Ask the Author: Eliot Peper
Answered Questions (8)
Eliot Peper
The idea for Analog emerged from a late-night conversation among friends. We were sharing a bottle of wine and imagining how wonderful it would be to have an off-grid social club where interactions weren't mediated or interrupted by the digital world—an institution that would have particular relevance in the technology-obsessed San Francisco Bay Area, where I happen to live.
None of us got our acts sufficiently together to build the real thing, so I fleshed it out in fiction. In doing so, I realized how useful Analog could be as a literary device: by stripping the feed away from the characters, it illustrates the role it plays in their lives.
People give me hope. Every time someone reacts with patience when a situation might call for anger, every time someone chooses generosity, every time someone takes the long view, these decisions to be better by doing better inspire me to open my heart to the world. Technology is a powerful tool that can be used for good or ill—we've raised billions out of poverty and saved countless lives from preventable disease and we've invented horrific weapons and autocratic panopticons—so ultimately how we choose to use technology will determine the shape of the future we pass down to our children and grandchildren.
None of us got our acts sufficiently together to build the real thing, so I fleshed it out in fiction. In doing so, I realized how useful Analog could be as a literary device: by stripping the feed away from the characters, it illustrates the role it plays in their lives.
People give me hope. Every time someone reacts with patience when a situation might call for anger, every time someone chooses generosity, every time someone takes the long view, these decisions to be better by doing better inspire me to open my heart to the world. Technology is a powerful tool that can be used for good or ill—we've raised billions out of poverty and saved countless lives from preventable disease and we've invented horrific weapons and autocratic panopticons—so ultimately how we choose to use technology will determine the shape of the future we pass down to our children and grandchildren.
Eliot Peper
Veil is a standalone science-fiction thriller about a near-future in which someone has hijacked the climate. The story is about finding a sense of renewed agency in a world spinning out of control, and grapples with family, friendship, loss, and what it means to live in the Anthropocene.
A couple years ago I listened to a podcast about the growth in scientific research into geonengineering—attempts to directly manipulate the global climate to reduce the worst aspects of climate change using everything from marine bacteria that change atmospheric chemistry to ingenious machines that suck CO2 out of the air.
But there's one approach to geoengineering that's by far the most feasible: using high-altitude planes to spray inert aerosols into the stratosphere that reflects a tiny bit of incoming sunlight, slowing global warming. The craziest part is that such an effort would only cost approximately two billion dollars a year—cheap enough that any country or even an individual billionaire could go ahead and do it unilaterally. Can you imagine the extent of the potential social, political, economic, and environmental implications?
Holy shit, I thought. Somebody needs to write a novel about this.
And Veil was born.
P.S. Enjoy the rest of the Analog Series!
A couple years ago I listened to a podcast about the growth in scientific research into geonengineering—attempts to directly manipulate the global climate to reduce the worst aspects of climate change using everything from marine bacteria that change atmospheric chemistry to ingenious machines that suck CO2 out of the air.
But there's one approach to geoengineering that's by far the most feasible: using high-altitude planes to spray inert aerosols into the stratosphere that reflects a tiny bit of incoming sunlight, slowing global warming. The craziest part is that such an effort would only cost approximately two billion dollars a year—cheap enough that any country or even an individual billionaire could go ahead and do it unilaterally. Can you imagine the extent of the potential social, political, economic, and environmental implications?
Holy shit, I thought. Somebody needs to write a novel about this.
And Veil was born.
P.S. Enjoy the rest of the Analog Series!
Eliot Peper
I change my creative process with every book.
When I began work on my first novel, I just opened up Word and started typing Chapter 1. I didn't have an outline, just an idea of where to begin and what might grow out of it. I wound up doing seven major revisions on that manuscript. For other books I've experimented with different approaches: mapping out major plot points, writing diary entries for major characters to get inside their heads, etc. Mixing up my creative process keeps me on my toes.
Over the course of writing ten novels, I've learned that certain things seem to work well for me. Every story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. And having an idea of where I'm headed (the end) helps me find the right place to start (the beginning) and serves as a lodestone whenever I get lost on the way there (the middle).
The more writers I meet, the more diverse creative processes I glimpse, and the more I realize that there is not "right way" to write a novel, there is only the right way for you to write this particular novel.
When I began work on my first novel, I just opened up Word and started typing Chapter 1. I didn't have an outline, just an idea of where to begin and what might grow out of it. I wound up doing seven major revisions on that manuscript. For other books I've experimented with different approaches: mapping out major plot points, writing diary entries for major characters to get inside their heads, etc. Mixing up my creative process keeps me on my toes.
Over the course of writing ten novels, I've learned that certain things seem to work well for me. Every story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. And having an idea of where I'm headed (the end) helps me find the right place to start (the beginning) and serves as a lodestone whenever I get lost on the way there (the middle).
The more writers I meet, the more diverse creative processes I glimpse, and the more I realize that there is not "right way" to write a novel, there is only the right way for you to write this particular novel.
Eliot Peper
I rarely set out to research a book. Instead, I follow my curiosity.
It something seems interesting for any reason at all, I do down Wikipedia rabbit holes, read books on the subject, and reach out to experts to learn more (you'd be amazed how willing people are to respond when you have a specific, respectful question). Basically, I just nerd out a lot because it's fun!
Sometimes when I'm learning about something, I notice things that stick with me. It might be a cool fact or a paradox or a feeling or a question or an anecdote or anything at all. Sometimes when I'm not doing anything in particular, I notice that my mind is wandering into fertile territory. These might daydreams or memories or images or scenes or relationships or ideas or anything particularly evocative. For me, the act of writing a novel is a process of recombining these fragments of learning and imagination and synthesizing them into a story that brings them to life. It's not unlike making a mosaic from shards of pottery.
As I'm writing a rough draft, sometimes I run into very practicable questions that would be apparent to the character in question but not to me as I write their story: How long does it take to fly from San Francisco to the Galápagos? How much of Washington DC would flood during a storm surge after a few decades of sea level rise? What does an assassin's weapon of choice tell us about their personality? For these kinds of tactical questions, I do what anyone else would and try to find the answer on Google, or reach out to folks who might know.
Because I don't see my research as a process, it's hard for me to compare the time it takes to the time I spend writing. Ultimately everything I read, do, and experience is the raw material from which I construct my novels.
It something seems interesting for any reason at all, I do down Wikipedia rabbit holes, read books on the subject, and reach out to experts to learn more (you'd be amazed how willing people are to respond when you have a specific, respectful question). Basically, I just nerd out a lot because it's fun!
Sometimes when I'm learning about something, I notice things that stick with me. It might be a cool fact or a paradox or a feeling or a question or an anecdote or anything at all. Sometimes when I'm not doing anything in particular, I notice that my mind is wandering into fertile territory. These might daydreams or memories or images or scenes or relationships or ideas or anything particularly evocative. For me, the act of writing a novel is a process of recombining these fragments of learning and imagination and synthesizing them into a story that brings them to life. It's not unlike making a mosaic from shards of pottery.
As I'm writing a rough draft, sometimes I run into very practicable questions that would be apparent to the character in question but not to me as I write their story: How long does it take to fly from San Francisco to the Galápagos? How much of Washington DC would flood during a storm surge after a few decades of sea level rise? What does an assassin's weapon of choice tell us about their personality? For these kinds of tactical questions, I do what anyone else would and try to find the answer on Google, or reach out to folks who might know.
Because I don't see my research as a process, it's hard for me to compare the time it takes to the time I spend writing. Ultimately everything I read, do, and experience is the raw material from which I construct my novels.
Eliot Peper
When I'm not writing novels, I help build technology businesses. I've been an early employee, a founder, and an investor in various startups and spent a few years as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture capital firm. Today, I spend the majority of my time on my fiction, but still occasionally help companies as an independent adviser. I've even written some commissioned science-fiction short stories for the executive teams of Fortune 100 companies trying to plan for an uncertain future.
As a novelist, I write about what interests me. That's the north star that guides everything from the characters I write about to the world they live in. The feedback loop between technology and culture has always fascinated me, and that fascination bleeds into my books. My life is the material from which my fiction grows.
As a novelist, I write about what interests me. That's the north star that guides everything from the characters I write about to the world they live in. The feedback loop between technology and culture has always fascinated me, and that fascination bleeds into my books. My life is the material from which my fiction grows.
Eliot Peper
I don't think AI will end or save human civilization.
Hollywood often portrays AI as computer code that takes on a life of its own and (often) rebels against its makers. But for all our progress in machine learning, we have gotten no closer to understanding consciousness or endowing computers with it. Software can be incredibly powerful, but it remains code: intricate recipes that networks of silicon chips execute on our behalf.
So instead of a potential robot overlord or robot savior, I see AI as a profoundly transformative tool like writing, contraception, the steam engine, the printing press, railroads, antibiotics, etc. Each of those technologies changed the course of history and the shape of civilization in fascinating ways, but trains didn't become our overlords nor did printers become our saviors.
What did they do? They gave us power—radically increasing human agency and the leverage of individual action. In doing so, they amplified the best and worst aspects of human nature, allowing us to dramatically decrease child mortality and to destroy entire cities with a single bomb.
The most interesting thing about AI isn't AI itself, but its consequences. Who stands to gain? Who stands to lose? How does it change our relationship with the world, each other, and ourselves?
Hollywood often portrays AI as computer code that takes on a life of its own and (often) rebels against its makers. But for all our progress in machine learning, we have gotten no closer to understanding consciousness or endowing computers with it. Software can be incredibly powerful, but it remains code: intricate recipes that networks of silicon chips execute on our behalf.
So instead of a potential robot overlord or robot savior, I see AI as a profoundly transformative tool like writing, contraception, the steam engine, the printing press, railroads, antibiotics, etc. Each of those technologies changed the course of history and the shape of civilization in fascinating ways, but trains didn't become our overlords nor did printers become our saviors.
What did they do? They gave us power—radically increasing human agency and the leverage of individual action. In doing so, they amplified the best and worst aspects of human nature, allowing us to dramatically decrease child mortality and to destroy entire cities with a single bomb.
The most interesting thing about AI isn't AI itself, but its consequences. Who stands to gain? Who stands to lose? How does it change our relationship with the world, each other, and ourselves?
Eliot Peper
Thanks Bob, I'm happy to hear you enjoyed Bandwidth.
My mum's from British Columbia and I've spent quite a bit of time in the NW, hence it's prominence in the novel.
After Bandwidth, I'd recommend reading Borderless->Breach->Cumulus->Neon Fever Dream->The Uncommon Series.
Cheers, Eliot
My mum's from British Columbia and I've spent quite a bit of time in the NW, hence it's prominence in the novel.
After Bandwidth, I'd recommend reading Borderless->Breach->Cumulus->Neon Fever Dream->The Uncommon Series.
Cheers, Eliot
Eliot Peper
Hi Matt, delighted to hear you enjoyed Bandwidth.
The mechanics of the feed are never described in Bandwidth or the other two Analog Novels. This was very intentional. One of the things I enjoy most about reading speculative fiction is how it challenges me to bring my imagination to the story as a reader. By illustrating the impact of the feed on characters' lives but leaving how it works up to you, the feed becomes a symbol, a metaphor, allows you to participate directly in creating the future the book extrapolates. More here: https://medium.com/adjacent-possible/...
Thanks, Eliot
The mechanics of the feed are never described in Bandwidth or the other two Analog Novels. This was very intentional. One of the things I enjoy most about reading speculative fiction is how it challenges me to bring my imagination to the story as a reader. By illustrating the impact of the feed on characters' lives but leaving how it works up to you, the feed becomes a symbol, a metaphor, allows you to participate directly in creating the future the book extrapolates. More here: https://medium.com/adjacent-possible/...
Thanks, Eliot
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