An interview with Michael Fletcher, author of 88
We met up with Michael R. Fletcher, author of the debut SF novel, 88, for an interview.
Michael R. Fletcher
Q: Would you please give us an
overview of your novel, 88?
MRF: This should be fun. I seem to have
injured myself doing handstand push-ups and am currently floating on a lovely
cloud of (legal, if slightly beyond their best before date) narcotics.
The story takes place in the year
2034 which was about as random a year as I could decide on. I thought all of
the advances I predicted would likely take much longer than I've allowed, but
that's the way things happen. One day you're staring at green text on a
monochromatic screen, and the next you're Googling performance stats for
Ferrari's new electric super car.
Back to the story. I started with
the assumption Artificial Intelligence wouldn't happen (or at least not fast
enough). Add to the mix the technology to scan human minds so they can be used
as sentient computers, and you have a recipe for tragedy. The human mind makes
an excellent computer. Well, that's not entirely true; some human minds make
excellent computers. Mine wouldn't, but that lead me to the question: What
minds would make the best computers? The answer is obvious. The minds of young
children, unhindered by preconceptions and primed for learning, are perfect;
particularly if you can get hold of them before their parents mess them up.
Oh, let's try a for real overview.
Hm. How do you describe a book without giving anything away?
The
dream of Artificial Intelligence is dead and the human mind is now the ultimate
processing machine. Demand is high, but few are willing to sacrifice their
lives to become computers. Black-market crèches, struggling to meet the
ever-increasing demand, deal in the harvested brains of stolen children. But
there is a digital snake in that fractally modelled garden; some brains make
better computers than others.
88, a brilliant autistic girl, has
been genetically engineered and raised from birth to serve one purpose: become
a human computer. Plagued by memories of a mother she never knew and a desire
for freedom she barely understands, she sets herself against those who would be
her masters. Unfortunately for 88, the Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia clan have other
plans for her.
Griffin Dickinson, a Special
Investigator for the North American Trade Union, has been tasked with shutting
down the black market crèches. Joined by Nadia, a state-sanctioned reporter and
Abdul, the depressed ghost of a dead Marine inhabiting a combat chassis,
Griffin is drawn deep into the shady underbelly of the brain trade. Every lead
brings him one step closer to an age-old truth: corruption runs deep.
An army of dead children,
brainwashed for loyalty and housed in state of the art military chassis, stand
between Griffin and the answers he seeks. But one in particular, Archaeidae, a
14-year old Mafia assassin obsessed with Miyamoto Musashi, Sun Tzu, and Machiavelli,
is truly worthy of fear. Archaeidae is the period at the end of a death
sentence.
6 x 9 Trade Paperback, 414 pages
ISBN 9781927400234
$32.99
EPUB, 414 pages
eISBN 9781927400241
$9.99
Available from online booksellers worldwide May 1, 2013
And directly from Five Rivers Publishing
Q: Tell us a bit about the
inspiration for 88?
MRF: Strangely, none of the original
inspiration made it into the book. The story evolved beyond the germ that gave it
birth. It all started when, back in university, myself and four friends rented
a car (with unlimited mileage) and drove to the Gulf of Mexico and back over a
long weekend. I remember sleeping in the trunk being surprisingly comfortable.
While passing through Matamoros--a Mexican border town across from Brownsville,
Texas--I was astounded by the number of dentistry offices. There seemed to be
one on every corner. It's a visual that stuck with me for reasons I can't
fathom.
Years later, after reading too
much conspiracy literature on how cell phones cause brain cancer, I once again
thought of that visual. Only this time they were neurosurgeons. How cool
would that be, I thought, if an epidemic of brain cancer drove the pace
of neuroscience? The idea of scanning human minds and saving them as
computers came out of that background, even though none of that made it into
the book.
It all started with wondering what
a world would be like where brain cancer decimated the human population and
neuroscience outpaced the other sciences. Neat as that idea was, in the end it
didn't really matter to the story and the needs of the story must come first.
As I wrote, the background evolved and the story I wanted to tell changed.
I also take a lot of inspiration
from whatever music I'm listening to at the time. While writing 88 I
picked my background music based on the scene I was working on. I listened to
an awful lot of Slayer and death metal while writing this book.
Slayer
Q: After inspiration, what were
the key elements you wanted to illustrate in the novel?
MRF: When I started writing I had a lot
of ideas I wanted to incorporate. Some were philosophical questions, and some
were simple what ifs. This being my first novel I began with none of the
usual things that writers do. I didn't sketch out a plot line, and I didn't
decide on who all the characters would be. I just sat down and started writing.
If you're forgiving, you could call it an organic process. I'd call it insane.
People I liked ended up dying and characters I'd originally assumed were
background stepped up their game and became important. Sometimes I felt like I
had no control whatsoever over what was happening.
At the time I was playing a lot of
online First Person Shooters and regularly getting my butt kicked by children
and teenagers. It occurred to me these folks would make excellent soldiers and
killing-machines given the right (or wrong, depending on your point of view)
environment. That's where the idea of children piloting combat chassis came
from. I think some of that FPS addiction crept into my fight scenes as well.
People have a tendency to
underestimate children, both in terms of what they're capable of, and what they
understand. A huge part of this book is seeing things from the point of view of
the children involved.
Q: In reality, how close are we
to creating a biological computer?
MRF: We're kind of already there. If I may lift a little from
everybody's favourite source, Wikipedia:
In 2002, researchers from the
Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, unveiled a programmable
molecular computing machine composed of enzymes and DNA molecules instead of
silicon microchips. On April 28, 2004, Ehud Shapiro, Yaakov Benenson, Binyamin
Gil, Uri Ben-Dor, and Rivka Adar at the Weizmann Institute announced in the
journal Nature that they had constructed a DNA computer coupled with an input
and output module which would theoretically be capable of diagnosing cancerous
activity within a cell, and releasing an anti-cancer drug upon diagnosis.
In January 2013, researchers were
able to store a JPEG photograph, a set of Shakespearean sonnets, and an audio
file of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech I Have a Dream on DNA digital data
storage
It's just the beginning, but if
you look back at how fast digital computing evolved, I'd suggest we're not more
than a few years from useful biological computers. The funny thing is, I'm not
sure they'll be much more useful than other computers. At least at the
beginning.
Q: Recently there’s been some
exciting news regarding neural-interface prostheses. Was it this sort of
scientific development that inspired you to create the character of Griffin,
who ends up being one of the key characters in the novel?
MRF: Ooh. Drugs really kicking in now.
In a word, no. I employ something
of a Head in the Sand technique for surviving the barrage of pointless
information that is modern life. I don't watch TV, I don't read the news, and I
don't follow current events--scientific or otherwise. It means I am incapable
of following most water-cooler conversations, but since my days are spent
sitting at a desk at home, it's no great loss.
That said, when I get hooked on an
idea I do research the crap out of it.
Examples of latest developments in neuro-interface prostheses
Q: Are there authors who
inspire you, and if so who are they and why?
Yes, definitely. The very first
version of 88 was basically me pretending (really unsuccessfully) to be
Neil Stephenson. I desperately wanted to write Snow Crash. Once the
editors beat that out of me I began to search for my own voice.
Writers like Richard Morgen, Iain
M. Banks, Vernor Vinge, George Alec Effinger, and William Gibson are hugely
inspirational, each in their own unique way. Morgen and Effinger have an edge
to their writing that few can touch. Vinge brings the ideas like no one else,
and Banks is one of the few people who can write a Utopian future and keep it
exciting. Intending no comparison, I feel a little like William Gibson; he
wrote his cyber-punk books knowing next to nothing about computers and the
internet. I too have no idea what I'm talking about.
William Gibson
Q: There is a great deal of
technical information in your novel. Was this the result of research, or
extrapolation from existing research?
MRF: A lot of research went into the
writing of the book. It's all part and parcel of being a complete shut-in
know-nothing. I love the process of learning new things and then pushing what
little understanding I have to extrapolate possible outcomes. Even though it
plays an absolutely minuscule role in this book, I ended up reading about the
gold standard to an exhaustive degree. The funny thing is, I still don't
understand economics. The whole thing looks like a big Monopoly game where the
people who are playing the part of the bank get to change the rules whenever
they want. If you aren't one of the folks making the rules, why on earth would
you play the game?
The science was more fun. Though
I'm not of a particularly scientific bent, almost all of my friends are Nuclear
Physicists, Bio-Physicists, and Computer Engineers. They were amazingly helpful
in chasing down ideas and then picking apart my fanciful interpretations of
their mostly incomprehensible ramblings. A great many conversations started
with me saying, what if...
Q: Tell us about your writing
ethic.
MRF: My writing ethic has changed a lot
in the last two years. It used to be terrible. When it came to writing I was
very Manic-Depressive. There would be days (sometimes weeks) where I'd spend
eight hours a day sitting at the computer hammering out words as fast as I
could two-finger type them. And then I'd hit a wall and not write a word for a
month or longer. I think I gained about twenty pounds writing 88. I had
no understanding of life balance, ate crap, never exercised, and drank
excessively.
The birth of my daughter changed
all that. I left my job as an Audio Engineer (I did live sound for crappy bands
in crappier clubs) to focus on my writing and being a father. I should have
done it a decade ago, but sometimes I'm a little slow. As a work-from-home Dad,
I am forced to schedule my writing time. Where I used to rise from bed at the
crack of noon, I am now at my computer at six in the morning, trying to sneak
in a few hours before my daughter wakes. If she naps for two hours in the
afternoon, every minute of that is spent writing. As she gets older (she's two
and a half now) and requires less of my immediate attention, I look forward to
stealing back a little more writing time.
Q: Is there a sequel to 88
planned?
MRF: Grumble. I wrote a fairly detailed
skeletal outline for the 88 sequel. It took place some thirty thousand
years in the future and was very, very cool. And then I rewrote the ending of 88.
Twice. As soon as I finished that last rewrite I realized that I wanted to
write a very different sequel. I have a basic skeletal structure and a lot of
ideas that need exploring and researching. I do know the book begins on July
8th, 2034, the day after 88 finishes. For now I'll call it 88.1.
First, however, I have to finish
editing Beyond Redemption, my dark fantasy novel. My brain shifts gears
like an old Datsun and doesn't like working on multiple projects.
Okay. I have to go and try and
lift my daughter out of her crib now. I might need more muscle-relaxants. Wish me
luck.
courtesy haroldgibbons.com
Michael R. Fletcher
Q: Would you please give us an
overview of your novel, 88?
MRF: This should be fun. I seem to have
injured myself doing handstand push-ups and am currently floating on a lovely
cloud of (legal, if slightly beyond their best before date) narcotics.
The story takes place in the year
2034 which was about as random a year as I could decide on. I thought all of
the advances I predicted would likely take much longer than I've allowed, but
that's the way things happen. One day you're staring at green text on a
monochromatic screen, and the next you're Googling performance stats for
Ferrari's new electric super car.
Back to the story. I started with
the assumption Artificial Intelligence wouldn't happen (or at least not fast
enough). Add to the mix the technology to scan human minds so they can be used
as sentient computers, and you have a recipe for tragedy. The human mind makes
an excellent computer. Well, that's not entirely true; some human minds make
excellent computers. Mine wouldn't, but that lead me to the question: What
minds would make the best computers? The answer is obvious. The minds of young
children, unhindered by preconceptions and primed for learning, are perfect;
particularly if you can get hold of them before their parents mess them up.
Oh, let's try a for real overview.
Hm. How do you describe a book without giving anything away?
The
dream of Artificial Intelligence is dead and the human mind is now the ultimate
processing machine. Demand is high, but few are willing to sacrifice their
lives to become computers. Black-market crèches, struggling to meet the
ever-increasing demand, deal in the harvested brains of stolen children. But
there is a digital snake in that fractally modelled garden; some brains make
better computers than others.
88, a brilliant autistic girl, has
been genetically engineered and raised from birth to serve one purpose: become
a human computer. Plagued by memories of a mother she never knew and a desire
for freedom she barely understands, she sets herself against those who would be
her masters. Unfortunately for 88, the Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia clan have other
plans for her.
Griffin Dickinson, a Special
Investigator for the North American Trade Union, has been tasked with shutting
down the black market crèches. Joined by Nadia, a state-sanctioned reporter and
Abdul, the depressed ghost of a dead Marine inhabiting a combat chassis,
Griffin is drawn deep into the shady underbelly of the brain trade. Every lead
brings him one step closer to an age-old truth: corruption runs deep.
An army of dead children,
brainwashed for loyalty and housed in state of the art military chassis, stand
between Griffin and the answers he seeks. But one in particular, Archaeidae, a
14-year old Mafia assassin obsessed with Miyamoto Musashi, Sun Tzu, and Machiavelli,
is truly worthy of fear. Archaeidae is the period at the end of a death
sentence.
6 x 9 Trade Paperback, 414 pages
ISBN 9781927400234
$32.99
EPUB, 414 pages
eISBN 9781927400241
$9.99
Available from online booksellers worldwide May 1, 2013
And directly from Five Rivers Publishing
Q: Tell us a bit about the
inspiration for 88?
MRF: Strangely, none of the original
inspiration made it into the book. The story evolved beyond the germ that gave it
birth. It all started when, back in university, myself and four friends rented
a car (with unlimited mileage) and drove to the Gulf of Mexico and back over a
long weekend. I remember sleeping in the trunk being surprisingly comfortable.
While passing through Matamoros--a Mexican border town across from Brownsville,
Texas--I was astounded by the number of dentistry offices. There seemed to be
one on every corner. It's a visual that stuck with me for reasons I can't
fathom.
Years later, after reading too
much conspiracy literature on how cell phones cause brain cancer, I once again
thought of that visual. Only this time they were neurosurgeons. How cool
would that be, I thought, if an epidemic of brain cancer drove the pace
of neuroscience? The idea of scanning human minds and saving them as
computers came out of that background, even though none of that made it into
the book.
It all started with wondering what
a world would be like where brain cancer decimated the human population and
neuroscience outpaced the other sciences. Neat as that idea was, in the end it
didn't really matter to the story and the needs of the story must come first.
As I wrote, the background evolved and the story I wanted to tell changed.
I also take a lot of inspiration
from whatever music I'm listening to at the time. While writing 88 I
picked my background music based on the scene I was working on. I listened to
an awful lot of Slayer and death metal while writing this book.
Slayer
Q: After inspiration, what were
the key elements you wanted to illustrate in the novel?
MRF: When I started writing I had a lot
of ideas I wanted to incorporate. Some were philosophical questions, and some
were simple what ifs. This being my first novel I began with none of the
usual things that writers do. I didn't sketch out a plot line, and I didn't
decide on who all the characters would be. I just sat down and started writing.
If you're forgiving, you could call it an organic process. I'd call it insane.
People I liked ended up dying and characters I'd originally assumed were
background stepped up their game and became important. Sometimes I felt like I
had no control whatsoever over what was happening.
At the time I was playing a lot of
online First Person Shooters and regularly getting my butt kicked by children
and teenagers. It occurred to me these folks would make excellent soldiers and
killing-machines given the right (or wrong, depending on your point of view)
environment. That's where the idea of children piloting combat chassis came
from. I think some of that FPS addiction crept into my fight scenes as well.
People have a tendency to
underestimate children, both in terms of what they're capable of, and what they
understand. A huge part of this book is seeing things from the point of view of
the children involved.
Q: In reality, how close are we
to creating a biological computer?
MRF: We're kind of already there. If I may lift a little from
everybody's favourite source, Wikipedia:
In 2002, researchers from the
Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, unveiled a programmable
molecular computing machine composed of enzymes and DNA molecules instead of
silicon microchips. On April 28, 2004, Ehud Shapiro, Yaakov Benenson, Binyamin
Gil, Uri Ben-Dor, and Rivka Adar at the Weizmann Institute announced in the
journal Nature that they had constructed a DNA computer coupled with an input
and output module which would theoretically be capable of diagnosing cancerous
activity within a cell, and releasing an anti-cancer drug upon diagnosis.
In January 2013, researchers were
able to store a JPEG photograph, a set of Shakespearean sonnets, and an audio
file of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech I Have a Dream on DNA digital data
storage
It's just the beginning, but if
you look back at how fast digital computing evolved, I'd suggest we're not more
than a few years from useful biological computers. The funny thing is, I'm not
sure they'll be much more useful than other computers. At least at the
beginning.
Q: Recently there’s been some
exciting news regarding neural-interface prostheses. Was it this sort of
scientific development that inspired you to create the character of Griffin,
who ends up being one of the key characters in the novel?
MRF: Ooh. Drugs really kicking in now.
In a word, no. I employ something
of a Head in the Sand technique for surviving the barrage of pointless
information that is modern life. I don't watch TV, I don't read the news, and I
don't follow current events--scientific or otherwise. It means I am incapable
of following most water-cooler conversations, but since my days are spent
sitting at a desk at home, it's no great loss.
That said, when I get hooked on an
idea I do research the crap out of it.
Examples of latest developments in neuro-interface prostheses
Q: Are there authors who
inspire you, and if so who are they and why?
Yes, definitely. The very first
version of 88 was basically me pretending (really unsuccessfully) to be
Neil Stephenson. I desperately wanted to write Snow Crash. Once the
editors beat that out of me I began to search for my own voice.
Writers like Richard Morgen, Iain
M. Banks, Vernor Vinge, George Alec Effinger, and William Gibson are hugely
inspirational, each in their own unique way. Morgen and Effinger have an edge
to their writing that few can touch. Vinge brings the ideas like no one else,
and Banks is one of the few people who can write a Utopian future and keep it
exciting. Intending no comparison, I feel a little like William Gibson; he
wrote his cyber-punk books knowing next to nothing about computers and the
internet. I too have no idea what I'm talking about.
William Gibson
Q: There is a great deal of
technical information in your novel. Was this the result of research, or
extrapolation from existing research?
MRF: A lot of research went into the
writing of the book. It's all part and parcel of being a complete shut-in
know-nothing. I love the process of learning new things and then pushing what
little understanding I have to extrapolate possible outcomes. Even though it
plays an absolutely minuscule role in this book, I ended up reading about the
gold standard to an exhaustive degree. The funny thing is, I still don't
understand economics. The whole thing looks like a big Monopoly game where the
people who are playing the part of the bank get to change the rules whenever
they want. If you aren't one of the folks making the rules, why on earth would
you play the game?
The science was more fun. Though
I'm not of a particularly scientific bent, almost all of my friends are Nuclear
Physicists, Bio-Physicists, and Computer Engineers. They were amazingly helpful
in chasing down ideas and then picking apart my fanciful interpretations of
their mostly incomprehensible ramblings. A great many conversations started
with me saying, what if...
Q: Tell us about your writing
ethic.
MRF: My writing ethic has changed a lot
in the last two years. It used to be terrible. When it came to writing I was
very Manic-Depressive. There would be days (sometimes weeks) where I'd spend
eight hours a day sitting at the computer hammering out words as fast as I
could two-finger type them. And then I'd hit a wall and not write a word for a
month or longer. I think I gained about twenty pounds writing 88. I had
no understanding of life balance, ate crap, never exercised, and drank
excessively.
The birth of my daughter changed
all that. I left my job as an Audio Engineer (I did live sound for crappy bands
in crappier clubs) to focus on my writing and being a father. I should have
done it a decade ago, but sometimes I'm a little slow. As a work-from-home Dad,
I am forced to schedule my writing time. Where I used to rise from bed at the
crack of noon, I am now at my computer at six in the morning, trying to sneak
in a few hours before my daughter wakes. If she naps for two hours in the
afternoon, every minute of that is spent writing. As she gets older (she's two
and a half now) and requires less of my immediate attention, I look forward to
stealing back a little more writing time.
Q: Is there a sequel to 88
planned?
MRF: Grumble. I wrote a fairly detailed
skeletal outline for the 88 sequel. It took place some thirty thousand
years in the future and was very, very cool. And then I rewrote the ending of 88.
Twice. As soon as I finished that last rewrite I realized that I wanted to
write a very different sequel. I have a basic skeletal structure and a lot of
ideas that need exploring and researching. I do know the book begins on July
8th, 2034, the day after 88 finishes. For now I'll call it 88.1.
First, however, I have to finish
editing Beyond Redemption, my dark fantasy novel. My brain shifts gears
like an old Datsun and doesn't like working on multiple projects.
Okay. I have to go and try and
lift my daughter out of her crib now. I might need more muscle-relaxants. Wish me
luck.
courtesy haroldgibbons.com
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