Alien Life Forms Seen As Global Risk

It's a dangerous and unpredictable world we life in.  In terms of natural disasters I guess it always has been, although those on the right of the Climate Change fence insist that the planet is more unstable than ever in terms of natural disaster potential.

That may or may not be correct, I'm not stepping inside that debate in this posting, but it is clear that the planet is more dangerous today than it was one hundred years ago.  There are military conflicts in multiple regions permanently, the internet presents increased international and personal risks and I'm guessing we haven't seen the end of the global financial meltdown yet.

It's not surprising that an entire industry has grown up around the analysis and management of risks.  Many of you will be aware of the term Business Continuity, some of you will be involved in it for your organisations.  If you work at a governmental level you may be involved at some level in National Resiliency, the arrangements that analyse the risks and attempt to ensure that the National Interest is looked after.  As citizens of whatever country we live in - this blog does seem to stretch quite wide these days - we should think that it is a good idea our governments are looking after our interests in this way.

But the biggest risks are global; if the UK or US banking industry collapsed completely then the repercussions would be felt worldwide.  If China catches a cold in manufacturing, everyone sneezes.

One of the organisations that looks ahead at global risk is the World Economic Forum, a think-tank of academics and industry experts from around the world.  They have been producing annual reports on their projections for potential global risks and have recently published their eighth annual report, covering the next twelve months.

The approach is to analyse perceived risks in a variety of headings to determine the potential for damage.  For industries that span continents this is necessary reading; the effects of disparity of wealth, the rise in terrorism, the reach of cyber crime, the adverse effects of bio engineering, the potential for pandemics and natural events are all topics that are considered and while some of these will give you the Heebie Jeebies as you read how exposed we can be, I expect many of you will be familiar with the broad risks presented by many of the subjects.

While most of the risks identified in the document are unlikely to reach their full potential in any given year, some will and lives will change as a result.  For example, in 2001, terrorism in New York changed everyone's life to some degree and still does.  Around the same period SARS was forecast to portent the end of the world and clearly that didn't happen - at least not yet.  This latest report takes a SARS like event very seriously as the world has hardly become less susceptible to such a pandemic in the last ten years.  Interestingly, for those of you following Parallel Lives as it is serialised on this blog, you will recognise that I've had more than a passing interest in pandemics - and for the record, Parallel Lives is over ten years old.

However, this year the World Economic Forum have taken their crystal ball gazing one step further, engaging with Nature, the scientific journal, to look at the potential effects of scientific research as risks.

The extended crystal ball gazing has turned up something that probably most of us wouldn't have expected in such a document, and that is the discovery of alien life forms.  They're not saying that 2013 is necessarily the year the such life forms will be confirmed but they point to the high numbers of potentially life bearing planets being discovered, with the discovery rate accelerating year-on-year.  So where's the risks?

Well, one risk is that global belief systems may well be challenged by the confirmed discovery of life on other planets, which could lead to destabilisation of some cultures.  Ironically, it may give some credence to Scientology, the pseudo religion supported by the halfling Tom Cruise.  I guess anything that challenges religious beliefs is a recipe for strife. Another issue is that such a discovery could skew national and international funding as there would be a race to increase the space exploration programmes to the detriment of other necessary projects.  There may even be an increased arms race as the planet gears itself up to defend itself from the newly confirmed aliens.

The report provides food for thought to anyone who is interested in the risks facing the planet and even without the identification of alien life forms is a fantastic resource for people like me who write science fiction thrillers.  But throw in the alien angle and you have what should be a best seller on our hands, and it's free to download.  I've only started dipping in and out of it so far, but what I've read is suitably well written yet easily digestible.  The PDF is on my Nexus and next in line to be read cover to cover.

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Get The Journeymen for free

As a special end of year promotion I am giving The Journeymen away for free until the New Year.

You can read the blurb to The Journeymen here

To obtain your free copy go to Smashwords and 'purchase' your copy using the code RT67P.

Here's a link to the Smashwords 'The Journeymen' page for you to complete your 'purchase'. You will have the opportunity to apply the code at the checkout.

Enjoy the read, feel free to share the promotional code and please leave a review when you have read the book.

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Why Don't Authors Re-Write Their Novels?

In virtually all media art forms there is a tradition of reworking and updating material, giving it a fresh coat of paint, so to speak.

Take movies, for example.  We all know that popular films get updated and recycled every so many years - everything from Bond movies to dance classics such as Footloose get this revision process.  Then there are the homages, hats tipped to the original story but filmed as a different piece of art - new title, different character names but essentially the original plot updated.

In music its a little different - it's considered bad form (for that read illegal) to 'update' music tracks without the original owners' consent.  But making an original interpretation of a song is fine as long as the owner gets credited and compensated - take 'Yesterday' by Lennon and McCartney for example; think of a number to guess how many versions have been recorded, any number you like, and its probably short of the current total.

But does anyone revisit their books?  Do authors think 'hey, it's about time I reworked such and such a book?'  Probably not, and for some justifiably good reasons, I guess.  If a book is still selling well, that implies it ain't broke.  If it's not selling well, but once did - well a rework might kick-start it, but if the author is still writing and has the creative juices flowing he or she probably wants to get the new ideas down on paper (or e-ink).  Reworking an old novel probably feels too much like self editing a book, a process all authors have to do as they near publication day and it can be a bit of a drudge reading and re-reading prose for the eleventeenth time.  And judging from some of the typos I've stumbled across in the last twelve months, including books from best selling mainstream authors and their publishing houses, it's a step that isn't being carried out assiduously enough.

I moot these thoughts as I consider my first novel, Parallel Lives, could benefit from a facelift.  When I wrote the main draft nearly ten years ago I reflected issues and technologies that were bubbling under the surface back then.  For example there's a plotline about Avian Flu that was probably more worrying in 2002 - don't get me wrong, I still think that a mutated Avian Flu strain may yet cause a pandemic situation but since I wrote the plot the risk has got close to being real.  Now from a writing perspective that's great in one way - predict something, even something that potentially could cause a lot of heartache and devastation - and you could be recognised as prophetic, not a bad reputation for a sci fi writer.  But in 2012, plotlines about Avian Flu probably look a little dated.  Another plot element, number plate recognition, wasn't well known about when I used it as part of the plot back then - I was in the defence procurement world and had some inside information which I sneaked in.  Today it's a mainstream piece of technology, used to identify car tax dodgers and to punish shoppers who linger too long in supermarket car parks.  There's no issue with its use in Parallel Lives, but writing it today I would just refer to it as an established technology, not a 'wow, look at this' plotline.

Because I like to swim against the tide, I may well re-write Parallel Lives and it may even be rewritten in this blog, chapter by chapter (they almost certainly need breaking down a bit anyway).  If I do, it may be after Project: Evil has been serialised, or I may interleave the two books on different days.

But most Authors wouldn't do that, I readily accept.  But here's an idea that might work, one stolen from the world of film.  What about updating another author's work - not stealing the idea but rewriting the book, updating it in the way that films are rewritten and updated.  Obviously give the original author full credit but write the book in an updated style.  Perhaps rework a piece of Charles Dickens as a SciFi novel?  Great Expectations could work, A Tale of Two Cities could be set on another planet, although there's enough revolution going on in the world today to not need to fabricate an alien location. 

But lets not kid ourselves.  Apart from the fact that all writing draws on what we have read and seen previoulsy, there is belief that there are only a handful of original storylines anyway.  So technically, with every book we write we're almost certainly stealing something from somebody on practically every line.  Maybe an upfront re-write is a more honest form of intellectual theft?

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How to Write a Novel - A Personal View Part 1

A colleague asked me about writing a while back.  His interest was more than idle curiosity; although he isn't a writer himself, his brother writes professionally for television.  Specifically he wanted to know if I had a clear idea of how the book would pan out when I sat down to write the start of the book.  Apparently his brother doesn't write a single word unless he knows how the script ends up and every twist and turn on the way.

Me, well I have a rough idea about how a story will end once I've written about twenty thousand words, that is, typically between 20% and 25% of the book, but only the vaguest idea how it will get there.  And of course I don't know what percentage of the book I'm up to at twenty thousand words, but that does seem to be the point where I have established enough of the story to understand what is happening.  Perhaps the way my colleague's brother works is representative of the TV world, and I'm certainly aware that TV series have a defined story arc that has to be shared by the various writers so that the stories and characters act consistently, but I think I'd find it difficult to work that way myself.

So how do I go about writing a book in the first place?  I guess there isn't a sure fire way that works for everyone, but this short series is how it works for me.

Often I start with a short story - I ran a series of blog entries earlier in the year describing the background to my books so there will be some repetition here.  Parallel Lives started with such a short story written on my work PC over my lunch hour, sometime around 2000.  I didn't do much with the story until the year I left the Royal Air Force in 2002, when I kind of got the writing bug.  The book started to develop in 2003 as I mulled over the concept of parallel universes being in some sort of contact with each other through individuals who were more sensitive to the link than most of us.  If you've read Parallel Lives there's a very subtle twist about three quarters through that should have made you wonder about which universe it was set in, if you were paying attention.  That twist came to me in the summer of 2003 while mowing the lawn, brain in free-wheel and suddenly I found myself wanting to stop the mowing and booting up the home PC.

The Journeymen also started as a short story, written one sleepless night while on a resettlement course in 2002.  I didn't touch that again until after I'd put Parallel Lives to bed in early 2004, but by then I'd realised that I could write a book form start to finish.  I was into a bit of a writing routine by then as well, so the cornerstone of my writing was in place.  As a confidence booster, actually finishing a book has to be near the top of the league.  What eventually became The Journeymen bore no relationship to the story it started off as.  In fact, the only part that story played initially was to act as a catalyst in my thought processes.  I'd written the short story that was clearly about a human-like race on a planet that clearly wasn't Earth, and it followed the travels of a group of four men who were breaking planetary rules to observe bipeds they believed to be proto-humans, but who it turned out had been brought to the planet by earlier travellers.

That's when my brain went into a spin.  The bit that I got thinking about was how such a journey could be made and I came up with a crazy notion of hitching a lift on a comet that passed by two specific planets.  Then I came up with this whole conspiracy theory where the humanoids had had to travel back to Earth, from where their ancestors had brought the bipeds from, and were stranded on a planet that didn't have the technology to return them.  I thought about what we humans would do in that situation and decided that there was a high probability that we'd manipulate the planet we were on to develop the technology we needed.  I clearly remember all of that dropping into place in my head in a few short seconds - I didn't know how it would work, who would be in it and I guess at that point I actually thought that the people who were to become The Journeymen were going to be the good guys.

That's the point I sat down and started writing, and the principle character, Tom Roberts, appeared on my screen within minutes of starting the book.  I had no idea that the book would shuttle between two stories, I had no concept of how complex a relationship I would develop and I have to be honest here, by the time I was three quarters of the way through the book I was so immersed in the story that I started to identify Journeymen, Sons, Colonists and IBs as I went about my day.  I doubt many readers would become as immersed but you have to realise that I lived with this story for about a year as I wrote the two interleaved stories.  I'm probably nearly normal now, but to be fair, I still broadly partition people into one of those four groups, not because I believe them to exist, but because I can see the four competing groups in modern society under other names.



In the next instalment I'll discuss my routine.

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I can be followed on Twitter - @RayASullivan

email me on raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

Visit my books on Amazon (for Kindle owners) and Smashwords (for access to all other formats and access to Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Sony and many other good ebookstores.

For quick access to the various Kindle, Kobo, WH Smith and Smashword links please use the table below to view my books

To View My books In....

Kindle US Store

Kindle UK Store

Kindle DE Store

Kindle FR Store

Kindle IT Store

Kindle ES Store

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SETI and Space.Com

You may have heard of SETI - the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence - an organisation founded in 1984 dedicated to seeking evidence of alien life.  It employs scientists carrying out vital research and enjoys the support of many others.

If you have read The Journeymen you will know a little about SETI, albeit a fictional branch, as I based part of the storyline and some of the main characters within SETI.  I'm sure it isn't the first fictional thriller that has had SETI as a back story, but I doubt there's a huge amount of books that have featured them either!

Anyway, if you have any interest in SETI or its work and you have a Twitter account you can follow SETI.  One of the benifits is that they send links to fascinating images from the likes of Space.com - the image below popped up on my phone this morning.  What a fantastic image!

A combined view of the Antennae Galaxies, taken by the ALMA radio telescope array and the Hubble Space Telescope.
CREDIT: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Search for SETI on Twitter, or visit their homepage on http://www.seti.org/.  Also take a look at http://www.space.com/ while you're floating around the universe.


I can be followed on Earth usingTwitter - @RayASullivan

Visit my books on Amazon (for Kindle owners) and Smashwords (for access to all other formats and access to Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Sony and many other good ebookstores.

Now on WH Smith!

What is Science Fiction? Part 2 - The Journeymen Backstory

In my last blog I discussed the back story to Parallel Lives.  In this blog I'm going to discuss The Journeymen back story.

In The Journeymen we learn about a planet nine light years away which developed a civilisation that explored incessantly, it's flora, fauna, geography and then extended to the exploration of space.  When it found a suitable planet (ours) it set up a colony that thrived.  Meanwhile, back on the home planet, relations started to slip, eventually resulting in a terrible war that killed billions of people and destroyed an entire continent.

That was tens of thousands of years ago.  About six thousand years ago the planet has recovered, provides a benign autocracy, has eleminated the need for war and has almost forgotten about the devastating wars.  Except that the wars left the bio-diversity too limited and the planetary population has started to decline. 

Contact with the original colony has been lost for tens of thousands of years.  Unfortunately much of the technology that they had developed previously has also been lost so it is decided to send a team of people on a multi genrational journey to the old colony hitching a ride on a comet that is known to pass by both planets on a two thousand year orbit.

Three generations and one bloody battle later with some of the people tasked to travel on the comet, the Sons of Arlgon, the Journeymen find themselves stranded on Earth, with the descendants of the original Colonists still preserving the required genetic material although many have interbred with ther indigenous population.  The technology is gone, there is no swift resolution possible.  So the Journeymen resolve to preserve the Colonist genetic lineage, while propelling the technology on Earth to provide the tools to get the genetic material home, at whatever cost necessary.

Fast forward to today and we find ourselves on a planet that is being driven to self-destruction by representatives from an alien race in a drive to develop the technology needed to get teh Colonist genetic material home.  In the middle of this one IB (interbred), Tom Roberts, finds that he is a pawn in a Journeyman plot that results in many people losing their lives.

In my next blog I'll explain the backstory to Skin, my latest published novel.