Interview with Thomas R. Weaver, author of Artificial Wisdom

 

Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview Thomas R. Weaver, whose novel Artificial Wisdom has its debut on April 5th, 2024.

You started out as a tech entrepreneur and successfully created a start-up that you sold to Just Eat Takeaway. What made you decide to write?

Writing has been a dream of mine since I was twelve years old. I never really allowed myself to consider it as a career choice, for the very simple reason that I knew most authors made very little money. I thought it was a luxury, to be able to write, and that all the time I wasn’t investing in my family, my friends and myself should be channelled into earning a living.

After selling my startup, I suddenly had “free time”, for the first time since childhood, and I realised I could choose how I wanted to spend that time. I’d had story ideas bubbling in my head for decades, and now I had no niggling voices telling me to ignore them and do something “more productive.”

What was the kernel of your idea for Artificial Wisdom and why did you choose to write it now?

One reviewer described Artificial Wisdom as full to the brim with ideas, so I think it’s fair to say it wasn’t just one kernel, but a whole bag of corn popping together. One of those was certainly the bubbling certainty, post-Brexit here in the UK and through observing US politics, that we were becoming more and more polarised as a society, and disinformation through social media was becoming very effective at encouraging large groups of people to vote against their own self-interest. I wondered what impact technology would have on that, particularly artificial intelligence, for better and for worse.

Then there was the climate aspect: the book takes place in 2050, in a world ravaged by shifts in the climate. This sprung from my own fears about the world my children would be inheriting and the lives they will lead when they are my age, and it absolutely seemed like it was timely to take on all of this from the lens of the near-future.

Why did you decide to combine the themes of AI and climate change (and arguably the threat of populist politicians?) What made you concerned about both AI and climate change and why was it important to use fiction to deal with your concerns?

I believe part of the role of speculative fiction is helping us see the greatest challenges of our time through the lens of tomorrow. I think humankind has a tendency to ignore daunting truths until they are too big to ignore, and sci-fi helps us confront them through stories. In 1984, for example, Orwell highlighted the dangers of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and the manipulation of language and truth, themes that have stayed incredibly relevant in the 75 years since he wrote it.

Climate change is arguably the most daunting existential threat humanity has ever confronted. What makes this challenge particularly formidable is the fact that a significant, powerful, and vocal segment of our population sees the threat as a matter of personal belief or political ideology. Populist politicians, and disinformation over social media, have made all this far, far worse, and seeing the division in the way we dealt with the pandemic, as a species, could not have made it more stark: this undermines our collective ability to take action.

Should we leave it too late to mitigate carbon emissions and rising temperatures of the air and sea through natural means – and arguable we already have –  then technology will have to play a part whether we like it or not. That will come at a cost. Artificial Intelligence may prove hugely important in helping us navigate this, because the data and science may prove to be too complicated for us to handle unaided.

But some (not all) say Artificial Intelligence is also an existential risk to humanity. By opening the gateway to superintelligence, might we not find ourselves supplanted as the dominant species on the planet? Or, will we perhaps begin to augment ourselves, and become a new species in the process?

These are, therefore, the biggest issues of our time, in my view. It’s an issue with no black and white answers. What could be better for fiction to squint at?

Would you say the novel is post-apocalyptic science fiction?

I’d say it’s pre-apocalyptic, not post. Most of the great post-apocalyptic science fictions (for me: Day of the Triffids, Station Eleven, The Road, and arguably half of the fantasy genre) detail life after a collapse. Artificial Wisdom is about trying to avoid the collapse in the first place.

Is it science fiction? Yes, but I think that’s a broad label which sometimes conjured up aliens, lightsabers and space-schools. I’m here for all of that, but I see this as a near-future technothriller, more akin to Jurassic Park than Ender’s Game.

Who is your protagonist, Marcus Tully, and where is he at the start of the book?

Marcus Tully is an investigative journalist, arguably one of the most influential of the time, though it is a time where journalists work for themselves, not for media networks. He’s a man that fanatically believes in the importance of the truth in civic society, no matter what the consequences may be of revealing them. Ten years prior to the start of the novel, he lost his wife and unborn child in the greatest climate disaster to date. He never really got over it, and moreover, he doesn’t want to.

You’ve called that climate disaster the tabkhir: hundreds of millions in the Persian Gulf have been killed by a wet-bulb heatwave. How is Tully drawn into the most crucial piece of journalistic investigation of his life?

At the beginning of the novel, he is leaked information by a whistleblower implying that this disaster may have been caused by geo-engineering by the USA to avert their own disaster. The candidate who made that call is running in an election with crucial stakes: a dictatorship, the make-or-break mandate to steer all nations through the changes needed to save humanity from a climate apocalypse. His only opponent is the world’s first political AI. He has a huge conflict of interest, but there is no-one else he’d trust to investigate this instead.

What are the different challenges of being an entrepreneur and writing a novel?

One of the biggest differences is that being an entrepreneur, and especially CEO of a venture capital-backed startup, means getting very good at context switching. You can find yourself dealing with a huge range of things within an hour, from a disgruntled message from a board member to members of your executive team arguing to a customer threatening to pull the plug (can you tell how much I enjoyed that world?).

To write, you need to get into a cognitive state which you can’t easily get to if you’re being distracted. It’s like you are visualising something happening across an infinite number of parallel worlds, in slow motion, capturing the essence of it, but also moulding it as you write it down, choosing which world is the main one and which choices are just discounted possibilities. If you get distracted, you can still write, but you lose the thread. 

At the same time, there’s a lot of similarities. You need a lot of self-belief, because you are putting something out there in the world, taking a risk people will judge you on. You face a lot of criticism and rejection. You need to be able to persevere and see things through to a conclusion, and to be very comfortable with uncertainty (in fact, the longer you are comfortable with not knowing the answer, the better the eventual answer may be).

What is your writing schedule? 

I’d love to say I’m one of those professional writers with a strong sense of routine who locks themselves in their garden cabin between 5am and 10am and won’t come out until they’ve written 3,000 words. I’d love to be that person. I’m just not. I believe in managing mindset, not time. When I’m in the right mindset for writing, I’ll dedicate a lot of time to it, hours in a day. When I’m not, I might not write at all, or maybe I’ll get something done just to have moved my wordcount target a little. I’m better writing before I move into more “cognitively easier” parts of my to-do list, such as admin, marketing or literally anything else. The procrastination is the real battle - that and my addiction to Twitter/Threads.

With your experience in startups, how much thought have you devoted to marketing, a critical skill for any author today?

A lot, though there is still a huge amount to learn because it’s a very different product to market than any I’ve dealt with before – in particular, why someone that wants to read chooses your book over anyone else’s in the vast recorded library of stories told by other members of our species… It’s quite unlike anything else out there. Even films and music are chosen and consumed in very different ways. 

One element I was adamant about was, to put a business term on it, packaging. In today’s social age, the look and feel of a product implies everything about the quality of the product itself. I wanted an incredible cover, and to produce a beautiful, stunning hardback edition first, because I wanted this book to be able to compete with the very best of traditionally published fiction.

Do you think humanity will rise to confront the twin threats of AI and climate change?

I do not believe humanity as a singular block will rise to confront anything. We are fragmented and have given the ability for everyone to shout over each other and amplify the very worst of our behaviours. I’m an optimist enough to believe that there will be some, enough, that we’ll get there. I have hope. I just wonder how much resistance there will be to the things we need to do to save ourselves, and what impact that resistance will ultimately have.

The choice facing world citizens in 2050 is a stark one: between AI politician Solomon, governor of New Carthage, a floating, domed city-state, protecting the elite, and a ruthless American President. What do you feel about words like “elite” which can be somewhat loaded?

Ultimately a lot of the words and ideas within Artificial Wisdom will feel loaded to a lot of people. I had to write it as the characters saw it. Nothing there is in my voice. Tully sees the world differently to, say, Haymaker, a former resident of New Orleans, a climate refugee who comes to work on his team after living on the streets of London, or Johan Pedersen, a venture capitalist who lives in New Carthage and is, in fact, one of its primary backers. It’s Tully who sees New Carthage as a dome to protect the elite while the world burns. Pedersen would view it as an essential refuge for humanity – it just so happens they couldn’t build enough floating cities for everyone, not yet of course.  As for Haymaker, he’d probably argue Tully himself is part of the elite.

What would you like readers to take away from Artificial Wisdom?

I want readers to have hope for the future, and yet recognise there is no hope unless we act –  as collectively as possible – to make changes.

But also, I want people to enjoy the read. This isn’t designed to be depressing read. I wanted my readers to be unable to put it down and to be debating it with friends and family when finished. I love hearing reviewers tell me how they’ve ended up talking about it for weeks afterward. That’s the highest praise you can have.

What can you tell us about the novel you’re working on now, Futilitytown?

Futilitytown is very different to Artificial Wisdom. I saw it as a bit more of a palette cleanser, if I’m honest, a really fun ride that is (a little) lighter on the themes. It’s a sci-fi thriller, but again I’m being very careful to avoid aliens, lightsabers and space-schools. I have a unique setting. One alpha reader described it as “like Zion in the Matrix,” someone else as “like a female Jack Reacher meets Philip Marlowe in a Silo-esque world (from the Wool series) with a 1930s New York / Tokyo noir vibe".

“Saga is a maintenance engineer on a vast intergenerational colony ship that left Earth on a five hundred year voyage, six hundred years ago. But to make ends meet for her and her daughter, she’s also a fixer, hired to discreetly resolve personal problems, if necessary with violence.

When Lola, a resident of Futilitytown, the most remote and rundown town on the deck, hires Saga to intervene with a neighbour preying on Lola’s daughter, she didn’t plan on getting a female fixer for her money.

Not every intervention goes smoothly, however. As Lola and her daughter disappear, what secrets are the residents of Futilitytown hiding? Why have so many children been taken out of school and sent away?

Saga will find herself trying to unpick a tangled web of plots and conspiracies that will threaten the lives of everyone on deck, the ship.”

There’s a lot of work still to do on it, but I’m excited about this one, and I think it has series potential that Artificial Wisdom doesn’t (though there will, in all likeliness, be a sequel).

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About Thomas R. Weaver:

THOMAS R WEAVER writes stories about tomorrow to help make sense of today.

Aside from writing, Thomas is a UK-based tech entrepreneur. His last startup was acquired by Just Eat Takeaway; his new one is still in stealth but backed by a major Silicon Valley tech accelerator. 

After successfully launching a tech startup in the restaurant hospitality space which transformed payment and ordering experiences he realized he had no more excuses not to do what he always wanted to do: write fiction. Despite swearing to friends and family (none of whom apparently believed him) that he’d never run another startup again, he recently started another one focussed on bringing some of the ideas in “Artificial Wisdom,” his debut novel, to life, specifically around communicating in augmented reality. 

In Thomas’s spare time, he is an avid cook, and loves drawing, painting, and chess. He usually writes immediately after a workout and spa session down his local gym. Thomas collects more books than he has time to read, especially if they have beautiful covers, like Folio editions. He’s a sucker for great covers. Learn more about Thomas and his debut “Artificial Wisdom” at his website, here. 

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Interview with Mark Whiteway, author of Carrie Anne's World: An Odyssey through Space and Time

Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview Mark Whiteway, the author of forthcoming novel Carrie Anne's World: An Odyssey through Space and Time.

Your latest novel, Carrie Anne's World, debuts in April 2021. Tell us about the book and the titular character.

Carrie Anne’s World is the story of a girl lost in space and time, set against the background of an Earth being decimated by climate change.

We meet Carrie Anne alone on a cliff top with no memory of her past. Who is she? Where is she? And how did she get here? Mike O’Keefe. A gap-year student volunteering on a conservation project encounters her in a series of recurring dreams. He dismisses the experience, but when elements from his dreams begin appearing in the waking world, he is propelled on a two billion year journey spanning the evolution of the solar system with the survival of Humanity at stake!

According to the blurb, your protagonist, Mike O'Keefe, visits the paradise island of Koh Tao when he is caught up in a terrorist attack. What was the inspiration for the story?

Both awareness of climate change and the determination to tackle it have grown in recent years so that most people agree it’s the biggest issue currently facing Mankind.

I remember seeing the movie Silent Running starring Bruce Dern whose character is trying to save the last of Earth’s forests. It was a movie well ahead of its time - its director and SFX specialists went on to produce Star Wars. But it also asks a thought-provoking question – how far would you go to protect Earth’s ecology?

This is a key theme in Carrie Anne’s World. It’s a cautionary tale, but also a tale of hope. Humans are capable of unbelievable stupidity but also great nobility. Which will win out in the end, I wonder?

You have written many books - two trilogies and a quartet. Is this novel a standalone and does it connect with any of your other universes?

No, Carrie Anne’s World has no connection to the Lodestone or Arc of the Universe sagas.

It was conceived as a standalone novel, but as with all of my books, I have left room for a sequel. There is plenty of scope for a “Return to Carrie Anne’s world”!

Are you primarily a writer of Science Fiction or do you stray into other genres?

Science fiction is my first love, but I have developed a strong attachment to mysteries. Lodestone Book Five had a strong mystery element which was continued in Book Six.

Carrie Anne’s World follows in that tradition. The mysteries surrounding Carrie Anne and her world unfold slowly as the book continues. Early on she writes “6 = 3” in the sand, though she doesn’t comprehend the meaning. When Mike eventually figures it out, the solution to the puzzle sets the theme for the remainder of the book.

The book also has a dash of romance, for those who enjoy such things!

Tell us about The Lodestone Series, the two trilogies set on the planet Kelanni and its universe. What inspired you to create that world and did you anticipate that it would turn into six books?

No, I certainly didn’t!

The basic idea came from Einstein. His Theory of Relativity predicts a number of strange consequences for our understanding of reality. One of these is the possible existence of negative matter. Although negative matter has never been found, we know from the math involved that it would have some highly peculiar properties, including negative gravity and negative inertia. My thought was “What might happen to an alien society that was exposed to a source of negative matter and the power it offered?” The result was flying cloaks, engines that run without fuel and the Lodestone series of books!

The first trilogy met with great success. I had left an opening for the story to continue, so I began on a second Lodestone trilogy going back into Kelanni’s past and challenging many of the assumptions in the first trilogy. Book Six was a celebration of the series, bringing back all of your favourite characters for one final grand adventure!

However, I left three distinct plot lines to continue, so…

Is it fair to say, without giving away too much, that humans are not exactly the heroes of the series?

Yes…and no. In the beginning of the Lodestone story arc, it certainly seems that way. I did find that creating a situation where the reader is in sympathy with aliens and against humans was an interesting story mechanic. However, characters and races in my books are never entirely “white hat” or “black hat”. The Kelanni ultimately find humans they can trust and even work with.

How do you go about creating an alien world and peoples?

I can easily answer this, but I’m not sure you’ll understand the answer… The world grows around you.

Or to quote Ray Bradbury when he was asked how he writes; he said, “You jump off a cliff and build wings on the way down!”

For example, most people tell me that their favourite character in Lodestone is the Chandara. Boxx, and the Chandara life cycle is integral to the story, and yet I did not come up with the idea until I was well into the first volume. The only way I can explain it is that the creature came along when I needed it!

Your quartet of books appears under the title The Arc of the Universe. The hero is a human called Regan Quinn who finds himself on an epic journey to save humanity. Is this story set in the same universe as the one in The Lodestone series?

No, it’s completely different. Lodestone is set on the world of Kelanni. The Arc of the Universe takes place across a vast interstellar alliance known as “The Consensus” with worlds as diverse as Nemazi - a desert planet, wracked by storm fronts of fractured time; Pann - a layered world where civilizations build atop one another and The Haven - a lone world in a null universe - a world that cannot exist and yet does!

What sort of man is Regan Quinn? You mention that he is accompanied by his “reanimated son, Conor”. Does this story deal with matters of life and death as well?

Considering that everyone else dies in the first chapter of Book One, I would have to answer, “Yes”!

Regan Quinn is a colonist on a world circling Kapetyn’s star known as Eire. After losing his wife in death, he takes his son and joins another colony fleet with the aim of starting a new life. The vessels are attacked, his son dies and he wakes up in a white room where the only feature is a window where the view is constantly changing. Is he dead? Is he dreaming? Is he the subject of some bizarre experiment?

His son re-appears, whole and uninjured. But is it really his son…?

Your stories have won numerous awards and have been critically well-received. What does that mean to you as a writer?

It’s gratifying, but if I’m honest, I get more satisfaction from a reader who tells me how much they enjoyed the story!

You talk about your admiration for authors such as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Robert Heinlein, and live not far from Wells’s former home in Sussex, England. What is the importance of these writers to you?

When I was young, I was the ultimate bookworm. I read everything – R L Stevenson, C S Forrester, Edgar Allan Poe. Then I moved over to Wells, Verne and Heinlein as well as John Wyndham and John Brunner.

I was also a history nut, and this comes out strongly in the Arc series where the Elinare can transport you to anywhere you have ever known or heard of. It was a story mechanic I loved and used to the full! So Quinn ends up at the Alamo, the London Blitz, the Irish Uprising of 1920, the Minotaur’s Labyrinth and the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Inferno!

Your books have super cover art, and Carrie Anne's World is no exception. Tell us about the concepts and the artists behind them.

The Lodestone covers showcase the various vessels in the series from the Kelanni sailing ship on Book One to the floating Chezarel city of Book Six. The Arc Covers show the key characters and were designed by an artist from Belarus.

For Carrie Anne’s World, I contacted a number of designers, but Miblart came up with a cover that pretty well captured the mood of the book from the first draft. I plan to use them in future!

What are you reading now, and are there any TV shows you like to follow or stream?

Paul Kearney and Roger Zelazny. Both have moments of brilliance in their writing that simply blow you away!

Like America, Britain has a long tradition of Science Fiction, starting with Wells (if not before). How does British SF differ from that from the US?

Both have their “Greats”.

Actually, the first ever work of Science Fiction is generally considered to have been the classic Battle of Dorking, written in 1871 by the Englishman George Tomkyns Chesney. It will probably shock you to know that I have written a follow up! It’s a 5000 word short story, as yet unpublished, which takes Chesney’s story forward. So far as I know, I’m the only writer ever to have attempted the conceit of following up the original Chesney classic! As yet, only a handful of people have read it. It’s my best kept secret!

What are you working on next?

I am about 20 percent along with my next novel entitled, Whipstitch. Like Carrie Anne’s World, the central theme is the environment, but the story could not be more different. It takes place in Pennsylvania, and it’s the first book I have ever attempted to write in US English. I am eternally grateful to my American beta reader for correcting my frequent gaffs!

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About Mark Whiteway:

"Writing SciFi was a long held ambition of mine. As a kid, I read everything from Wells to Verne to Heinlein. At twelve years old, I wrote a novella. (I still have it, hand-written in a huge ledger). 

"Following that, life intervened, and it was only in April '09 that I determined to get back to writing. Several ideas had been running around in my head for some time, of which the Lodestone concept was the strongest. As I began to develop the story, it became clear that I was not going to be able to do justice to it in a single book, and so the Lodestone Series was born. The first trilogy was quite well received, which led to a second trilogy in the Lodestone universe and I then branched out into a new story which became The Arc of the Universe quartet of books. “Lockdown” enabled me to complete the epic Carrie Anne’s World and to start my next project. And on we go!         

Mark Whiteway lives in rural West Sussex, England.    

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Interview with Sarah Lahey, author of The Heartless Series

Today the Speculative Fiction Showcase is delighted to interview Sarah Lahey, author of The Heartless Series, whose first book was our featured new release on June 3rd.

Your first novel, Gravity is Heartless, Book 1 of The Heartless Series, debuted in June. First, can you tell us a little about the novel and what inspired you to write it?
I was interested in how the world would look for the next generation. I have three adult children and I was thinking about what the lives of their children, my potential grandchildren would be like. What technologies would they be using? How will they survive the oncoming effects of climate change, where sea levels have risen, and the planet is heating up? The novel is set a world where automated cities, vehicles, and homes are now standard, and artificial intelligence (AI), CRISPR gene editing, and quantum computing are a reality. I wanted to explore these ideas in the framework of an adventure, romance novel with a strong female protagonist. 

Gravity is Heartless is described as a Science Fiction novel set in the near future, in 2050. It deals with many issues that are already urgent and controversial in our time, such as climate change. Your protagonist, Quinn Buyers, is a climate scientist. Can you tell is a little about her and her story arc?
Quinn Buyers is fanatical about science, so much so, it’s almost like a religion to her. Yet despite her intelligence (she has a PhD in climate science, and a renowned mathematician mother) she doesn’t know much about herself, or the world around her. She invented a breakthrough predictive weather system, but she was two decades too late—in 2050 climate change is in full swing, and the people of Earth don’t need to be told it’s hot and dry, because it’s hot and dry all the time. 
When we first meet Quinn, she has repurposed her weather system to monitor solar flares, and when a climate catastrophe strikes it kills her research team, and her mother disappears, she embarks on a quest for answers that takes her across the globe. She meets an array of new people, and travels to foreign places, which force her to confront who she is, and what’s missing in her life. Under complicated circumstances she also falls in love, but she’s not sure if it’s the type of relationship she wants. 

Your background is as a senior lecturer teaching classes on Design, Technology, Sustainability and Creative Thinking at a design college in Sydney, Australia. How does the subject of your work feed into the creative writing process, if at all?
My work and research are crucial to my writing process. The subjects I teach have a strong bearing on the Heartless Novels—students aren’t the only ones learning in a class environment. I’m so lucky to be surrounded by a group of young adults who love design, art and technology, and who are passionate about contributing to the way we live in the 21st century. 
I’ve also been teaching sustainable design for a decade now. I’m a climate change advocate, but I was often surrounded by sceptics. So, I thought if people read my novel, they might understand more fully what life would be like in a world affected by massive consumption and the impact of burning fossil fuels for energy. But I also wanted the novel to be accessible to the youth culture of today, so it needed to be fun, an adventure, and above all optimistic.

We live in perilous times when the present seems quite threatening. What does a new Science Fiction novel bring to such circumstances?
I think times have always been perilous. There aren’t many moments in history when the world has sat still, where people all over the globe were able to say life was bliss and they felt 100 percent safe. The world is a scary place, but it’s always been a scary place. 
Science Fiction is the perfect way to explore our fears about this scary place, both in the present and the future. It poses questions about technology and progress; is technology good for us? Is it bad? The genre invites us to consider our options, and our choices in ‘what if’ scenarios. It asks, what will the world of the future be like if we do this thing right now? What will happen if we adopt this technology and make it mainstream?
Many people are concerned about the future, about technology and its effect on humanity and the way we live. They are worried that technological progress is not necessarily good for the individual or the environment, and I think that’s a very justified concern; commercial opportunities compromise moral and ethical issues. I think this is one of the reasons the genre is so important right now—we’ve been through a technological evolution in recent times, and with Science Fiction we get to play out some future scenarios. 

Why do you think Dystopian Science Fiction has been such an important strand since the time of George Orwell and H.G. Wells?
Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling books Sapiens and Homo Deus, says that Science Fiction is the most important of all artistic genres, because it shapes and prepares us for all the daunting and alarming ideas and new technologies—biotechnology, CRISPR gene editing, extended reality, AI in our homes and work places—that are coming our way. 
Dystopian Science Fiction novels are often full of future predictions that sometimes come true. George Orwell published 1984 in 1949, and some of his ideas have come true. In the novel there are telescreens, which monitor you and can see into your home. There’s a technology called Speakwrite that converts your speech to text. The Versifictor is an AI algorithm that generates music and literature; this year the first AI Eurovision Song contest was held.  And of course, there’s the overarching premise of Big Brother and mass surveillance, that’s played out in many modern cities around the world with the large number of CCTV cameras and face recognition devices. 
Also, Dystopic Fiction isn’t necessarily depressing. These novels are often full of wonderful ideas and employ terrific plots. The protagonist will surely go on a journey of some sort, and have an adventure, which is far removed from everyday life. The narrative will transport the reader to a new world, and this is often an emotional and psychological journey, as well as a nail-biting, page turning quest. These books can be exciting, they can be romantic adventures, they can be the perfect form of escapism. 

Tell us about your blog, The Automatic Pencil…
The Automatic Pencil is a design project that responds to the world of the 21st century. This is a world adjusting to its ideas on how humanity engages with nature, a world grappling with the rise of Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing, driverless vehicles, smart cities, digital currencies, automated homes and appliances, and climate change. What will the world be like in thirty years’ time? Who will you be in 2050 and how will you live? These are the questions my blog intends to address. 

Please can you tell us about your book cover and its design.
For the cover design I worked with Julie Metz, from She Writes Press. She asked me to sketch what I imagined the futuristic climate city, called Harmonia, to look like. My idea was that the main character and her AI meerkat offsider would grace the cover, but in hindsight, this was far too complicated. Julie’s advice was great, and I sent her my rudimentary sketches with some notes, and the fabulous Ben Perini did the rest. 
The futuristic climate city that adorns the cover is a cool haven that’s only available to the mega wealthy. In 2050 the global economic divide includes access to cool air, and while most of the world’s population lives in sweltering metropolises, which accommodate over a 100 million, a few elite citizens inhabit the first fully chilled climate cities. 
I love Ben’s design and I think it’s perfect for the book. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with for Book 2!

Gravity is Heartless is the first book in a trilogy. How do you see the story arc developing? 
The first book sets up a few major concerns that the main character, Quinn, needs to resolve in Book 2. First is the disappearance of her famous scientist mother, who mysteriously vanishes after a climate catastrophe. The cause of this catastrophe and whereabouts of her mother become the story arc for Book 2, Nostalgia Is Heartless. The second issue is Quinn’s relationship with her partner, who she thinks she’s probably in love with, but still needs to commit to the relationship. These concerns are resolved in Book 2. 
Book 3—without giving away too many details—introduces Alan Turning 1936 model of computation; the self-referential halting problem where the machine is programmed, switched on, given data, and is now up and running but it never stops. Never is a very long time, and with humanity essentially destroying the Earth, a race of Super AI species might be the only way to save the planet. 

What are you reading now?
My TBR pile includes A Long Petal of the Sea, by Isabel Allende, Uncanny Valley, by Anna Wiener, and Stephen King’s new book If It Bleeds. 
I’ve also recently finished a few best sellers; Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, Normal People by Sally Rooney, Boy Swallows Universe by fellow Aussie Trent Dalton, and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. 


Do you have any thoughts about the future of books? The death of the novel has been announced many times, but it seems to keep coming back. The oldest cave paintings are at least 40,000 years old. 
Humans are emotional creatures and we are programmed to respond to stories, and therefore books in all forms and genres. This is not something that will slip away easily, it’s been part of our DNA for tens of thousands of years. The tradition of oral story telling is a huge part of our ancestral past. Homer’s Iliad is said to date back 13 centuries. There’s an ancient Aboriginal tale told by the Gunditjmara people from south-eastern Australia, which describes how the volcano called Budj Bim was formed; this story might be 37,000 years old. One of the oldest stories ever written is The Epic of Gilgamesh; this text is a running theme through the Heartless series. 
We also engage with the world using our senses. When we walk into a book shop and pick up a book, we use four of our five sense—sight, touch, sound, smell—and books unleash powerful emotions within us. They are a way of teaching and remembering. They allow us to explore controversial or uncomfortable topics. They help us find order in a chaotic world. 

Are there any Science Fiction books or writers that you enjoy?
I like dark books and confronting tales that leave you slightly disturbed and wondering about the darker side of humanity. Ian McEwan’s work fits that description. I’m thinking of novels like The Cement Garden and his early series of short stories, First Love, Last Rites. I’m also a fan of William Gibson and loved Neuromancer and Burning Chrome. I’m looking forward to Agency, released this year, the 'sequel and a prequel' to his novel The Peripheral.

Science Fiction and Fantasy have become powerful genres in recent years. But genre itself is changing all the time. What are your thoughts about this?
Perhaps the changing nature of Science Fiction represents the changing nature of the 21st century. We have been through a massive technological revolution and enormous cultural and social upheaval in the last few decades. The world has not seen digital, biological and physical innovations like the ones we are now surrounded by.  Smart materials are redefining the building industry. Automation, 3D, and now 4D printing will change the way we produce and distribute goods. Blockchain technologies have altered the way we do business. We are living with robots. We can even edit the building blocks of life. The Science Fiction and Fantasy genre reflects these changes, but they are also able to offer more ideas and show us the outcomes. 

How do you see the readers of your book and what would you like them to take away from a reading?
The novel was written as a fast-paced, high stakes adventure. The ultimate holiday or airport read. Living in Australia, it takes us a long time to travel across the globe. New York is 21 hours away, it’s 14 hours to LA, and London is 24 hours.  So, I wanted to write a page turner; one based in hard, realistic science, wrapped around an adventure and romance plot. 
The book is designed to make you think about the future, what makes us human, climate change and how we interact with technologies. The novel also includes a diverse range of characters. The LGBQT community is represented, and a nonbinary pronoun is used for one character, so I wanted it to be inclusive. 

Why do you think people seem suspicious of Modernism and modern architecture and design?
When Modernism first came about in the mid-twentieth century, it permeated art, architecture, design, and literature because it offered a new way of viewing the world, a challenge to the status-quo and a call for new ways of seeing. Change is always scary, I guess. Personally, I think post-modernism is more of a concern! 

What will you do next?
So many projects and so little time. After The Heartless Series, I’d like to write a novel about my dog Desmo; she is a working dog, and she takes up a bit of my time. After that, there’s another Sci Fi series, which loosely links to The Heartless Series. I’m also keen to master the perfect scone mix. 

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About Sarah Lahey:

Sarah Lahey is a designer, educator, and writer. She holds bachelor’s degrees in interior design, communication, and visual culture, and works as a senior lecturer teaching classes on design, technology, sustainability and creative thinking. She has three children and lives on the Northern Beaches in Sydney, Australia.

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Guest blog by Timothy S. Johnston: The Second Cold War is Coming, and the Culprit is Climate Change

The Second Cold War is Coming, and the Culprit is Climate Change

(Graph from Wikipedia Commons, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies)

We are currently experiencing the greatest shift in climate in recorded history.   Earth has suffered five of the hottest years on record in the last decade.  Storms are growing in intensity.  Cropland is not producing what it once did.  Ocean levels are rising due to melting continental icecaps, ocean shipping facilities will soon be overwhelmed and inundated, and coastal metropolises such as New York City will have to build shore defences or citizens will have to abandon coastlines to move inland.

Economies will collapse.

People will rebel.

There will be military coups and dictatorships and chaos.

Countries will go to war for resources to sustain exploding populations.

And all because of global warming and climate change.

We’ve known about it for decades now.  Burning fossil fuels has been a major contributor, but not the only one.  We’ve been slashing and burning forests with impunity, especially in tropical areas, and the resulting emissions of carbon to the atmosphere is also a major cause.  Rice paddies, cattle populations, and rotting landfills are others.  Back in the 1970’s there was a major debate about nuclear power, and nations mostly backed away from it and kept on burning fossil fuels.

We reap what we sow, as a farmer might say, and they’re in serious trouble now too.

But is it all doom and gloom?

No.  There are alternatives, and my current series, The Rise of Oceania, takes place on Earth in the near future when superpowers are reeling from the effects of global warming, but they are also taking action.  They’re searching out new resources for their suffering populations, trying to mitigate the disaster by building floodwalls and shore defences, and shifting to cleaner power sources like fusion.

The oceans could be considered humanity’s salvation.  Seventy percent of the planet lies underwater.  There are vast, untouched resources there for us, should there one day be a need that outweighs the cost of extraction/harvest.  Consider kelp, for example, as an option to substitute for dying crops on land.  Many cultures already make use of various types of seaweed.  Under the right conditions, kelp grows a meter a day.  Earlier this year, and to the surprise of many experts, researchers reported massive kelp forests in the arctic, flourishing due to the changes in water temperatures and conditions.  One article on the discovery cites a current increase of kelp usage in world diets at 7% per year.

(Kelp.  Image from Wikipedia Commons, US National Park Center)

And there are other extremely valuable resources in our oceans.

Areas underwater near thermal vents (conduits releasing heat and gas and minerals from the Earth’s mantle, called Black Smokers) are littered with mineral nodules made up of manganese and iron.  These are gravel-sized or larger sediments on the ocean bottom.  No need to drill or dig — simply get down there (under immense pressures) and scoop them up.  When conditions on the surface reach a point where it becomes cost effective to mine nodules underwater, you can bet that the superpowers are going to start doing it.

(Manganese Nodule.  Image from Wikipedia Commons, user Koelle, de.wikipedia)

(Black Smoker, from Wikipedia Commons, US Geologic Survey)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtFFmDGIsa4

(Video from EVNautilus on YouTube:  Hydrothermal Vent — Black Smoker)

Fish can be farmed underwater too, held in pens by bubble fences and harvested quickly and easily.

These are the three main resources that superpowers will be looking for, and in my new series of books — The Savage Deeps is out in stores now — a Second Cold War fought between the superpowers underwater is the focus.  Not a single scene takes place above the water.  It’s about the nations of the world competing for resources and new technologies, often engaging in outright fighting.  There are massive submarine battles, torpedo battles, hand-to-hand combat in scuba gear, spycraft and espionage and sabotage and sub chases.

And lots of death.

And all underwater.

Global warming and climate change are pushing human beings on a dangerous course that right now can’t be corrected.  We can try to minimize the damage, but we started on this course at the outset of the Industrial Revolution in 1750 AD, and we’ve been burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon into the atmosphere (and other greenhouse gases like methane) for nearly three centuries.  We have to make changes or we’ll suffer the doomsday scenario described at the beginning of this article.  Those changes not only involve a shift to cleaner energy, but to supporting the less developed nations of the world to make changes, challenging superpowers like China to move away from using cheap coal, and we will also have to look for new resources as we deal with the damage we’ve caused.

The oceans may be our best hope at survival, and there will surely be competition under the waves, where no one can see what’s happening, and where people on land won’t even notice lost subs and divers and underwater habitats.

These are The Savage Deeps.

— Timothy S. Johnston, 4 March, 2020

About Timothy S. Johnston:

Timothy S. Johnston is a lifelong fan of thrillers and science fiction thrillers in both print and film. His greatest desire is to contribute to the genre which has given him so much over the past four decades. He wishes he could personally thank every novelist, screenwriter, filmmaker, director and actor who has ever inspired him to tell great stories. He has been an educator for twenty years and a writer for thirty. He lives on planet Earth, but he dreams of the stars. Timothy is the author of The War Beneath and The Savage Deeps. His futuristic murder mystery/thrillers include The Furnace, The Freezer, and The Void.

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The War Beneath won a 2018 GLOBAL THRILLER Award.  Now come The Savage Deeps.

War has come to the darkest depths of the deepest oceans.

Mayor Truman McClusky of Trieste City is at war with the world's superpowers. Laying claim to the resources of the ocean and its floor is the only way to survive in a world where global warming and rising sea levels ravage the surface. But when a Trieste City spy ends up dead—his body beaten beyond recognition—Mac realizes that his city is in mortal danger. The occupying force in Trieste knows more about his plans for independence than he thought, and they will stop at nothing to control Trieste and her people.

Mac flees with a small team that includes scientist and newcomer to the underwater city, Dr. Manesh Lazlow. Together they head for a secret base in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where they plan to create new technologies to fight the superpowers for dominance over the oceans. But the French have picked up Mac's scent and will stop at nothing to kill him. Mac must elude the French, protect his citizens against sabotage and spycraft, and discover the identity of a spy in his midst if he is going to save his city and compete with the superpowers. But he's just a tiny player in the grand scheme of ocean politics . . .

. . . unless he can get his new deep-sea engine working. With it he'll be able to forge deeper than any other sub in the oceans. And if that happens, then all hell is about to break loose.

At six kilometers down.

Purchase Links:                    www.timothysjohnston.com/savagedeepspurchase