To many readers these names will probably be quite unfamiliar. After all, most people are rather familiar with productions like Star Trek or Star Wars. Do you have any thoughts about those franchises?
I think Star Trek did a lot of things very right. There is at least some scientific plausibility to the technologies of Star Trek. Yet, the technical requirements aren’t so strict that not many writers could participate in contributing Star Trek stories. It’s a quite romantic vision of the future, in which humanity has overcome most of its vices. As that, it’s lovely, but it does shy back from embracing the consequences of transhumanist technologies. AIs only play a marginal role in Star Trek, and immortality could have been a thing by backing up people in the pattern buffer of the transporter. Star Trek sacrifices continuity and logical cohesion in favor of accessibility.
That’s a remarkably nuanced analysis of Star Trek. To me it seems that you are starting where Star Trek didn’t dare to tread. Is that an appropriate statement?
In a way, it is. But I certainly didn’t want to copy or build on Star Trek. I was more interested purely in the ultimate evolution of the future. What will technological and cultural progress eventually lead to? Those have been the driving questions behind the world of Coherence.
Few humans are capable of doing that at the level you are displaying with your stories. Have you ever sought out collaboration with other science fiction writers, or other persons?
Partially, yes. There is a start of a story line on Venus written by João Luz: Vena’s Tale- Prologue+Chapter 1 - Fractal Cosmos - Fractal Future Forum – Envisioning and creating a better future. It represented part of the original story about the interaction of humanity with independent AIs. Unfortunately, João eventually discontinued that work. After that, I only rarely reached out to other science fiction authors, and couldn’t get any kind of collaborative effort to work.
Fascinating. So, was your idea to create something like a franchise like Star Trek that other authors could join and build upon?
Yes, absolutely, but doing something like that is pretty hard. I fear that Coherence has become too sophisticated by now. I doubt that many people would be both able and willing to contribute to that universe. But if someone approached me about that, I would be glad to offer my full support.
Writing fiction hasn’t been my strong suit so far, so I guess I’ll pass that offer. But what about you? It seems that you have been on hiatus for the last years.
Yeah, the lack of resonance to my stories discouraged me from proceeding. In the meantime I did lots of world building regarding the prequels to Guidance Withdrawal, but didn’t do much actual fiction writing apart from the occasional short story. Writing on this level is hard for me. It feels like too much effort for too little effect. But my hope is that people actually get more interested in stories like that over time, which would motivate me to go on.
I would certainly like to read your new stories. They belong to a niche that I can’t seem to be able to describe very well. How would you classify your works?
I’m not so fond of the classical classifications of soft vs. hard science fiction. I’d rather describe my work as full-spectrum science fiction, because I want to portray a possible future that considers all aspects of technological and cultural development. If the technological landscape changes, it will sooner or later affect how society operates. Society may lag behind in using the full extent of the technologies available, but it still adapts to them in some ways at least. And that adaptation is what’s missing in most of science fiction. I try to anticipate how society will be changed by key technologies like blockchain, AI, superintelligences, interstellar travel, realistic simulations, mind uploading, and similarly disruptive technologies. I may fail at that attempt, but at least I try.
It’s certainly a tall order to do that with any single disruptive technology, but you appear to try that will all of them, right?
Yes, that’s essentially what I mean with the term full-spectrum science fiction. It’s therefore quite heavy on initial world-building, but it may shed light on previous blind spots in our thinking. It could also be seen as a way of doing futurism by painting quite sophisticated scenarios of a distant future.
When it comes to futurism, the general idea may be to predict the future. But you seem to be more ambitious than that. To me it seems that you want to shape the future.
Indeed. I think our discussions about the future, if they happen at all, usually lack depth and a true big picture view of the dangers and possibilities. I want to provide that with my main scenario of Coherence. It may not be perfect, but it can serve both as a warning and as inspirational model. Perhaps there are ways of preventing the problems of (the timeline of) Coherence. But we won’t find them, if we are unaware of its basics, at least.
If you admit that there are problems with Coherence, would you still want to live in that world?
Yes, but perhaps we actually already live in a world like that and we are just stuck in a simulation in which it’s our challenge to fix a broken world.
If that’s the case, let’s hope that we will succeed. Thank you again for another fascinating interview!
You’re welcome. It’s a fulfilling challenge to me to come up with appropriate answers to your questions.