Interview - Jeff Carlson

Jeff Carlson has caught my attention a few months ago in a bookshop in São Paulo, where I found his debut novel, Plague Year. An above-the-average technothriller-cum-SF, this novel deals with one of my favorite tropes in SF right now: nanotechnology. I greatly enjoyed that novel and I bought the second one, Plague War, so enthralling as the first one. Currently, as he tells us in his site, he´s working on a new stand-alone thriller as well as a third Plague novel to complete the nanotech trilogy. He is also collaborating with New York Times bestselling author David Brin on an adventure novel entitled Colony High. Great expectations! Meanwhile, enjoy this interview and expect a review of twe tho Plague novels soon.

Post-Weird Thoughts: What was more fascinating to you -- nanotechnology itself or the protagonists' apocalyptic situation?

Jeff Carlson: Both! But the truth is that Plague Year began with the situation; I got hooked on the science afterwards.
I'm fortunate that my parents raised me with a great love of the outdoors, skiing, backpacking, fishing, and boating. I grew up in northern California, at sea-level, and yet the San Francisco Bay Area is just a three hour drive from the Sierra mountains. After a weekend of fresh powder and jumping off cliffs, my friends and I never want to go back to work, and as a writer, I'm always looking for cool ideas.
One of the places we drive through to get to Lake Tahoe is Donner Pass, the site of the infamous Donner Party. So I started to think, "What if no one could ever go home again? What if this was happening everywhere?"
Believe it or not, I'm actually a normal, happy person. My wife Diana and I have two strong, intelligent children, she's pretty great herself, and I enjoy what I do. Once you accept the basic premise of the story, unfortunately, things get ugly in a hurry, which is why I think the books are so popular. It's an impossibly hard question to ask yourself. "What would you do to survive?" There are very, very few animals or plants to eat above 3,000 meters, no shelter, no technology, and no fuel.
In a crisis, some people will fail -- but there are always others who rise to the occasion. Any occasion. Human beings are the smartest, toughest creatures on the planet, and yet it's given us a blind spot, too. It works against us. We're the cause of nearly all of our own problems. To me, that's intriguing as hell.
When I first began writing Plague Year, the threat was a virus, but I couldn't make a biological threat obey a barrier. It kept coming up over the mountains and killing everybody. There's a book in that, too, I guess, but it would be a story without any hope at all, whereas if the danger was a machine plague it might have limits. You might even be able to turn it off.
Researchers are publishing a lot of eye-popping stuff in medical technology these days, and I was especially fascinated by the way they're using primitive nanobots to target and destroy tumors. And so the machine plague was born...

PWT: Are there any living role models for, say, alpinist Cameron, nanotech researcher Sawyer, or scientist Ruth?

JC: I confess that there is a lot of the two main characters in me. Cam's background as an athlete and enjoying the purely animal sensations of skiing -- of being muscle, and only muscle -- that was straight from the heart. He's young, in good shape, and out on his own for the first time. Cam is the Everyman in the story, the regular guy who gets caught up in the end of the world.
I'm sort of a split personality, though. I don't have a 190 IQ like Ruth, but -- and I hope I can say this without sounding too fat-headed -- I do test at genius levels. Growing up, sometimes I didn't always fit in well. Even on soccer and baseball teams, I could be too cerebral. When I shut up and played, I was very good, but when I argued with the coach or talked strategy in the backfield, not so much. But I knew I was right. Heck, I still think I was right! Ha ha.
Sawyer is a different story. A lot of the inspiration for that character arose from a high school friend of mine who was very smart, very charismatic, and yet had also survived a broken home and several foster families. He was a natural leader, but also someone who worked against himself by being too selfish at times. He could also be sarcastic. It was a defense mechanism. I think he was carrying around a lot of misplaced guilt.
As a writer, that sort of inner conflict was very appealing. Here we have a guy with everything going for him, but he can't see past his own self-hate. It's a natural source of tension.

PWT: Talking about role models: Which books or authors writing about men and machines were inspiring to you, if any?

JC: It's ironic -- I began writing because I loved to read, but now that I'm a full-time pro, I barely have any time for other people's books, which I regret. There are a lot of great novels out there that I'm missing! My job entails so much research, editing, contracts, and correspondence in addition to actually writing my manuscripts, plus we have two boys, which is like living in the chimpanzee cage at the zoo. They're enormously fun but they also keep us running nonstop.
One of my favorite writers is Joe Haldeman, for his evocative use of language. Another would be the team of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child for their intense plotting. When I have spare time to read just to relax, I do tend to read science fiction and tech thrillers like Plague Year, because I love the big crazy ideas. But I also read detective novels and mainstream literature and even an occasional romance novel just to keep me on my toes, because as a writer I always read with one eye toward the other author's craft. "How did he do that?" I'm thinking, or, "Ooh, look how she set up this subplot!" Writing a book is like fitting together an enormous puzzle, which is why it's so much fun.

PWT: Do you believe in nanotech revolutionizing the world? Why or why not?

JC: It's already happened. You're surrounded by nanotech right now. For a field that concerns itself with microscopic things, nanotechnology is incredibly vast and pervasive.
You can find "nano-particles" of zinc or titanium dioxide in sunscreen that make the lotion clear instead of giving you a funny white face. There is "nano silver" in socks as an anti-odorant.
For the purposes of the book, though, the characters are mostly concerned with nanoscale machines. The Holy Grail of the most ambitious researchers in the field is to develop a high-level robot that can follow directions not only create more of itself - because one nanobot is basically useless, being so incredibly small -- but to be able to construct or rearrange things at the molecular level.
In theory, nanobots like this could make gold out of dirt. Or food. Or medicine. Or a cold fusion reactor. Once you control the most basic building blocks of the universe, you can create almost anything.
We're still a long way from this magic. Right now, what people are doing with nanotech is creating better sunscreen and socks and new optical fibers and microprocessors.
However, there are also remarkably clever people who are using crude nanobots to identify tumors in patients. Tumors are more acidic than healthy tissue, and people have manufactured nanoscale carriers that, when injected into the body, will react to that acidity and begin to release markers which are then used to precisely target the tumor in MRI scans.
All of this sounds great, right? Here's where it gets scary. The problem with even passive nanotech such as what you find in sunscreen that doesn't look white or socks that don't smell is that particles of this size are impossible to contain. The junk in the sunscreen can be absorbed into your body, where, in sufficient amounts, it will disrupt hormone production. The stuff in your socks washes out and filters into the ground water, where it plays equal havoc with biological lifeforms, and I'm not just talking about frogs and fish. It affects people, too, because it returns to you in your drinking water...
And that's just the beginning.

PWT: Would a complete loss of control as you describe it be possible?

JC: Yes. There are hundreds of private labs who aren't publishing what they're doing, some commercial, some military. You don't even want to think about nanobots as a weapon. Even nuclear bombs are nothing to worry about in comparison to an invisible, worldwide blanket of nanobots that could disarm and disintegrate missiles before they're launched. Or rip apart anybody who doesn't like it.
In Plague Year, I posit that there are research teams who have moved beyond "dumb" nanobots to an active, "smart" machine that will find and remove malignant tissues inside their living human host.
For all we know, there are science teams who have already developed machines like this in real life. The researchers in the lab imagined in Plague Year are also some of those who aren't publishing, not because they're evil but because it's proprietary information. The first group to come out with such a thing will make trillions of dollars, although money becomes a secondary concern at that point.
There's an even better pay-off than being rich, because if you can improve your cancer cure by another level or two, you nearly have immortality -- and you can smoke, drink, and eat donuts all day long besides! Machines like this could keep your lungs clean, your liver strong, and correct any and all failing such as diabetes or multiple sclerosis while also protecting you from AIDS, nerve agents, or even the common cold.
My characters are still in the early stages of creating their device, which they call archos, a Greek word meaning "master form." Eventually, they hope to use the same prototype to accomplish all of the wildly complex aspects of maintaining the human body against age and disease. For now, however, they've taught the archos tech to use its host's body heat as an energy source and they've taught it build more itself using the carbon and iron it would find in malignant tissues. That's it.
That's when it breaks loose from their lab during an act of industrial espionage.
There's nothing anyone could do. The only thing in the world's favor is that the archos tech has one weakness. The research team built a hypobaric fuse into their machine as of their controls. They planned to treat their patients inside a hermetically sealed room, and, when they were done, they'd drop the air pressure to 70% of an atmosphere, causing the nanotech to self-destruct, after which the patient would emerge, happy, cancer-free -- and free of active nanos, too.
The bad news is that 70% of an atmosphere is about 3,000 meters up. This barrier fluctuates with the weather, but not by much, and there aren't a great many places on Earth at that elevation.
Below the death line, the uncontrolled nanotech devours all warm-blooded creatures, leaving only some insects, amphibians, and reptiles.

PWT: Do we need more control over nanotech research?

JC: How would you enforce it? Nanotech isn't like nuclear proliferation. A working lab can be the size of a couple rooms with just a few people involved.
We could pass more laws, but only the good guys will follow them.

PWT: So do you have more trust or distrust in scientific progress?

JC: Maybe you wouldn't think it from reading Plague Year, but I'm going to say "trust." In Europe, North America, and many other parts of the world, people are wealthier now than 99% of anyone else who has ever lived in the history of mankind. Yes, we also have enormous problems like overpopulation, pollution, and global warming, but we owe all of our creature comforts to science.
The things we take for granted would be insanely miraculous treasures to all of the generations who went before us. Antibiotics. Brain surgery. Computers. Supermarkets full of food and books.
People forget. We get so caught up in our own small daily lives and the frustrations of paying the bills or having neighbors who are inconsiderate morons and so forth... There are a billion dead ancestors who would have happily killed to have just a fraction of our luxury and our long, easy, rich lives.
I write scary books because if all that happens in the story is that the nanotech cures cancer like it's supposed to -- well, big deal. That's not much a page-turner. I believe we will defeat cancer, but I get to play "what if" because I live in a civilization built upon such unprecedented success that I can sleep in until 9 every day, get up and goof around on my laptop, swilling black tea in my underwear, and still have enough spare income to buy my kids a PlayStation. I mean, how could we be any luckier?

PWT: Generally speaking: What is you take on the human quest for immortality?

JC: This is also happening as we speak. The average lifespan has nearly doubled in the past two centuries, which is a huge factor in our problems with urban sprawl and pollution. We're all so fortunate. And yet we're killing ourselves! People tend to live longer, yet die more horribly. It seems like every day there are new exotic diseases, cancers, allergies, and birth defects... not to mention mundane old problems like starvation and war.
Actually, I'm writing a book about it! The story's still in its infant stages; it will probably be my second novel after the Plague Year trilogy is complete.

PWT: The ISS scenes -- are they paying homage to NASA's work?

JC: Absolutely. I'm very supportive of the space programs all around the world. We'd be foolish not to approach the resources and opportunities available in orbit and near-space. It's a goddamned shame that we're pissing away billions of dollars on ideological brush wars instead of pursuing more useful endeavors. Don't get me started! Ha.
I would have had major "big picture" influences in my life even if I wasn't born on the day of the first manned moon landing, which made for a happy accident. My father worked for NASA-Ames at the time, and my granddad on my mother's side was an avid science fiction fan whose library included personally autographed copies of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. (I have those books on my shelves now.) They wanted to call me Apollo, Rocket, or Armstrong. Fortunately, my mom was a little more level-headed. Still, "Rocket Carlson" would have impressed the girls...
Both men were strong, early teachers to me, opening my eyes to the idea that the universe is much, much larger than hometown U.S.A.
I like to think I'm a better person for it.