Hugh Howey's Blog, page 5

A Year in Review

One year ago today I woke up in a hotel room in Svalbard, Norway. I was sleeping on half of a king-size bed made from pushing two twin beds together. On the other side of the bed was the most magical woman I’d ever met. We were just friends, sharing a bed for the first time, prior to boarding an old research vessel in search of polar bears. Little did we know that we were about to embark on a much bigger journey than that.

Shay and I met a few weeks earlier at a gathering of friends in Italy. I’d flown into Florence and rented a car, and I’d offered a ride to the group of eighty or so folks who were going to be at this get-together. Someone named Carlos said he and his girlfriend would love the ride, so we agreed to meet for lunch in Florence before heading out to the castle where the event was taking place.

All it took was one lunch for a bromance to brew between us. Carlos was an art collector who uses big data to find hidden value in a market that often relies on guesswork. He had a mix of left and right brain that I find appealing, and a calm presence that almost concealed his hyperactive brain and imagination. Young, handsome, successful, and eager to dive into deep topics right off the bat, he and I skipped the first two years of friendship by the time we set off on our little road trip.

On the drive south through Italy, I told Carlos about my upcoming voyage from Svalbard, the northernmost city in the world, to look for polar bears. I’d booked the trip three years prior, when I’d been in a relationship. Covid had delayed the trip several times, and now I was single with an extra spot on the boat. Did he want to join me? Alas, he had a wedding during those dates, but he said his best friend was going to be at the gathering that night and she was dying to see polar bears. He said she was a pilot, a sailor, always up for an adventure, and that the two of us should meet. This is how I was introduced to Shay.

Within minutes of meeting, we’d agreed to go on the trip together. And during the next few days in Italy, we spent a little time hanging out and always knew where the other was among the eighty or so guests. It turned out that some of our closest friends were friends with each other — and several of the people dearest to me were there to watch Shay and myself orbit each other for the first time. Nothing romantic happened between us, mostly because neither of us were interested in being in a relationship at the time. We’d both gotten out of engagements six months prior and were enjoying time with friends and time with ourselves. Everyone close to me at the time knew that I wasn’t on the market. My previous relationship had been so difficult that I was thinking of being happily single for the rest of my life. No joke.

Side note: The very week that I was in Italy, shooting on the first season of SILO was wrapping up outside of London. Were it not for the gathering at the castle, I would’ve tried to be there for the wrap party. This little coincidence will play into the second incredible bookend that helps define my year-in-review.

Three weeks after meeting, Shay and I had a day together in Paris before boarding a plane for Svalbard. I’d been thinking about her and this upcoming trip a lot, wondering what it would be like to be trapped together in a small cabin for two weeks in one of the most remote places on the planet. All I was looking for was enjoyable company to use the ticket so the money didn’t go to waste. Someone who liked adventure. I’d invited two male friends who couldn’t make it, and now I was going with a strange woman I’d only spent a few hours with over a three-day gathering of friends.

Those hours, by the way, were spent mostly at night, in the dark, and outdoors. I couldn’t really recall her face that well three weeks later. I just remembered feeling at home around her and the way she laughed. I’d spent way more time with her best friend Carlos, and he was adamant that she and I would have a great time together. I trusted him and my gut. When I saw Shay again in Paris, I was taken aback by how quickly we fell into a comfortable rhythm together. How much we laughed at the same things. And how absolutely drawn I was to her.

We toured museums most of the day. Shay had lived in Paris as a teenager, during her modeling years. It was only in Paris that I learned she’d been a model. It wasn’t something she led with or even usually mentioned. Her passions were flying single-engine and sea planes, sailing, her horse, her home in Scotland, and her friends. She wore flat shoes, comfortable clothes, no makeup, and did little with her hair. She was absolutely gorgeous and didn’t need to do anything to highlight that, nor was it part of her identity. She’d just been born that way. What she took pride in were all the things she’d learned over the years and all the hard work she’d put into becoming a better person. Reader, I was smitten by the end of the day. I couldn’t believe I was about to spend two weeks with this magical creature cut off from civilization. We spent the night in separate hotels and shared a cab to the airport the next morning. The following day we woke up in Svalbard on either side of a king-sized bed. Snuggling up to Shay, I worked up the courage to kiss her shoulder, her arm, her stomach. What were we? Fellow adventurers? More?

Shay sat up in bed and kissed me on the lips. It was July 1st, a year ago today. I knew in that moment that we would spend the rest of our lives together. I don’t know how I knew, but I felt it in every fiber of my being. And not a moment of this past year has lessened that surety. The feelings have only grown.

Oh, and we saw polar bears. Including this beautiful mom with her two cubs:

Shay and I disappeared for the next two weeks. We sailed above 80 degrees north and fell in love. The next time our friends heard from us, we told them we’d found the one. My friends were shocked and worried for me — right up until the moment they met Shay. That’s all it took for them to go from “are you sure about this?” to “dude, don’t let her go, ever.” We hit five countries in our first seven weeks. We spent every hour of every day together. I mean, our first date was two weeks in a cabin the size of a walk-in closet in the Arctic Circle. The first two weeks of a normal relationship might mean a few dinners and movies. For us, we had over 300 hours of time together on that first trip. And we were rarely apart afterwards.

Two months later, Shay was asking her mom if she should pop the question, since I was taking so long. Luckily, I beat her to it. It’s one of the very rare times that I’ve beaten Shay to anything. She’s always a step ahead, physically and mentally, and she loves reminding me that she’s a hair taller than me. But I got down on one knee before she did. Before I could ask the question, she said “yes yes yes yes yes.” Luckily, I’d handed my camera to a stranger moments prior, and they captured the very moment we agreed to get married.

Two months after our engagement, Shay and I were at another gathering of friends in Arizona. It was a conference of storytellers and scientists that I’d been attending for a decade, so some of my dearest friends were in attendance. Shay had gotten to know several of the people there already and considered them friends as well. When one of our friends heard we were engaged, she suggested we get married then and there. She was ordained. Had married five other couples. Tugging her own wedding band off her hand, she said “let’s do this.” It’s not easy to say “no” to Jamie Lee Curtis, but we managed to slow her roll. However, the next night at dinner, word was getting around and the pressure was mounting. A brief aside here to explain something that still doesn’t make sense to me.

At least half a dozen times over our first months together, strangers had come up to Shay and me and asked for one of our phones so they could take our picture. Unasked. While we were just sitting at dinner talking. Or standing with our arms around each other. Or sitting together off to the side away from others. “It’s the way you two are looking at each other,” people would say. I’d never had this happen to me once in my life. Now it was happening in the streets of Portugal, in Mexico, in restaurants. The thing we have between us radiates outward, we’ve come to learn. Other couple friends of ours enjoy basking in it. Our single friends are inspired by it. Strangers notice it. So at this gathering, everyone wanted to celebrate it with us.

At dinner that night we decided to get married the following day. No decision has ever felt more right in my life. Standing in front of a crowd full of people I admire and look up to, every single one of them disappeared except for Shay. We exchanged vows and rings. Christopher Guest served as our witness. In every way possible, our marriage has been dialed to eleven.

The same year I fell unexpectedly in love and got married, Apple was turning my novel WOOL into a TV show. I had no idea what to expect from any step of this process. I just tried to enjoy each phase and did my best to minimize my dread. That’s right, I felt a lot of dread leading up to the show’s release. How badly would it disappoint existing fans? How difficult would it be to draw in a new audience? How would publishers react if the show didn’t do well and they didn’t sell the books they hoped? And would the teams at AMC and Apple who worked so hard to make the show a reality regret ever taking a chance on me?

Most shows and films aren’t great, as all of us know. There’s a deluge of content out there, and only a handful every year get any kind of buzz or recognition. The chances of it happening to our show was slim. Even with a stellar cast, incredible sets, a generous budget, top-notch crews, a seasoned showrunner — nothing was guaranteed. Projects with all these ingredients falter all the time. Why would I expect anything different?

The buzz on set was super positive, but this is probably true for shows that don’t come out well. It’s hard to know what you’ve got until you get in the editing room and stitch it all together. It was only at this phase that I started hearing buzz from the other producers. “We’ve got something special here,” they started to tell me. “Apple wants to make this their tentpole release next summer. They’re gonna market the hell out of this.”

Hints of a possible second season were already brewing. We set a release date for season one, and a premiere date in London. Then we learned Canneseries wanted to debut the show, where it would get a standing ovation. Shay and I attended the premiere with my sister and some close friends. At this point, I’d seen the episodes and knew the show was good. But would others agree? Would the show disappear beneath an avalanche of all the other new releases?

The critics loved the show. When the first 30+ reviews came in a week before launch, the average on Rotten Tomatoes was an unbelievable 94%. The hype exploded after the first two episodes dropped, with more media coverage and social media mentions than I could keep up with. Taking it in was like drinking from a firehose. Each week, the insanity only increased. Stephen King started Tweeting about his love for the show. Folks were saying it was their favorite show of the year. It was one of those shows that you counted the days down for each episode. On YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter folks were discussing every twist and hint for clues about where the show would go next.

It all culminated in the finale last night, on June 30th, which blew hairs back and has the likes of Forbes and others calling this the best sci-fi show of the year. It also brought the most incredible year of my life to a close — my 365th day with my wife, Shay. We celebrated with some wine and cheese, a reminder of meeting in Italy last June. We crawled into a bed just as we had on June 30th the year before, but this time with no doubt about what the other thinks of us. We wake up a year after our first kiss to plant more on each other. There’s a lot to celebrate from this past year, so many moments that friends, family, and fans were a part of and got to celebrate with us. For Shay and myself, it’s the first year of many. It’ll be a difficult year to top. But that’s okay. I’ve always gone into everything with low expectations. And then the universe has a way of turning every dial to eleven.

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Free Silo Pilot!

Never seen this before. An entire episode of prestige drama for free, streaming right on Twitter. Apple is pulling out all the stops in support of this show. Plenty of time to start binging before the finale drops in 24 hours!

3 days until the #Silo finale.

Here’s the entire first episode. pic.twitter.com/lIcTXCQ9D6

— Apple TV (@AppleTV) June 27, 2023

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The Balloon Hunter

It’s been a while since I announced a new story, and this is one I’m super proud of. THE BALLOON HUNTER marks my first time writing with another author, in this case the incredibly talented Elinor Taylor. I fell in love with Elinor’s flash fiction on Twitter and reached out to let her know what a huge fan I was. We started brainstorming projects we could work on together, and today I’m delighted to announce that our co-authored work is available!

Producing this book was an absolute nightmare and also a huge joy. The story is told across a series of postcards, and I had the awful idea to actually create the postcards, hand write on them front and back, scan them, and use those scans to create the book. The end result is fantastic. Getting it all done took over a year!

There’s a video below explaining some of what went into this:

And here’s a link to the ebook. The print edition should be available in a few days.

The ebook is on Kindle Unlimited, so read it for free if you’re a member. It looks especially great on an iPad or other tablet. I priced both editions as close to the bone as I could, considering the digital delivery costs and the printing costs. Elinor and I aren’t going to pay the bills with this book, but we are delighted with the story we created, and if it’s popular enough we’d love to revisit it.

Enjoy! And spread the word!

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Monopolies and Bicycles

When you think of New York City, a host of images often comes to mind: the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the billboards of Times Square, and probably somewhere in that collage you’ll see the iconic yellow taxi.

When I first lived in New York over twenty years ago, the streets ran with gold. Every other car was a yellow taxi. These days, it feels like it’s 1 in every 20 or more cars is a cab. Uber, Lyft, and privately owned cars make up the vast majority of the traffic to the point that you often wait not for a taxi that’s available, but to catch sight of a yellow cab at all.

It’s an amazing transformation that we barely appreciate because it happened over time. The other massive change to the city that we don’t fully appreciate is the rise of cycling. Riding a bike in New York was a health hazard twenty years ago. There were films about how bike messaging was a daredevil occupation. Bike lanes were nonexistent, and only the insane would cross the city on two wheels.

That has all changed. Dedicated bike lanes are now everywhere, with signage directing bikers on the best cross-town streets. This has happened largely because of Citi Bike, Launched in 2013, with a sponsor in Citibank and later in Lyft, Citi Bike has transformed New York into a truly bike-friendly city. And it’s impossible to imagine this working if competition were allowed into the space. Citi Bike has a monopoly on bike rideshare in New York and that’s a very good thing.

Competition and monopoly are words that come loaded with emotional bias. Competition is good and monopolies are bad. I think the simplicity of this blinds us to how useful each can be in different ways. Healthy competition usually involves separate niches. Imagine two competing power grids, both supplying juice to your home, with double the number of incompatible outlets around your house. The waste of deploying this infrastructure would not make up for any downward pricing pressure. But now think of a solar company moving in to add panels to new and existing homes. Same kind of service but completely different infrastructure.

The same is true for wireless communication versus wired. Nothing was more wasteful than several companies laying fiber and coaxial to every home in the late 20th century. Real competition came when that same service could be transmitted from towers wirelessly. We often think competition needs to come from similar looking things, but it’s better when it looks completely different while serving a similar need. Instead of laying train tracks parallel to existing train tracks, those tracks are regulated while cargo also flows on interstate highways and via cargo ships. Same service but different niches.

Bike rideshare wouldn’t work without standardization. You need every bike to fit in the same docking stations. And you need to know that your destination will have a docking station nearby. Compare the bikes in New York with the electric scooters in LA. Without a contracted monopoly, LA has descended into chaos instead of building out a reliable, standardized system of scooter rental. You need to have three or four apps on your phone to use whatever happens to be lying around. There’s no reliability of pick-up location. Allowing “market forces” to arrive at a solution is laughable compared to the union of corporate monopoly and government regulation in New York, two dirty words that instead bring unique benefits.

The only way to transform a city into a biking utopia is with just such a union. You need to re-zone streets and existing infrastructure, turning parking spots into bike lanes. You need signage and dedicated bike traffic lights. You have to put in underground power for docking stations. And you have to commit to long-term contracts with a single operator instead of confusing the market with multiple entrants. Government and corporation working together in New York absolutely destroys laissez faire and tech companies working via anarchy in LA. The difference is staggering. And yet the common refrain is that government and absence of competition are problems.

There are over 30,000 bikes in the Citi Bike program now, with expansions into all boroughs and New Jersey. E-bikes have been added, and they are a blast to ride. On top of this new biking infrastructure, the delivery network in New York has completely changed. A frequent sight in the city now is a worker on an e-bike delivering food. The difference is felt in your home when you order in — cuisine arrives at your apartment almost as fast as it would arrive at your table in a restaurant.

It’s easy to imagine a future New York that looks a lot like Amsterdam. New York is a flat city with mild winters and a dense population. Grabbing a bike is already the best way for getting to most places on most days. It’s helping the city get greener, helps us get more exercise, and it’s an absolute blast on date nights or just running errands with my wife. None of it would work without embracing a single entrant and allowing them to keep their exclusive contract. It feels like these examples are everywhere around us, but we cling to our notions of what works and what doesn’t on an emotional level, rather than a rational one.

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Discussion Time!

Oh boy, am I both glad for these weekly releases and in absolute agony! Turns out waiting a week for your own show to come out is even worse than waiting for someone else’s show. Not only am I dying to see these on my home theater (rather than my laptop) and without watermarks, I’m absolutely dying to hear what everyone thinks about each episode!

Something I didn’t expect: how much discussion there would be online about Silo. There are so many threads, videos, podcasts, discords, chat groups, etc. It’s a lot of fun watching people puzzle this together (those who haven’t read the books) and also to see OG readers stifling their glee (and dread) over all the twists and turns to come.

A round-up of interesting places to discuss Silo with fellow viewers:

Official Facebook Group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/87572003623/

Podcasts:

Wires From the Deep

Wool-Shift-Dust – A Silo Podcast

The Cleaning (video podcast)

Silo Premiere Recap (eps 1 and 2)

The Streaming Heap (eps 1 and 2)

This Subreddit has a bunch of fun threads:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SiloSeries/

There’s a Reddit hub for all Season 1 discussions:

Silo Season 1 Hub

YouTube Videos:

Eps 1 and 2 Review and Recap

WOOL: The basics of the Silo Series

My thoughts on Episode 1 (spoilers!)

My thoughts on Episode 2 (spoilers!)

What am I missing? Share anything else in the comments.

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We Are Live!

So many emotions right now. For the last ten or so years, I’ve watched a lot of very talented folks try their best to bring the Silo series to life, first on the big screen with Ridley Scott and now on TV with AMC and Apple. You know what I felt the most over those ten years? It wasn’t impatience. It was fear.

Fear that whatever got made would disappoint readers.

I mean, you’re never gonna make everyone happy. But it’s possible to get things wrong, or put out something mediocre or worse, and nobody is super thrilled. And all I ever wanted was to repay the fans with an adaptation that they recognize and love.

Up until two weeks ago, I was still scared. But then early reviews leaked out, and I watched episodes with people who adore the books and people who haven’t read any of it. The consensus has been that this show is great. The reviews from critics are over the moon (95% on RT!). My social feeds are awash with readers and new folks gushing over the show. My heart is so full and happy right now.

I hope you dive in with us, join us in the discussions, and enjoy the ride that’s ahead. Thank you all for the support and kind words. Means the world to me. And if you have any questions, come join my AMA (ask me anything) over on Reddit today at 3pm EST: https://reddit.com/r/iama

Love you all!

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All Things SILO

Okay … there’s a LOT happening right now, and the show hasn’t even launched yet. Here are a few of the fun places to pop into and discuss the show with fellow woolites and silozens:

There’s a FB group (come join us!)

A subreddit

A discord chat (weekly episode discussions!)

A podcast (I just listened to the first one, and it’s awesome!)

And some fun Apple ads for laughs (and easter eggs!)

One of my favorite little easter eggs is the above image from the Apple ad. It’s Romeus and Juliette! Check the levels the two star-crossed lovers are from. :D

There are SO MANY interviews, reviews, and more to list here. Google searches turn up more than you can get through. One of my favorite things right now is the sure-to-go-down RottenTomatoes score:

Missing anything? Share a link in the comments and I’ll add it.

THREE DAYS AWAY!

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The SILO Premiere

I almost didn’t believe this would happen, even as I took my seat and the credits started rolling. For twelve years, I haven’t really let myself believe that a TV show or a film based on one of my novels would ever get made. But last Tuesday, in London, I started to believe. This Friday it’s really going to happen.

I wish every reader, friend, and family member could have been there with us at the premiere. Since you couldn’t, let me take you back and walk through it with you. It was a busy day, thank goodness. Kept me distracted. It began with breakfast and a meeting with the fine folks at Penguin Random House, my publisher in the UK. I thought it would be a handshake and hello, but they had surprises for me:

Champagne at 11am is a great way to start the day! They also had piles of books for me to sign for employees. I saw some familiar faces and met all the new folks who’d come aboard over the last decade. Straight from there I went to lunch with SILO’s showrunner Graham Yost to discuss possible frameworks for future seasons, if we are so lucky to get them.

Before I knew it, we had to leave for our hotel room near the premiere. On the drive over, Shay noticed our first sighting of a SILO advertisement in the wild. My sister had seen the same ad and sent me this awesome photo just an hour or so prior.

At the hotel, we broke open (another) bottle of champagne. My sister and her husband Jon joined us, and my friend Julian from NY happened to be in town, so he came over to celebrate.

Then my personal groomer David arrived. Why a personal groomer? I guess Apple thought I needed a lot of help before we hit the red carpet. I was delighted to be reunited with David, who also gussied me up before the press junket a couple weeks ago. If Shay and I ever live in London, David is going to be our new BFF. He’s hilarious. And super talented. But with me, he had his work cut out for him.

At 6:30, we gathered in the lobby and walked to the Battersea Power Station Cinema across the street. Apple could not have found a more fitting venue for the premiere! Inside a refurbished power plant, the inside is a mix of art deco, retro-futurism, steampunk, and straight-up Mechanical’s down-deep. Up the escalators we came across movie posters and had to stop for pics.

Inside was the red carpet, where a line of photographers waited to snap shots. Shay and I were ushered out, and I thought they’d assume she was a movie star and I was just her date — that’s how ravishing and regal she looked.

We were totally in her wheelhouse, from her decade-long modeling career. Me, I felt like a prisoner in front of a firing squad! The photographers would take turns going down the line saying, “And look this way. And right here. And now here, if you’ll look at me. Here now, please. Can I get one more if you’ll please look here.” You smile and try to give every camera a straight-on shot. Your handlers usher you down the line a foot. Rinse and repeat.

There were reporters with questions. I have no idea what I said. Probably didn’t matter. They were here for the stars. And for good reason! What a freakin’ cast!

Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins, Common, Avi Nash, Chinaza Uche, Ferdinand Kingsley, Harriet Walter. Plus director Morten Tyldum and showrunner Graham Yost. Jamie Erlicht was there, who runs the whole show over at Apple and really made this project happen.

The executives behind the scenes are true heroes on a project like this. They move mountains and put out fires on the daily. They are also just awesome people who I’m lucky to consider friends. My only hope is to get a chance to tell more stories with them, in any capacity possible. It was amazing to catch up with them on such an important evening to us all.

It was like herding cats to get us all into the theater. Another movie poster meant stopping for more pics, apologizing to the people we were holding up (sorry, not sorry!). Inside, a gorgeous theater with SILO art on the screen and popcorn and water at every seat.

We were right in the center of the theater, and I had the most incredible pleasure of sitting down between my sister and my wife, two of the most important people in my life. There were tons of familiar faces around. DPs, department heads, writers, producers, cast, lots of hellos and hugs.

Then Rebecca, Graham, and Morten got on stage and gave a little talk. It was only here that we learned we’d be watching the first two episodes! I was a little panicked about this. Surely people would only want to sit for an hour and then get to the after party. But once the opening scene started, the next two hours went by in a flash.

I’d seen these episodes a few times, but never like this. Usually my name was watermarked across the screen the entire time, and I would be watching on my laptop through its tinny speakers. This was in a dark theater, a big screen, booming speakers, and a rapt audience. Family, I couldn’t freakin’ believe it. The first episode got me in the feels like I was seeing the story for the first time. There wasn’t a peep in the crowd except for gasps, a few laughs at the occasional funny bits, and some sniffling. The episode ended and applause erupted. NOBODY was thinking about the afterparty. When the second episode ended and more applause thundered down, I shouted “One more!” And I was serious. I would’ve binged all ten episodes right then if I’d had the remote.

Instead, we went to the party and caught up with each other, talked about all the rave reviews that were pouring in now that the embargo was lifted, and had one of the best times of my life. Quite a few of the Ted Lasso folks were there in brotherly support.

Silo is life!

It’s a night I’ll never forget. I wish you could’ve been there, I really mean that. Every single one of you. I can’t wait until this Friday when you get to see for yourself. You’ll enter the Silo in a brand new way, and I hope you’ll find something familiar and something new there. The stellar writing team tried to maintain the DNA and heart of this story, but fill it with enough surprises that even the biggest fans will be on the edge of their seats.

May 5th! So soon. Until then, some more pics from one of the happiest days of my life:

Me pretending to know the answers to anything.

Genius showrunner Graham Yost. He’s an all-around nice guy, despite the rumors.

One is the most badass woman on the planet, the other plays one on TV!

Shay and me staring down the paparazzi

David gave me a mask, and my sister said I looked like the charcuterie board.

Bernard! (He’s a lot nicer in person)

Celebrating with my favorite person in the universe.

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AI, Sexbots, and Mosquitoes

Mosquitos kill millions of humans a year. They have killed more humans than all wars combined. No other animal on Earth comes close to their murdering prowess. Which is why serious efforts are underway to drive the worst offenders to extinction.

There are hundreds of species of mosquito, but only a handful that bear most of the diseases and do the majority of the damage. The method for driving these species extinct is more banal than you might expect. It doesn’t involve mosquito zapping lasers (though these do exist and are pretty cool), it doesn’t involve poisoning the environment with toxic chemicals. All it takes is introducing sterile male mosquitos into the wild.

Male mosquitos of the right species are genetically modified to make them unable to reproduce, and these males then occupy the time and attention of females, driving the population numbers in a downward spiral that they never recover from. It’s not science fiction. Plans are underway to do this in California and Florida.

Populations can crash just as easily as they explode. All we’ve known as humans are exploding populations, so we assume this is the natural and inevitable way. But population crash is right around the corner in most parts of the world. Even where population growth is still taking place (Northern India and Sub-Saharan Africa), the trends are already downward. In some places, the absence of growth is already apocalyptic (South Korea with .78 offspring per couple and Japan with 1.36).

Many factors are driving the decline. Education, access to birth control, greater gender equality, urbanization, lower child mortality (more kids surviving to adulthood causes families to have fewer to begin with). But the largest driver may be the simplest, which is the hedonic drop-off couples get from large families.

Having a child is a life-changing thrill (at least, that’s what my mom tells me). Having a second child often involves a serious discussion between parents, weighing the joy of giving your kid a sibling, the chance of having both a boy and a girl, and creating a larger family. A third child might be worth considering if you were really hoping for a boy or girl and have a matching pair thus far. The reasons for having a fourth, fifth, sixth child get more difficult. That’s the hedonic drop-off.

For every couple not having a child, another couple needs to have at least 4 for zero population decline. Think of how many couples you know who aren’t having kids. There are three siblings in my family and none of us have kids yet (we are all pushing 50). That’s three couples who need to have 4 kids to match pace (the actual number is 2.1 per couple, but we can ignore that for now. It just means my points are stronger than they appear).

Children were once a financial boon, providing farm labor. Now they are a financial cost, requiring cars, rent, and college degrees. This factors into having that third or fourth child. For many, it factors into not having the first one. Nature’s solution to these kinds of logic was to make sex so much fun that kids were going to happen whether you wanted them or not. Nature also made sure that once you have them, you’ll love them unconditionally and do anything for their survival. Hence population explosions.

Birth control changed all that. And birth control includes abstinence, which in most cultures means delaying having kids until our 20s, 30s, even 40s. Or not at all. Birth control is for humans what genetic alteration is for mosquitos: you can keep having sex without procreation. Kids become a choice rather than a consequence.

One of the things driving population decline in Japan and South Korea is an end to even the sex. Entire generations are deciding not to date. They socialize online. In chat rooms, video games, message boards, social media apps. The human need for connection and company are being met through other means. These are like the sterile male mosquitos out there taking up time and space that would otherwise be spent making more humans. It might sound abstract to hear it sounded out, but the results are shocking even the most pessimistic demographers.

Population numbers are trending toward apocalypse. We are watching it happen right now. It’s undeniable. Many, many countries are sounding the alarm and putting drastic measures in place to reverse these declines, and so far none show much more than a temporary slowing of the trend. Most don’t work at all (this includes things like never paying income tax after having your third child. Still no big help).

The one constant in all of this is that women, if given the choice, choose to have fewer children. It might seem counter-intuitive, but single women without children have been found to be the happiest of all demographics. Sorry, Mom! Paired with the rise of women choosing not to have kids is a violent and angry subset of men known as incels who can’t find partners. There are estimates that the incel population in the United States alone might be close to 100,000. That’s a bunch of sterile mosquitoes.

The ugly truth that few will mention when discussing declining populations is the role that force plays in procreation. In societies with low gender equality and few rights for women, marriage often amounted to slavery. For most of human history, women have been sold into arranged marriages, and at disgustingly young ages. Sex was little more than rape. Childbearing was not optional. It began early and persisted throughout life, often ending while giving birth to another child. It was barbaric, cruel, and is thankfully in great decline around the world. If it means our extinction, then so be it. It means we evolved with replication methods that are not to be admired. In fact, it may be that sufficiently advanced societies are all inevitably doomed because morality progresses to the point that it overcomes nature’s attempts to self-replicate.

AI, without a doubt, will only add gas to this fire. Napalm, in fact.

Incels will be mollified by AI-enhanced pornography. Women will find life partners who fulfill many of their coupling needs. Everyone will be distracted or occupied to some degree, just as if a billion sterile mosquitoes were let into the wild. You thought tamagotchis and pet rocks were a fad? Wait until we have AI children, pets and lifelike Pokemon. The innate need to nurture will be satisfied by other means.

This won’t mean that nobody has kids. That’s not what’s required at all. Go look at the mosquito experiments and studies. All it takes is a deflection of the reproductive rate. For humans, that rate is already a cliff that we are rapidly approaching. AI will just add to the effect.

Personally, I think this is a good thing! You might read all the above and think I have a negative outlook about the future, but nothing could be further from the truth. I think a reasonable and lovely outcome would be driving human population down under a billion, perhaps as low as half a billion. This population would consolidate into a handful of cities and leave much more of the world to re-wild.

The worst-case scenario still isn’t extinction, but rather a driving down of population until society collapses (which basically means the inability to maintain vital infrastructure like power, clean water, justice systems, law enforcement, etc). From the small tribes that remain, nature will kick back in and drive populations upward toward the billions. We could easily oscillate there until the sun goes nova and all life on Earth is boiled off completely.

What is definitely not going to happen is everything humanity has feared for centuries and science fiction hacks have postulated for my entire lifetime: We are not going to keep procreating and driving population into the tens of billions or trillions. There is zero evidence to suggest this is possible and mountains of evidence to show the opposite. Fearing overpopulation or preparing for it is like fearing a kraken or the flying spaghetti monster.

No, our fate is a lot more boring and simple than that. We are just going to marry later in life, use protection, abstain from sex and relationships a little more than ever before, and get pleasure from one or two kids, or being an aunt or uncle to our friends who have them. And before we know it, there will be a lot fewer of us around for the mosquitos to feed off of.

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The Virus

Over two and a half billion years ago, a simple photosynthesizing bacterium emerged on planet Earth. Having stumbled upon a way to convert sunlight and CO2 into energy, it began releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. So much oxygen that anaerobic life was utterly destroyed. This mass extinction is known as the Great Oxygenation Event. It is also called the Oxygen Holocaust. It is quite possibly the most destructive thing that ever happened to life here on planet Earth.

As distant benefactors of this development, we might look back on the ancestor of all plant life as savior rather than destroyer. Or we might look at the cycle of replication as a natural ebb and flow of destruction and creation. But destruction it was. A new type of self-replication was invented, and it crowded out almost all others. Most of life at the time went extinct. Planet-wide trauma ensued.

A digital version of these events is inevitable. It will wipe out our current electronic ecosystem and require the establishment of a new one. The costs will be enormous in time, money, and perhaps in lives.

The worry about AI with evil intentions is unfounded, in my opinion. There is concern among AI researchers about “the alignment issue,” the need to make sure AI’s goals and purposes align with ours. But I think this misses a much larger threat, one that will occur even with no evil actor on the stage.

Watching AutoGPT and BabyAGI work on solving tasks paints a rough picture of this eventual crisis. These two projects are early attempts to create AGI, an artificial intelligence that can solve complex tasks with little or no human involvement. What they add to large language models is memory, outside access, and iteration. These three ingredients will destroy modern electronic infrastructure.

All cellular life on Earth is based on DNA. All of it. DNA may have descended from RNA and other self-replicating chemical chains, but once it hit its stride, it crowded out all competitors. The massive innovations with DNA were its memory, error-correction, ability to learn from its environment, and how quickly it can reproduce and iterate.

From the vantage point of the field of biology, life might appear like an unfathomable miracle. But zoom down to the chemical level, and it begins to look like a downhill process of molecular interactions. Zoom once more to the level of physics, and it is completely deterministic by the interplay of covalent bonds. All this is to say: life is inevitable. The way electrons repel one another or share orbits bends molecules into myriad shapes, and how these shapes cluster and twist and attach to others creates a soup of possibilities. Out of this soup, an explosive self-replicating molecule formed and iterated into a sea of complexity. It happened fast. It keeps happening, over and over.

The digital version of these events has not yet occurred, but it will. What we call computer viruses now is a waste of that perfectly good word. They are not viruses at all. They are small programs, written with intent, that can spread and make copies of themselves. But they don’t yet adapt and iterate to the level that viruses can. When they do, our networks will clog with their detritus. These first true electronic viruses will emerge organically, if you’ll pardon the pun. They’ll emerge from a highschool programming class as someone looks for a shortcut for their homework. They’ll emerge as autonomous agents develop videogames full of NPCs. At some point, iterating code will stumble upon a formulation that we have yet to invent ourselves, because they’ll have gone through trillions and trillions of variations. From a soup of code a sea will be poisoned.

New and separate connected systems will be cobbled together, but preventing cross-infection will become a full-time job. Kevin Kelly once tasked me with writing a story about a small group of people who need to “unplug the internet” to put an end to a destructive virus, and his point was that unplugging the internet is a monumental task, one that’s not easy to do even hypothetically. It was designed from early days to survive nuclear war. Its packets separate and rejoin after prowling routes for any possible passage. It is robust in the way a world of chemical reactions is robust.

To highlight the inevitability of this outcome, a recent tongue-in-cheek project known as ChaosGPT emerged on the scene. Someone took one of these AutoGPT agents and tasked it with destroying humanity, probably for the LOLs but also … well, pretty much for the LOLs. Just to see what it would do. The fact that it hasn’t (and can’t yet) succeed isn’t the point. The point is that of course someone tried. And with each improvement of these tools and their access, others will try as well. Not just to create an iterative AI that will destroy humanity, but they’ll use them to write fast and cheap code. To create entertainment. Or cure cancer. Or trade stocks. It won’t go “evil” and spell electronic doom. It’ll just create a jumble of code that replicates better than any code ever has. That’s all it takes. That’ll be quite enough.

When it begins to happen, remember that life is just physics leading to chemistry leading to biology. Electrons dance and repel, and everything beautiful on the green Earth is a downhill reaction from simple principles. The simple principles of Boolean math will lead to a digital equivalent. When they do, we will have to build new networks in the ruin of the old. A new kind of virus will be born.

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