanish explorers brought smallpox to the New World, the Aztec Empire was wiped out.

On the other hand, it could be said that some long-term good came out of such suffering at times. It’s been suggested that the horrors of the Black Death in the 1300’s (bubonic plague again) actually raised standards of living and brought about the end of the feudal system in places like Britain because the reduced population meant more work for the survivors. It may also have halted Viking incursions into North America. There have been numerous cases of disease-driven hardship triggering rebellions that changed the social order, leading to independence from colonizing powers, for example.

It’s interesting to note, too, that the fall of some ancient civilizations were hastened by climate disasters; the Minoan culture in the Mediterranean was rocked by the explosion of the Thera volcano around 1600 BC, and a number of Bronze Age cultures in that same region were laid low by a suddenly cooler climate after the 1100 BC eruption of the Hekla volcano in Iceland. Droughts and cooling weather are thought to have contributed to quite a few collapses.

And here we are, in the early stages of a climate crisis, also facing a global pandemic with the certain knowledge that it won’t be the last.

But it’s worth taking a look at what’s considered to be the most comprehensive look at the rise and fall of human civilizations, historian Arnold Toynbee’s massive A Study Of History. Having analysed 28 civilisations, Toynbee saw strong patterns, one of the most crucial being the gradual failure of the creative minority that leads and drives a society. Such leaders become complacent, resting too much on their laurels rather than continuing to reinvigorate their societies. The rest of the population—the proletariat—become increasingly dissatisfied. Social upheaval begins from within, and outside pressures increase as the central authority weakens. The change that follows can take many forms, but it is inexorable. Environmental factors like disease and climate can hasten and shape the change, but the impetus for it comes from the civilisations’ own internal vulnerabilities. Some historians believe that social inequality is a powerful contributing factor too, and that societies can collapse under the weight of their own bureaucracies.

Does that sound like what we’re seeing in a world where wealth is increasingly hoarded by the one percent?

Just a thought.

Science fiction writers insist that our job isn’t to predict the exact details of the future, but to point out the many different futures that might happen, so the world can clearly see the ones it doesn’t want. So what are some of the long-term implications of this Covid-19 crisis?

We’ve discovered that a surprising percentage of office work really can be done from home with current and emerging technology. If the trend persists, the demand for commercial real estate could plummet, easing overcrowded business centres of cities (allowing them to be re-purposed or even re-greened), and shrinking concrete production (a huge polluter and consumer of energy). It could mean momentous reductions in commuter traffic too. With the price of oil already hitting unthinkable lows, a continued loss of demand might be the final straw that breaks the Big Oil camel’s back—the beginning of the end of our society’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Compounding that impact will be a significant shrinkage in the airline industry—it might be a long time before people again feel comfortable packed into pressurized tubes with hundreds of others for hours at a time, and navigating airports among travellers from all over the world.

Covid-19 has also taught us the dangers of relying on global commerce for essentials like personal protective equipment, medicines, and even food. We’ve allowed vast amounts of production to be moved to certain countries because of cheaper labour, only to be caught with our pants down when a crisis hits. Then we’re stunned to find that the things we urgently need are in short supply. If we learn that lesson (and we should!), more products will once again be produced close to where they’re consumed. This could have a real impact on global shipping and trucking, two more of the most egregious carbon emitters.

The above trends taken together could result in the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions we desperately need to head off the worst of climate change. A surprising benefit of a horrible event.

Another big change could be in the wind: When a financial recession hits, governments often try to spend their way back out of it, but they really count on consumers regaining enough confidence to go out and buy lots of goods. That’s the medicine that cures a sick economy. Well, in the past couple of months enormous numbers of people have been thrown out of work, at least temporarily. National and regional governments have had to step in with a whole spectrum of financial supports. Some countries will be judged to have done a better job of that than others, and if, after Covid-19 passes, the economies of those countries also perform a more successful rebound, it will be powerful evidence in support of a guaranteed minimum income or universal basic income for citizens. In some places, that idea is considered unthinkably socialist. In other places, it’s already being done. But if Covid-19 shows that citizens kept from bankruptcy by government support programs can quickly regain their confidence and spend their way back to communal economic health, that will be a persuasive argument for ongoing measures to reduce financial hardship and poverty.

All in all, I certainly don’t expect our current civilization to collapse, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see significant shifts in political power around the world, especially when some countries like the U.S have been let down so badly by their leadership.

And while these are some of the biggest changes we might see, there will also be hundreds of others, especially involving more spending on preventative medical research and treatment measures. Increased reliance on social networking, the internet, and nearly every aspect of communications technology. Remote education. Food delivery. Shopping online from local retailers. Just observe the creative ways people have coped with the lockdowns, and think about how many of those solutions will catch on and stick around.

It will give you something to do while you’re stuck at home!

A Sampling of Additional Reading

https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/these-4-ancient-apocalypses-changed-the-course-of-civilization

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190218-are-we-on-the-road-to-civilisation-collapse

https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/study-history  Arnold Toynbee

https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/pandemics-timeline https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-pandemics-change-history

https://www.businessinsider.com/pandemics-that-changed-the-course-of-human-history-coronavirus-flu-aids-plague#coronavirus-or-covid-19-2019-present-11

And an interesting panel discussion on the subject that includes science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaLphVBg9ew&feature=share

IS COVID-19 A SCIENCE FICTION SCENARIO?

The quick answer to the title of this post is: of course!

Science fiction doesn’t try to predict individual events. It looks at societal trends and tries to envision the implications of those trends. Epidemics and pandemics have happened many times in human history, but the more we improved our means of traveling from place to place, and the more interconnected our global society became, the more we increased the potential of a disease outbreak affecting every human on the planet. As this trend became apparent, fiction writers took to it like a virus to a growth culture. So there have been lots of stories featuring pandemics although, to my recollection, not as many that take place during the spread of the infection. Movies seem to have dipped into that well more often, including some nail-biting examples like 1995’s Outbreak and the one everyone’s watching on Netflix lately, the 2011 film Contagion. A much larger number of novels take place before or after the pandemic. The “befores” range from vintage thriller The Satan Bug by Alistair MacLean to one of the first great technothrillers, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. “Afters” are too numerous to mention, but some standouts include Stephen King’s The Stand, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. A fictional pandemic is a convenient way of creating a post-apocalyptic setting with a drastically reduced human population and a devastated social infrastructure—a perfect environment for lots of gritty and emotional drama.

It’s a little harder to understand why so much of pandemic fiction involves plagues that turn people into zombies. Examples include I Am Legend by Richard Matheson and World War Z by Max Brooks. It’s a sub-genre in itself, but aren’t real pandemics scary enough?

It can be fun imagining the chills and challenges such a bleak setting can provide. It’s no fun at all actually living through a scenario like that. Like Covid-19.

Every story’s a little different, but it’s possible to list some of the things that pandemic fiction predicts will happen, and compare them to what we’re really seeing:

People will flee the cities: There’s been no mass exodus yet. However, where I live in Ontario, Canada, many people have left their city homes to isolate themselves at their vacation properties. Sensible, at first glance, except if they do get sick or injured, the health care facilities in such places will be overwhelmed.

Governments will be unprepared: Real examples are everywhere. Most are just from a lack of foresight, but some responses, like from the Trump White House, look more like criminal negligence.

Food and other essential supplies will quickly become scarce: So far only toilet paper! (What in hell is that about anyway???) Supply chains are holding up well to this point, except for critical medical supplies like masks and ventilators, but if the crisis is prolonged and even more stringent lockdowns are necessary, some rationing might become necessary.

Looting becomes rampant: It’s easy to see why this would be expected, given that so many businesses are temporarily abandoned. But I haven’t heard about it going on. Maybe it’s low priority news, or perhaps police are keeping quiet about it, but really, who are thieves going to sell the stuff to? When so many people see themselves as potential victims of this, I think most folks will alert the police rather than rewarding lowlifes who take advantage of a pandemic to rob the unfortunate. Hopefully, too, governments’ support of people unable to work will keep them from having to steal out of necessity.

Powerful people will act like warlords, hoarding and creating their own fiefdoms: There is some hoarding going on, but mostly it seems to be misguided morons hoping to make money off people’s fears. Fortunately, governments are cracking down hard on these people (as they should) and there’s no need to take their bait. As to survivalist compounds and the like? The reality is that trying to hide from the infection as a group would not be smart. All it would take is one carrier to get in and suddenly your protected compound is like a cruise ship. Much better to isolate ourselves individually. Whether that value equation could change if food becomes more scarce is anybody’s guess.

It’s every man for himself: I guess we SF writers are a cynical lot, or maybe it’s just inherently more dramatic, but the greatest danger from a fictional pandemic (once the disease has run its course) is from other humans. People turn violent, fighting over every scrap—to hell with friendships and any sort of benevolence toward our fellow beings. Of course, the reality we’re seeing is the opposite of that. People are eager to help others, friends, family, and strangers, especially assisting the elderly with visits and deliveries. Not to mention the selflessness of front-line health care workers, first responders, and so many people in every kind of service industry doing their part. It’s truly heartwarming and inspiring and, believe me, we writers would love to continue to be proven wrong!

We’re also seeing a lot of things I’m not sure any writers predicted. The weird stuff includes a rise in street-racing (because traffic is so sparse), shoppers emptying the toilet paper aisles in grocery stores (you can’t eat toilet paper, people!!), and some misguided religious leaders blithely ignoring calls to avoid gathering in groups. Stupidity is not a blessing.

On the good side, who could have predicted how businesses like restaurants are adapting to lockdown restrictions? Or that manufacturers would re-tool their factories to produce ventilators and even invent better ones, while idled fabric workers sew masks for hospitals? Who would have thought that neighbours would do communal exercising in their front yards across from one another, or have parties by sitting alone on their front steps talking to each other on the phone? Who knew that artists and performers would offer free online concerts, readings, theatre shows; that experts would provide free lessons of every kind; that teachers would provide home schooling resources and parents so diligently share them? In fact, I don’t think anyone could have predicted the way online socializing and sharing has soared—it’s a new phenomenon peaking at just the right time. Ain’t human ingenuity a wonder? And kindness. Let’s not forget kindness.

There’s even some evidence that this unplanned wrench in our collective plans is giving our planet some much-needed relief from our constant abuse.

So while relatively few fictional pandemics turn out well, there’s good reason to hope that the real thing will have a much happier ending.

Do your part. Help where you can. Stay home as much as humanly possible.

After all, there are lots of great books to read!

(P.S. Here’s a Goodreads list of Popular Pandemic Books!)

THE PRIMUS LABYRINTH IS YOURS TO OWN, OR WIN!

My new science fiction thriller The Primus Labyrinth is now available to pre-order!

You can buy it in epub and mobi e-book formats right here in my own bookstore, or at places like Amazon US, Amazon Canada, Kobo, and almost every other online book retailer. The print version, with a solid 470 pages of suspense and action, is available from Amazon, Indigo, and other retailers online, or can be ordered through most good bookstores.

Here’s the book description:

In a coercion plot against the U.S. president, a VIP’s bloodstream has been mined with germ-sized bombs. The only hope is a prototype virus-sized submersible, but the man most qualified to pilot it, Curran Hunter, is traumatized by a near-fatal underwater accident. The sub is piloted by virtual reality—there should be no danger—but when VR becomes full telepresence, Hunter’s very sanity is on the brink. The bombs could be detonated at any moment. Mercenaries are mobilizing to kill the team of scientists working with Hunter. And he’s fallen in love with the victim.

But to save her life will require the deepest violation of all.

Although it was inspired by one of my movie favourites Fantastic Voyage, The Primus Labyrinth is wholly original and will take you to one of the strangest and least-travelled places in science fiction: the labyrinth of vessels that transports our very life’s blood. Early readers say it’s perfect for fans of Michael Crichton.

But there’s more good news! If you’re a US member of Goodreads, you could win one of 100 copies of the Kindle version of The Primus Labyrinth that I’m giving away all through March. Just enter at its Goodreads Giveaway page, but again, it’s for Goodreads US members only.

If you love getting deals on e-books like I do, you should sign up with BookBub. Every day they’ll send you an email of Daily Featured Deals: e-books from the genres you choose, all heavily discounted. Many of them are free. Most are $1.99 or $2.99.  And I’d love to have you follow me at BookBub so you can be the first to know when I have new releases or special deals there.

One last thing: whether you win a copy of The Primus Labyrinth or buy one, I truly hope you’ll spend a couple of minutes to review the novel at Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever else you and your friends share books. It costs you nothing, but it’s one of the very best ways to help your favourite authors keep writing the books you love.

SHOULD WE GET SERIOUS ABOUT THE SEARCH FOR E.T.?

Did our earliest human ancestors look up at the points of light in the night sky and wonder: are we alone in the universe?

Well, they certainly had no concept of stars or planets or evolution, but they saw patterns in those bright dots that spoke to them of strange beings and creatures. And there’s no doubt that once we did comprehend that some of those dots were planets like our own, we wondered if they could be inhabited.

The question has persisted, and though it might have been dampened a little once we learned how inhospitable our sister planets Mars and Venus are to life, there’s been a resurgence fuelled by our discovery of hundreds of planets circling other stars. Collectively, the pursuit of answers to such questions has become known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Although ‘outer space aliens’ would have to be awesomely powerful to create something we could see through optical telescopes, it was understood early on that an advanced civilization would very likely produce energy transmissions detectable on the radio bands. Scientific genius Nikola Tesla thought he’d detected a Martian signal in 1899, and in 1924, when Mars was at its closest distance to Earth in 80 years, the USA held a ‘Radio Silence Day’, halting radio transmissions for five minutes every hour to enable scientists to listen for possible signals from the red planet. Radio telescopes have been actively involved in SETI since the late 1950’s, and especially during the 1970’s and later, although US government funding of NASA’s SETI efforts was cut in 1981. The SETI@home project involves average people lending the processing power of their home computers to the search, analysing telescope data. After a bit of a slump in interest, in 2015 famed physicist Stephen Hawking and billionaire Yuri Milner announced a ten-year $100 million project called Breakthrough Listen that pays for dedicated telescope time. And now in 2020, on the heels of an announcement that the Very Large Array radio telescope in Mexico will join the search, the director of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia, Dr. Anthony Beasley has been quoted as saying that it’s "time for SETI to come in from the cold and be properly integrated to all other areas of astronomy". Beasley insists that governments should commit funding to SETI. Of course, the idea of using tax dollars to search for intelligent life in outer space has always been controversial.

Why is it so important to know if there are intelligent species out there?

Science fiction has gotten its teeth into the subject from the earliest days. H.G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds raised one of the most compelling reasons: what if a race of aliens came to Earth with hostile intentions? It’s a given that such invaders would be more technologically advanced than we are, or they wouldn’t be able to cross the enormous distances involved, and we know that the clash of unequal societies in human history has never gone well for the less advanced ones. Human explorers travelled to distant lands for specific reasons: to take resources from the new territory back home with them, to capture slaves, or to use the new lands strategically in their conflicts with others. A secondary motivation was to convert inhabitants of such places to their own belief systems. That motivator was outwardly characterized as altruistic benevolence—wanting to help the ‘less fortunate’—and there may have been benefits along the way, but few would argue that they’ve outweighed the harm done.

Of course, we can’t judge the motivations of alien species by human standards, can we? They may think in completely different ways with utterly different values.

Sure. Statistically, I suppose the spectrum ranges from species that would squash us like ants, to godlike races determined to bring peace and love to the galaxy. The thing is, we can’t afford to assume the latter, so every bit of warning we can get about who is out there is vital.

I want to make it clear that, while I do think we should search for signs of extraterrestrial life, I do not support sending out signals to attract attention. It’s just too risky. (Besides, with nearly a century of profligate radio and television transmissions, what’s the point of adding more?! That’d be like holding up a sandwich board in Times Square.)

And if all of the above has given you the impression that I expect hostility from non-terrestrials, in fact I don’t—I believe they would have good intentions. But you know what they say about the road to hell….

Even without the threat factor, there are other extremely valuable results that could come from  the confirmation of intelligent life around other stars.

We would know that intelligence/sentience is an integral part of the universe, and not just a fluke. That would open our eyes to seeing the potential for sentience among our fellow life forms on Earth, gaining a better appreciation of the other life that shares our planet. It would also force us to be more open-minded about the ways of those strange to us.

We would know that other places in the galaxy are inhabitable, motivating us to spread human life (and hopefully other Earth life) beyond our fragile globe, either because we need to, or just to ensure against a cosmic catastrophe.

We might gain clues that would help us advance our own science in unknowable ways, perhaps by whole new approaches that wouldn’t have occurred to us. We might even find ways to consult and partner with another species for our own betterment.

And one of the most important benefits of discovering a more advanced civilization: we could see proof that it’s possible to survive the enormous technological change we’re undergoing without rendering ourselves extinct. Not only survive, but thrive, perhaps with the kind of benevolent egalitarian society envisioned in our most optimistic imaginings, like the world of Star Trek.

Discovering intelligent life elsewhere in the universe could provide tangible hope for the whole human race.

Isn’t that worth a few million bucks?

PRIVACY SURRENDERED

At a time when everyone’s offering their forecasts of what the new decade will bring, there are so many fronts one could explore. But over the holidays I was struck by how often one subject came up in conversation: surveillance technology. Not so much the kind forced upon us, but the kind we’re willingly embracing. Siri and Alexa. Google Nest. Facebook Portal. Some of us are willing to have internet-connected devices listen and watch us 24/7 for those times when we want to give a command to turn on a light, turn up the thermostat, place a call, or play a game that reacts to our physical movements.

Used to be that a peeping Tom had to sneak up to our windows. How times have changed!

I’m not a luddite—I use my laptop and smartphone constantly—but I have been known to put masking tape over the laptop camera and I’ve turned Siri off on both my Mac and iPhone (I’d never had the “Listen” feature activated anyway). Does that mean I’m now confident that my devices aren’t listening and watching? Not really. I’m counting on being too old, boring, and frugal to be of interest!

But isn’t it cool to think that you can just talk to your house and appliances and have them do the things you want without lifting a finger? Of course it is. And almost all of that functionality could be accomplished with a purely local non-connected system. Except that wouldn’t let the tech giants gather and sell information about you, and that’s how they make a big chunk of their money. As a wise person has said, if you’re not paying for a product (or you’re paying much less than its worth) then you are the product.

Along with all of this potential surveillance at home, there’s increasing use of closed circuit cameras and facial recognition in buildings and the streets of major cities (and smaller centres the moment they can afford it), police and military drones, and ever-more-advanced optics in reconnaissance satellites, so true privacy will be as rare as [insert your own joke about virgins here].

I see no signs of this trend ending anytime soon—privacy legislation is being enacted, but can laws protect the privacy of someone who willingly gives it up? So my crystal ball says that by the end of this new decade the feeble struggle will have ended and society at large will have fully accepted that Big Data companies, governments, and faceless tech employees can see and hear everything we say and do, anywhere anytime. No big deal. Right?

What will this look like? Well, of course, the reason companies want to know so much about you is so they can sell you things, and by the end of the decade all advertising will be personalized advertising. Compliment a friend on their choice of jeans and a moment later your devices will be showing you how and where to buy them. I know people who’ve already experienced something like this, even when their phones have been locked. In ten years it will just be assumed. Store signs you pass will point out that they stock the product you were looking at on the person who just walked past you (thanks to eye movement analysis). If you still read physical magazines and linger over a particular ad, your favourite device will add that product to your wish list with a helpful link to the retailer who placed the ad. Your fridge will reorder groceries automatically based on not only your regular use but also your plans to entertain, host a kids’ sleepover, or go on a trip. Your home office will reorder supplies. So will your bathroom.

This personalized marketing will surround you in cars as well as your home, whether it’s a private car or, more likely, a shared ride or Uber-type vehicle (self-driven, though). And don’t worry about having to rummage through your purse to find a payment card. Apps will know the expression on your face when you’ve decided to buy something, and they’ll take it from there. Your closets and cupboards might remind you about articles you’ve bought and aren’t using, but you’ll be able to turn that function off, because who likes a nag anyway?

It also goes without saying that, even without posting on social media, all of your friends and acquaintances will know what you buy because that just might convince them to buy it too. You’ll be OK with that, because it’ll all be part of the social status game that no one will be able to avoid without going off to live in a cabin in the woods.

Buying things won’t be everything there is to life…not quite. People will still do other things in their homes and cars, and companies will find ways to monetize that. The most obvious way is pornography. Yes, I mean starring you. In ten years companies will no longer even pretend that they’re not recording and storing the things you do that might interest other people, and sex will be at the top of the list. Mind you, they won’t want you trying to sue for a cut of their profits, so they’ll probably use “deep fake” technology (already very advanced) to alter the appearance of you, your partner, and your home. Not only will such “amateur porn” be in demand, and accepted, but people will enjoy the game of watching it to see if they can spot themselves or others they know. After all, they’ll be able to set a preference for local subjects, maybe even neighbourhoods, just like the Find Friends apps you use now.

Bedrooms aren’t the only places people get intimate, and by 2030 most cars on the road will be self-driven. Freed of the burden of having to drive themselves, people will do other stuff. Though the fad will probably ease off after a few years, there will be an exuberant competition to see who can do the most outrageous things in their cars. Sex too? Of course!

Won’t all of this surveillance make us safer? How will criminals get away with anything when somebody’s always watching?

I think it’s pretty obvious that, as technology advances, so will the means to spoof or defeat it by those with enough money, like organized crime organizations. Or there’s always the low-tech method: bribing underpaid employees with access to all these feeds. One thing’s for sure, every item of value you own, your home and business addresses, your schedule, and your real-time location will be available at any time. Not to mention every other form of personal information imaginable. What more could a criminal ask for?

Is this just far-out paranoid conspiracy theory stuff? I only wish. Since much of it is already feasible, I’m probably being too conservative.

We’ll know in ten years. Maybe sooner.

WHERE WILL THE PAST DECADE'S DISCOVERIES LEAD US?

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

At the end of each year we humans love to take a look backward and review the changes that the passing year has brought. That urge is even stronger when we come to the end of a decade. The folks at National Geographic have provided a great overview of twenty of the key scientific advances of the 2010-2019 decade here, and there were some exciting ones: the discovery of thousands of planets around other stars, fantastic close-up views of Pluto, Vesta, and the Kuiper Belt object named Arrokoth, dramatic progress in rocket launching technology, the gene-splicing potential of Crispr-Cas9, and new insights into our ancient human ancestors. There was also one looming shadow over everything: the spectre of human-caused climate change.

For a refresher on the science, read the article and maybe follow the links or do research on your own to learn even more. But a science fiction writer can’t help but look at a list like this and wonder which of these developments will have the greatest impact on the human race in the years, decades, and centuries to come.

New knowledge about the ancient past of our species and others is fascinating, but barring major surprises (like finding out we’re descended from aliens) it probably won’t have much effect on how we move forward as a race. I believe that what we’re learning about the universe beyond our planet will have a bigger impact: not only knowing that there are potentially hundreds of habitable planets we might someday reach, but also that organic molecules—the building blocks of life—are present even on other planets and moons of our own solar system. Add to that the data we’re gathering about other celestial objects from asteroids, to comets, to dwarf planets, and recently two visitors from outside our solar system (the object Oumuamua and Comet Borisov), plus the rapid improvements in the technology we use to get beyond the atmosphere and function in outer space. These advancements all mean that the prospect of breaking out of our cradle Earth to other worlds is coming closer and closer to reality. I know that SF writers have often been overly optimistic on this subject, but I really do think it will happen within the lifetime of today’s children, and it will change everything.

Humans will live on other planets, maybe someday in other solar systems. There’s a good chance we’ll find life on those planets. We might even meet other thinking beings with advanced civilizations. All of those things are huge.

Sooner than space colonization, though, we’re going to witness the ramifications of gene-splicing technologies like Crispr-Cas9 along with rapidly advancing reproductive science. These things won’t just affect where we live, they will impact what we are as human beings. We could eliminate devastating genetic conditions, horrible diseases, and maybe even repair severe physical injuries. But we might also choose to “improve” the human body via cloning, tailored genes, and nanites (like microscopic repair robots in the human bloodstream), and those alterations could just as easily become driven by fashion as by medical necessity. Sure we’ll choose to bequeath our children with good genetic health. Will we also arrange for them to be born with cat’s eyes? Webbed fingers and toes? Genius IQs? We will link computer interfaces directly to our brains, and order replacement organs every few decades. The very definition of what it means to be human could change in ways we can’t even foresee now. I’d wager we’ll face some very challenging decisions on this front before the coming decade is through. The processes are already here, we’ve just been really lax about deciding how far they should go.

Yet even space travel and extreme human modification are a little ways off. The most imminent development we face as a race is global climate change.

We’ve had warnings about it since the 1970’s. Week after week we learn more. And even the frightening forecasts of climate scientists consistently turn out to be too conservative. Polar ice is melting, ocean levels are rising, coral is bleaching, extreme storms are increasing in frequency and strength. Our coastal communities will flood and dry regions will become full-blown deserts, forcing millions of refugees to flee across borders, sparking international conflicts. Food production will be threatened as weather ruins crops and fisheries are depleted.

That’s not being alarmist, that’s just science.

Bottom line? Climate change is, hands down, the most critical science story of the decade we’ve just lived through, and will have the biggest impact in the decade to come. If we can survive the mess we’ve made of our home planet, things could look very bright. We know that we can further reduce the suffering caused by disease and injury and continue to extend the human lifespan. We can find other places for us to live and ways to adapt ourselves to living there, which will relieve the population pressure that has caused so many of the current problems here on Earth.

2010-2019 has been a ground-breaking decade.

The decade to come just might be “make or break” for the human race.

POWERFUL SCIENCE AND SCIENCE FICTION

From time to time I like to offer a look at what other people are writing about science and science fiction. So here are my impressions of a couple of books I urge you to read. They’re completely different, and worthwhile for very different reasons, but both offer lots to think about.

The Power  by Naomi Alderman  (5 stars out of 5)

In The Power young women suddenly begin to discover that they have the power to concentrate electrical energy with a new, or previously dormant, organ in their bodies. They can awaken the power in older women too. They can use it as a plaything, or they can use it as a weapon. But it’s here to stay, and the world—religion, politics, relationships—will never be the same. The main characters Allie, Roxy, Margot, and Tunde (a man) are deeply flawed but relatable and real. There aren’t stereotype black hats and white hats here, though another writer might easily have taken this premise in that direction.

I was afraid this book might be anti-men. It isn't. In fact, it's extremely well-balanced. It depicts a shift in the gender power balance of the world, but doesn't portray the new as a shining improvement over the old. That would have made it a shallow book--instead it has real depth.

This novel could have been just a taut thriller or a clever science fiction tale, but Alderman makes the right decisions to make it much more: a modern classic.

18 Miles: The Epic Drama of Our Atmosphere and Its Weather  by Christopher Dewdney  (4 stars out of 5)

 When I had the pleasure of meeting Christopher, I’d just begun to read this book—I hadn’t read enough to talk meaningfully about it to him. But he’s a poet as well as a non-fiction writer, and a former book editor. You can easily see the evidence of both in this book.

Dewdney covers a lot of territory here, from the outer limits of our atmosphere to the Earth's core, from ancient myth to modern battles whose outcome was influenced by weather. And, of course, the challenges of our current climate change situation, though 18 Miles isn't heavily focused on that. Dewdney’s lifelong fascination with storms is easy to relate to, and his personal experience of Hurricane Katrina makes the details even more compelling. There are scientific explanations of clouds, wind patterns, precipitation and more, but served up in palatable portions, and accompanied by tales like the harrowing story of U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel William Rankin who bailed out of his crippled fighter jet straight into a colossal thunderstorm.

We Canadians get every kind of weather, and if you'd like to understand where it comes from instead of just complaining about it, this is a great book for you.

MY FIRST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL CAN SOON BE YOURS

I’ve written a number of novel manuscripts, so in deciding to enter “independent publishing” I faced a hard choice: which story should go first?

Well, I’ve decided to go with a science fiction thriller that comes from the Michael Crichton side of my writing persona.

Please welcome: The Primus Labyrinth!

Here’s the back cover blurb:

A woman’s bloodstream has been seeded with death.

An American president must betray his country or sacrifice a woman he loves.

And their only hope lies with a broken man and a desperate gamble.

Curran Hunter almost died at the bottom of the ocean. Now an innocent victim will die unless Hunter can purge her body of deadly devices by piloting the Primus, a prototype submersible the size of a virus. Its control system uses Virtual Reality—its creators assure Hunter there can be no danger.

They are utterly wrong.

Hunter’s every belief will be tested, his very sanity on the line for a woman he doesn’t know.

And to save her life will require the deepest violation of all.

Ride the currents of the inner ocean in a race against time in The Primus Labyrinth!

The novel was inspired by the 1960’s movie Fantastic Voyage, a long-time favourite of mine, though the two stories are very different.

The Primus Labyrinth will be published in print and e-book form in February 2020.

But here’s more good news: I’m going to give away 20 Advance Reader Copies of The Primus Labyrinth in e-book format and you could receive one of them!

Just send me an email at scott@scottoverton.ca  and say “Yes! Please send me an ARC of TPL! But send it right away—before Nov.3 . Then I’ll pick 20 winners and follow up with an email to ask you which e-format you’d prefer.

Is there a catch? No! But I do hope that you’ll be willing to read the book by January and post a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or both in time for my pre-sales order period. Because posting an honest review is the absolute best way you can support my writing.

So don’t wait—send me that email right now!

I love The Primus Labyrinth and I can’t wait for you to read it.

PAINTING NEW SPOTS IN A SPOTLESS MIND

Some years ago, scientists successfully introduced a “memory” into a sea slug by implanting it with some ribonucleic acid (RNA) from another sea slug that had the original experience. The experiment illustrated one of several mechanisms involving memory in living organisms, though it’s still a long way from, say, the movie Total Recall where Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character buys an artificial memory of a vacation he can’t afford (Colin Farrell in the 2012 remake—both movies are adaptations of the Philip K. Dick short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”).

However, recent research has brought a team of scientists closer to that capability. First, the researchers trained mice to associate an electric shock with a specific odour. They carefully observed which neurons in the mouse brain were stimulated by these activities. Then, using a technique called optogenetics, they used light to stimulate equivalent neurons in the brains of other mice, creating a “memory” in mice that had never experienced either the shock or the odour themselves.

Other research has shown that the most robust memories get their vividness and durability because they involve multiple neurons encoded the same way. You can easily see how this would happen when experiences are repeated lots of times, like when we practice skills to train ourselves, or actively memorize certain information. But particularly powerful experiences can produce a similar result. The more neurons involved in the memory, the better it’s able to withstand the loss of a neuron or two through aging or other malfunctions. Also, as with groups of former high school buddies who get together to reminisce, the slightly different information contributed by each of them produces a more accurate, fleshed-out whole. (Though we sometimes remember the same events very differently!)

The many processes involved in making, storing, and retrieving memories are still not well understood. Some neuroscientists will insist that memory storage in our brains is fairly nebulous, involving electrical potentials more than hard and fast artefacts of information. They’ll say that there’s no place in your brain where a picture of your first pet exists, although you can probably remember every line of its furry face (or think you can). Having been a radio broadcaster for decades, there are popular songs I’ve heard hundreds of times and, though I probably couldn’t recreate the recordings note for note, I can at least easily tell when I hear a remix or re-recording of a song even if it’s by the original artist. The singer holds a certain note a fraction longer, or the sax riff is played on an instrument with a slightly different tone than in the original. I have tunes playing in my head most of every day, no Spotify required. Maybe I don’t have a library of mp3s stuffed somewhere in my head, but the experience is pretty close to that. No wonder there’s no room in there for remembering to take out the garbage!

Because memory is such a critical part of our identities and how we perceive the world around us, the prospect of copying, erasing, altering, or replacing our memories is a disturbing one, which no doubt explains why the subject has appeared so often in science fiction. From the 1880’s when Edward Bellamy wrote Dr. Heidenhoff's Process about a doctor who could remove unwanted recollections, the subject of “memory editing” has been a staple of the genre. Getting rid of traumatic or otherwise unwanted memories is an obvious subject to explore, often used in military SF (the equivalent of joining the Foreign Legion) and, in the interest of an exciting plot, it usually goes wrong. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a great movie example. Erasing memories as a way of protecting secrets is especially common, utilized by the Mule in Asimov’s Foundation series, the Utopia-dwellers in Clarke’s The City and the Stars, the Strangers in the movie Dark City and the special agents of Men In Black, among many others. Memory erasure by aliens is an absolute given in UFO mythology!

Less common is the concept of actually inserting memories of experiences that never happened, like in Total Recall or the 2010 movie Inception (visually stunning and exciting, even if the science is non-existent)—this is more the territory of thrillers involving “brainwashing”, like The Manchurian Candidate. But the prospect of remembering things that may not have happened might be even more disturbing than losing memories. It not only calls our sense of identity into question, but the very knowledge of what is real and what isn’t.

A better understanding of how memory works could be a godsend to an aging population facing the increasing risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, and offers hope for those suffering brain injuries. We can readily believe that removing, or at least weakening, traumatic memories could be therapeutic for many troubled people. And artificially “remembered” skills or knowledge could be genuinely useful and save a lot of time. But it’s just as easy to imagine the frightening misuses such technology could be put to, as often seen in dystopian stories about authoritarian governments seeking to control the minds of the masses. Innovators in business or technology could be tricked into revealing vital secrets to competitors, or national security operatives fooled by hostile nations. Political leaders could be manipulated by enemies, or even just suspected of being controlled—the results of either could be devastating.

On the individual level, a victim of a tragic life might be given an invented past of happiness and fulfillment instead, allowing them to live the rest of their lives in contentment. Yet every struggle they’ve undergone, every achievement they’ve made, would be rendered meaningless.

As with so many areas of scientific advancement, the knowledge we’re gaining can be invaluable, but its value is in how we make use of it. That’s also where the pitfalls lie. And they are many.