With a story that has a markedly seasonal flavour, William R D Wood makes his debut in Futures this week with Single layer I.T.. You can find out more about Will’s work on his website. Here, he kindly reveals the inspiration behind his latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Single layer I.T.

Single layer I.T. happened on the way home from the store.

I’m a good driver and I don’t mean of the Rain Man calibre either. I take it seriously. Four kids and a few million miles under my belt keep me cautious. Even so, on the way to the store I was puzzling over a plot point for a different story and must have been distracted. I started to merge lanes without checking my blind spot. Luckily the driver of the other vehicle was well versed in the use of her horn, as well as dirty looks, both of which she shared liberally with me as she zoomed by.

What can I say? Oops. When other drivers make bonehead moves like I did and endanger us, I always tell my children not to take it personally. I’m quick to point out people act differently behind the wheel than they would face to face. The thin barrier offered to us by a ton or two of vehicular technology can transform us and not always in a positive way. Besides they could be rushing to the hospital, to some critical meeting or on their way to change the world. You just don’t know.

Minutes later, guiding my shopping cart through the aisles at the grocer, I bumped buggies with a lady at a corner in the dairy section. Not my best driving day. Another dirty look. At least this time I got to apologize. I was lucky enough to pull in behind her at the checkout too. I attempted some pleasantries but her expression made clear she was done with me and she would be obliged if I were done with her. C’est la vie. I meant well.

On the drive home, three things occurred to me. One, would we be so easily offended if we had a glimpse into each other? Two, the concept of linked minds would make a great little story. And, three, I get a lot of dirty looks.

The horror writer in me could not leave that one alone. With the line between biology and technology becoming more blurred day by day, suppose someone with the right multidisciplinary expertise decided to make sure we were all aware of one another. All the time.

The concept has been tackled with mixed success a few times on film and myriad times in print. Imagine the progress we could make if we were linked. The places we could go. I can certainly see the objective appeal. The resulting intelligence of a human singularity could propel us to the stars. But what might the cost be and what kind of growing pains might be necessary?

What kind of person is needed to take that first step and what kind of baggage might they bring to the project? I’m all about empathy for my fellow human beings but the loss of identity, the loss of self, especially against one’s will, is truly terrifying. Would the ends justify the means? With Single layer I.T. I hoped to scratch the surface and continue the dialogue. Something like the human singularity is coming someday alongside wonders and terrors our independent little minds can’t even imagine.

I have to admit, a few seconds access to the processing power of the human singularity might be helpful if I could be assured someone would pull me back into myself. As it happens, I still haven’t figured out the plot point to that original story.

John Gilbey makes a welcome return to Futures this week with a dystopian vision in Citadel. John is no stranger to Futures — his first story for us appeared way back in 2005, and since then he has written some 16 other visions of the future (there’s a full list of his Futures stories at the end of this post). You can keep up-to-date with John by following him on Twitter. Here, he reveals just what is so attractive about dystopian visions. As ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Citadel

Earlier this year, I gave a talk to a group of journalists in New York about my science-fiction stories and how they relate to the regular science reporting that I also do. When it came to the time for questions, and I had already started eyeing the table of snacks that the hosts had kindly provided, someone raised an interesting question.

“What is it with science-fiction writers and dystopias?” he asked, going on to point out that you can barely move in book stores these days for stacks of sinister vampire fiction, savagely wrought tales of post-nuclear wastelands, startling portrayals of werewolf family life and other dark and doom-laden literature.

I can only speak for myself — and sometimes can’t even reliably manage that — so this may not be why other writers invest so much of themselves in the fields of darkness. I write dark stories of the future to try to prevent them from happening, to scare folk enough that they might start thinking about how the science they are doing today could make my tales of future madness look to our descendants like an amusing affectation rather then a worryingly accurate prediction.

As a science-fiction writer, I tend to worry a lot. In Citadel, my concerns turned to a future where crucial information has been lost and the risk of societal collapse is very real. The scenario is carefully ill-defined. It could be a lost colony of Earth, a territory on our home planet itself or a parallel continuum — it doesn’t matter. At some point in the past, folk with serious technological skills have seen a coming disaster — astronomical, climatic, geological — and tried to mitigate the effects by implementing smart, self-sustaining technologies to support a created culture based on the guilds, religious orders and fiefdoms of medieval Europe. Such a culture might conceivably be a better survival unit than a modern, liberal consumer society at a time of huge disruption and shortage.

In the scenario, the society — and perhaps the technology — is failing because the chain of knowledge inheritance has been broken. The hidden information system, which monitors and supports but doesn’t fully control the society, has ceased to be able to communicate effectively with the hereditary Lord and Lady who manage the community — and without this, systems are failing. Perhaps terminally.

This theme, and its potential resolution, reflects some of my concerns about the control of knowledge in our own society. It could be interpreted as a plea for open access to data, papers and other collections of fundamental value to our collective future. In a world with so many challenges, walling-up our accumulated understanding in Citadels of our own making seems unhelpful.

Citadel is a warning, but it is also a love story — albeit a dark, dystopian one.

Read more of John’s Futures stories

It never rains in VR | Finding a happy medium | Safety critical | Big Dave’s last stand | Meeting with Max | Permanent position | Commitment | Final protocol | Unfinished business | Corrective action | The last laboratory | Intervention | Visiting Bob | Communicant | Review of the year 2062 | Deep impressions | Infraction

Taryn Heintz makes her debut in Futures this week with her story One of me. Originally from Seattle in Washington, Taryn now lives in Cardiff. Here she explains how she approached the difficult subject matter of her tale — as ever it pays to read the story first.

Writing One of me

I moved to the UK when I was 21, I’m 30 now. Every year, sometimes twice a year, I make the trip back to Seattle to see friends and family. Trips home at 30 are very different from trips when I was 21. At 21, I would usually go from party to party having fun before returning to the airport exhausted and ready to sleep through the 11 hour flight. By 25, I flew home twice a year for three years exclusively to attend weddings. At 28, the babies started making appearances. First a niece in 2007, and now in 2015, I have four nieces, three nephews (with two more on the way), two god children and about ten various close-friends’ children who also call me auntie.

There comes a point in most people’s lives when everyone around them goes baby crazy and it seems like not a month goes by without celebrating a new birth. Although thrilling, whenever a new child is born, I wonder about the people who are struggling to have families of their own. These are not passing thoughts, as I am someone who has struggled with fertility. Fertility issues are not something people speak about as openly as their food allergies or other health problems. It’s often hidden away in a dark corner and only shared with the closest of friends and family. By the time all four of my sisters were either pregnant or mothers, I decided to start trying, but trying and being successful at procreation are two very different things.

I can remember one particular low moment after a doctor’s visit when I thought at this point I would even clone myself. And that’s when the idea for One of me was born (pardon the pun). I have always been fascinated by alternative futures where clones are used as medicinal remedies — the book Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a personal favourite because it explores the ethical and moral issues behind using clones to produce organs for transplantation. Even at the age of 11, I can remember hearing about Dolly the sheep and wondering if the science behind cloning would be extended to humans and what that would mean.

With these thoughts circling my head, I wrote One of me frantically, in a single sitting. When writing, I was fixated on the idea that people, who couldn’t have children naturally, could clone themselves and what kind of practical and emotional problems that would present. So, I thrashed out my story and tried to create something that had many dimensions and a lot of feeling. The greatest thing about science is that it gives us a chance to remedy the problems facing the world, but one problem solved can also lead to a plethora of other challenges. Because, simply solving a problem doesn’t always heal the trauma it caused in the first place.

This week, Futures takes a trip into deep space with Mike Brotherton’s Beyond 550 astronomical units. An astronomer based at the University of Wyoming, Mike is also author of the novels Star Dragon (2003) and Spider Star (2008). You can keep up-to-date with his activities on his website. Here, Mike kindly takes time out from his busy schedule to discuss the orgins of his latest tale — as ever it pays to read the story first.

Writing Beyond 550 astronomical units

About ten years ago, I founded the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers, a week-long crash course held annually at the University of Wyoming. About 15 writers attend each year, enthusiastic professionals who want to increase the quantity and/or quality of the astronomy in stories. The goal of the workshop is to reach their audiences, to provide stealth education to the public, and to inspire the next generation of scientists. Star Trek inspired me to become an astronomer, and I’m not the only scientist with such a history.

There are a number of things I say nearly every year to the workshop participants, whose work spans a wide range of genres. To the urban fantasy authors, for instance, I suggest that a popular werewolf series in which understanding phases of the Moon was critical could help their readers correct common lunar misconceptions. At one point I started making the comment that I’d love to see a story about a sentient telescope. After years of no one running with that idea, I decided I should use it myself.

One of the best reasons to have an aware, thinking telescope would be if it was so far away it could not be easily controlled by people. Deep space, then. And then I realized that there had been discussions for years to put telescopes out at 550 astronomical units away from the Sun, where our home star’s gravity could focus light according to the laws of general relativity. That gave me my premise and setting, but the story needed to turn on character.

That made me think about what would make a good astronomer, human or not. I thought of one of my old summer students showing me spectra of quasars he’d selected in a survey. As he was showing them to me, he got to one and said, “Now, this one is my favourite …” At that point I realized his passion for astronomy. He loved looking at these strange squiggles that held information about these far off objects, and was interested in them for their own sake. People smart enough to become scientists usually can make more money doing easier work outside of science. The people who become successful scientists simply love doing science. So I figured that might be true of a sentient telescope as well. Emotion would drive the effort and decisions, and without it the story would be less compelling.

Finally, I decided to highlight something scientists understand too well, and the general public probably not so much. Many scientists are all about their sub-sub-field and are fascinated by every detail that may be a clue to deeper understanding of their niche, while questions outside their area of expertise lose their lustre. Even some pretty important ones. I mean, I get more excited about a 25% improvement in how to estimate the mass of black holes powering quasars — my area of expertise — than I do most anything else not about quasars, even when I recognize the importance of other areas of science.

So there was my conflict, a telescope who just wanted to see the next planetary system when it knew almost anyone else would prioritize the detection of an alien civilization, and there was my story.

This month’s Futures story in Nature Physics sees Norman Spinrad offer a solution to the Fermi paradox in Water worlds. Norman is no stranger to Futures — or indeed to the world of science fiction, as he has been publishing novels for some 50 years. His tale New ice age, or just cold feet? appeared in the very first series of Futures stories back in 2000, and he has since written about the theatre, recycling, medical research, driverless cars and Dying for Dummies. Here, he explains what inspired his latest story and what the solution to the Fermi paradox means for the hunt for extraterrestrial life — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Water worlds

I’ve always been interested in the Fermi paradox, a paradox that seems to get more and more central as our knowledge of what’s out there in our Galaxy, in our Universe, expands and mutates at warp speed.

When I was a boy with an introductory astronomy book called The Earth Among the Stars, the accepted theory was that the planets of our Solar System were formed by material ripped from the Sun by the happenstance of a close encounter with another passing star and were therefore rare bodies, perhaps even unique. I was already writing science fiction when the first extrasolar planets were discovered. Now we know that there are probably more planets in our Galaxy than stars, some billions of them estimated to be in the liquid water ‘Goldilocks zones’.

Enrico Fermi posed his famous paradox when what is now astronomical knowledge was only hypothetical: given that the Galaxy and the stars in it are billions of years old, statistically speaking, there should be hundreds of thousands of civilizations out there more advanced than our own. So where are they? Fermi speculatively calculated that if we are typical, if life is a common phenomenon, the Galaxy should be teeming with such civilizations. Why haven’t they contacted us? Or even tried?

This has become more and more mysterious the more we learn about the true nature of the Galaxy: billions of planets, even more moons, oceans beneath the ice verified in Saturnian moons, the organic building blocks of life discovered in a comet, perhaps even on Pluto. It seems abundantly clear that liquid water and organic molecules are abundant and intrinsic to our Galaxy, our Universe, as are planets and moons where life as we more or less know it, let alone life as we don’t know it, should likewise be abundant, and consciousness, and therefore technological civilizations, should not be uncommon.

So why have they not contacted us? Why has decades of SETI efforts found not a single signal?

So far, the attempted answers to this paradox have been anthropocentric and/or paranoid. Despite the astronomical evidence, we are alone because God wants it that way. There is something so terrible out there that silence is kept by civilizations that fear it. All civilizations end up destroying themselves. And so forth.

Another obsession of mine has been dolphin and whale consciousness and intelligence. Attempts to decipher cetacean ‘languages’ for decades have likewise failed. As have my fictional attempts to write stories from the viewpoints of whales or dolphins.

Until recently. Sort of. Somehow it came to me that dolphins and possibly whales too don’t have ‘languages’ at all — even though they are ‘conscious’ and seem to have ‘cultures’ — because they don’t need them. Their sonar senses give them direct three-dimensional and even transparent communication. They ‘see’ each other, and even inside each other’s bodies, with this sonar sense. And it is not a passive receptive sense like our sight and hearing. It is interactive. They can create three-dimensional and transparent imagery, moving imagery, that is fictional, a kind of television, that is very close to what we might call ‘telepathy’.

This allowed me to finally write a story called The Music of the Sphere, which, although not exactly told from the points of view of dolphins or whales, does present the consciousness arising out of their kind of sensoriums.

And of late, very recently, with the scientific realization that there may be many moons around gas giants with warm water oceans maintained by gravitational tide forces, that life could exist in such oceans, could even be more prevalent than life on dry planetary surfaces, it would seem there would be conscious life, intelligent life, even civilization, in those ice-capped oceans.

But they would be like those of the dolphins or whales. Non-technological civilizations because of the impossibility of the creation of, or discovery of, fire — without which artificial power to create and run technology could not be developed or exist. Civilizations with arts and histories but existing entirely in oceans under miles of water ice. Never to know the stars. Not only unable to communicate with other civilizations out there but not even have the concept of an out there.

A Galaxy full of worlds and moons, with intelligent creatures that are fully conscious enough to create advanced civilizations. But more of them than not aquatic civilizations. Non-technological civilizations.

We already have such a civilization on the Earth. That of the cetaceans.

We too are also a water world.