Spoiler Space: "Public Safety"

This is the story of mine that's closest to being really science fiction, in the sense of “fiction about scientists.” The reason that may not be immediately apparent is because the people who are actually doing science here are not the good guys but their only briefly-glimpsed antagonists.

Fiction, including SF, has a fraught relationship with science in general and scientists in particular. The image of the “mad scientist” has been around since the genre arguably was born, with Frankenstein, and for about a century after that most scientists were of the mad and evil (or at least misguided) variety. While we think of our time as being one of change, the change we experience is mostly from a state of affairs that didn't exist for very long – 78s to LPs to CDs to MP3s and so on. The 18^th and 19^th centuries saw real change, with communities and ways of life that had existed for hundreds and even thousands of years coming to an end. (This process is still happening, though it's at its tail end: my wife's grandfather started out working a mixed farm with horse-drawn tools – Mennonite farmers bought them at the auction when he died.) So it's not surprising that writers of the time viewed science and technology with suspicion, and were more worried about the risks of change than the possible rewards.

Both the 20^th century and the United States were a lot more friendly towards technological progress, though, so in Golden Age SF we see the birth of the scientist hero, who saves the day by his knowledge, practicality and engineering skills. The funny result of this was that while there were still mad scientists – the trope was too vivid to die – they basically stopped being scientists in any real way. Unlike Doctors Frankenstein and Jekyll, they were more interested in money, conquest, or simply sowing fear than in actually doing science (or else it was their less-intelligent assistants who were the villains.)

Getting back to this story – I was going to do it sooner or later – for a long time I had wanted to write something where a mad scientist did real mad science, an experiment that could only be conceived of and carried out by someone who had no respect for life or law. This idea dovetailed with two other things: an interest in the crazier side of the French revolution – a side which manifested itself, ironically enough, as a literal worship of Reason – and a New Yorker article that showed how flawed the “science” of fingerprint identification was. A visit to New Orleans helped to pull everything together and I had my idea: a society convinced that it was the most advanced and rational in history, blind to the degree to which its meticulously-worked-out beliefs were based on false premises, and prey to those that took its values to their logical extent by carrying out experiments completely free from conscience or compassion. Mad scientists, in other words, not mad because they lacked reason but because they had nothing but. The 19^th century created the mad scientist; if the 20^th century is anything to go on, though, we may have more to fear from the sane ones.

It's appropriate to be posting this on Canada Day, since this story has more Canadian in-jokes than any other. I'll leave the rest of them for you to spot, but most obvious is the character of Commandant Trudeau, who was named after the Prime Minister of the same name -- a figure who loomed large over my childhood and who had “reason over passion” as a motto (which also appears in the story, in Latin form.) Trudeau really did look a fair bit like Julius Caesar, or at least like the way Uderzo drew Caesar in Asterix.

Sources:

Michael Specter. “Annals of Crime: Do Fingerprints Lie?” TheNew Yorker, May 27 2002.

Most of the other research I did this one came from online sources that I forgot to document, on topics such as the Jacques Hebert and the cult of Reason, how a turn-of-the-century electric battery would work and how one might sabotage it if one had a desire to, and of course the French Revolutionary calendar. Converting the day on which the story ends to our own calendar reveals a mildly amusing in-joke, though the last line of the story likely gives it away.

#SFWAPro

Another reading, closer to home

More news! Just a month after I'm reading at the ChiSeries in Toronto, I'll be part of the very first Chiaroscuro readings here in Ottawa, alongside Violette Malan and Charles De Lint! I'm hugely honoured and proud to be part of launching this series, especially alongside two such amazing writers.

Because Violette and Charles will both be reading fantasy pieces, I've been asked to read some SF. Unfortunately my SF stories tend to be on the longer side and I've been asked to keep it to around twenty minutes. I'm leaning towards "The Coldest War" right now, but I've got two months to think about it.

Catching up

After some weeks of not much news there's been a whole lot in just that last few days. First of all, Kazka Press has released At Year's End, a collection of holiday-themed flash fiction that includes my story "A Visit, A Gift." It's e-book only for the time being, but that means it's the perfect stocking stuffer if you haven't finished your Christmas shopping yet -- instant delivery! You can buy it online at a bunch of places.

Second, my story "Heroic Measures" is going to be included in Rich Horton's collection Superheroes from Prime. The full TOC hasn't been released yet but it's got stories by Peter S. Beagle and Kelly Link, so you know it'll be good.

Finally, Bundoran Press, publishers of my novel Fall From Earth, is changing hands, having been sold to Hayden Trenholm, author of the acclaimed Steele Chronicles series. I'm sorry to hear that Bundoran's founder/publisher/editor Virginia O'Dine is leaving: aside from having the obvious good taste to buy my book, she's been a terrific editor, advocate and promoter for my work and that of many other Canadian writers. It's in good hands with Hayden, though, plus we'll now have an SF publisher based right here in Ottawa.

A book-shaped hole

This blog post by Alastair Reynolds is a great contribution to the whole "Is SF exhausted" debate, but what I really loved about it is that it articulates better than ever why I write what I write -- because, as Reynolds puts it, he sees "a book-shaped hole where one ought to be," something he thinks ought to exist that nobody else is doing. It's a way of looking at it that I find comforting as I slowly begin the process of writing another unsellable book.

The future, one thing at a time

The latest issue of Clarkesworld is up, and with it an article I wrote in which I argue against Campbell's Law ("the future doesn't change one thing at a time".) This has been percolating for a long time, ever since I was quoted that law during a critique of one of my stories many years ago. The critique, as it happens, was entirely right, but I never entirely bought into the general argument behind it... so hang onto those grudges, kids, they just might pay off someday!

Phone home

I've spoken a few times in the past about how fiction often does a poor job of adapting to advances in the kinds of technology that actually change our lives -- what I call plot-disruptive technologies, like Google and cellphones. Here's a great "supercut" that illustrates the point nicely: