The View from Meatspace

I’m a really nervous optimist.

Life here on our planet is changing fast. Global insecurity is skyrocketing, caused by the spread of misinformation, our eroding trust in public institutions, and the narratives of once-fringe voices moving into the mainstream and polarizing our societies.

This insecurity is vastly compounded by concerns of overpopulation, climate change, migration, and wealth inequality, not to mention the exponentially rapid rise of AI and VR technologies that provide possibilities and pose dangers the scope and scale of which we cannot yet begin to grasp.

But change always brings opportunity. The bigger and faster the change, the greater the opportunity, and if we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the threats facing our world and ignore the opportunities, we’ll completely miss the potential to leverage the changes into something wonderful.

Truly, it’s an exciting and scary time to be alive, more rife with opportunity and threat than any time in human history.

During times of stress and worry, we need escapes for the mind and imagination, and that’s how I perceive my job and purpose on this planet. For me, science fiction is the best vehicle to explore the bounds of humankind’s potential and plumb the depths of the human soul. My goal is to craft engaging tales peopled with everyday characters who are thrust into situations that make our own global crises look paltry in comparison. Characters whose souls carry the burning ember of heroism. Characters who are just like every one of us.

To paraphrase a famous internet quote:

We are all ghosts driving meat-coated skeletons made from stardust, riding a rock, hurtling through space.

Fear Nothing.

Thanks for joining me on the ride through meatspace,

Patrick Cumby