Nature Future Conditional

The story behind the story: Overseer

This month’s Nature Physics plays host to an intriguing Futures story by Aldous Mercer called Overseer. If you’ve ever wished you could clone yourself so that you can do all of the things you want (and have) to do, then this story might give you pause. You can keep up-to-date with Aldous’s activities at his website or by following him on Twitter.  Here, he reveals what inspired him to write Overseer — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Overseer

Overseer started as a personal fantasy — shared by almost everyone I know, at some point in their lives — of being able to split myself in two (or four) to get more work done, to read more for pleasure, to travel, to stay at home and do the laundry.

Like many other science-fiction writers, my primary profession is that of a scientist and engineer, and any writing I do is by necessity relegated to the 04:00–06:00 timeslot. My works often take on the overtones of, if not addiction, then at the very least obsession. Compulsion. Administrative tasks, and personal correspondence, and my sorely underutilized rowing machine, they are all pushed to the side. And then the fantasy recurs — if only I could somehow find the time to do everything I wanted to!

But as I grow older, I believe more and more that time is not the problem. Energy, and will-power, and attention-spans are the conserved resources here, and all the people that I am (defined by my functions), they all draw upon the same well. It is not a deep one.

Overseer was born when, for the very first time in my life, I was slapped in the face with evidence of my parents’ mortality. I was oceans away from them, these two ageing, worthy, deeply loved people. On that day, my fantasies of doubling myself so I could write another novel, or set up a folding-cot at work without spousal retribution, all those fantasies evaporated, replaced by a sort of despair that there exists no physical mechanism by which I can split myself, halve all of me permanently, to be there for all the people that need me today.

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