David Marusek‘s intriguingnew novel Mind Over Shipexplores a post - human future where corporations battle to manipulate the luck of genesis ship . We ’ve just interviewed Marusek about the intriguing socio - political humanity of his novel .
https://gizmodo.com/mind-over-ship-explains-what-clones-really-want-5148570
io9 : When we speak about the Good Book before , you mentioned that you ’d had to winnow out the middle class betweenCounting HeadsandMind Over Ship . Why the halfway class ? And how did that choice transfer what you did with Fred ?
DM : Hmm . I think what I said was that I had to eliminate the Kodiak Charter story thread , which was my outdoor stage - in for the middle class . In CH I wanted to give a cross - section of fellowship , and I create three story threads that featured the various socio - economic radical . The Starke / Harger thread includes the super rich who own virtually everything and the AIs who deal it all for them . The clone yarn represents the rudimentary work force that occupies the bottom rung of society ( there is no true impoverishment left in the developed world ) . The gap in wealth between the elect and the clone service of process class is vast , and the halfway class that used to bridge over it is no longer there . With the miracle of nanotechnology and the total organizational superstar of the AIs , the middle course of study lost its ground for existence . In the mid-21st century , ( 70 class before the time of my story ) members of the shrinking middle class organized into small , communal groups call charters , and the World Charter movement was born . Bogdan Kodiak and his dysfunctional housemeets were my poster children for the dying in-between class .
In my first draught for MOS , I had a whole lovely thread about the Kodiaks . Where they landed when their charter was break up by the state for deficient membership . biography in “ Scootsville , ” where end - of - the - roaders go to be out the residuum of their lives in warrens built propagation ago to house give the sack person . I followed them as they struggled to appease together and write about Bogdan ’s first footstep to reach his dream of give-up the ghost into outer space . A lot of orderly stuff , but I could see that I could n’t possibly get it all in and still have any distance leave for Mary and Fred , who I really wanted to concentrate on in MOS . unfortunately , I axe the whole Kodiak thread .
I handle to cannibalize some option bit from it and used them in MOS . As to the relief , I ’m not yet certain what I ’ll do with it . Since I pen the first few drafts of my work in longhand , none of this is in a news processor .
Many writers who take with posthuman futures predict earthly concern where death is rule out and we live in a state of exemption from physical limitation . But your posthuman graphic symbol seem even more jug by their body than masses today – Ellen is trapped in her baby body , the evangeline clones ca n’t scat their neurologic tendencies to depression , and everyone has to undergo these hideous purge to get all the nano out of their body . Plus , there are the freaky donald knockoff with the giant , braided penises . Why did you choose to focus on what could be called the grotesque side of posthuman aliveness ?
I was agreeing with your statements all the way up to the concluding motion . You really think the donalds ’ surgically braided penis fetich is grotesque ?
You ’re right , though ; there is a lot of body business go on in this Quran , though IMO not all of it is antic . Quite the contrary . There is vomiting , I take on , and flyspeck alloy things that grovel under your skin to sleuth on you . But there are other scenes of enjoy a beneficial cup of umber and Danish , for example , or wearing a good chapeau , field - dressing a large Pisces , and other sensuous and not at all grotesque delight .
Two of the companies in conflict over the fate of the O - Ships are clon - makers : an Indian firm yell Capias and an American one call Applied citizenry . Throughout the novel , Capias clones are stealing the jobs of Applied People clones . Were you recollect about present - day economic outcome when you make that conflict ?
Actually I created the Capias World agency to have someone to buy out my other American clone temp agency , McPeople . That was the name of Applied People ’s primary rival in the first book , but by the time I write MOS , I go down to throw all things Mc , which is an even bigger cliché than outsourcing jobs to Mumbai .
It ’s funny that you should take about injecting present - twenty-four hour period economics into science fabrication that is supposedly about the futurity . The present - day global fiscal nuclear meltdown is breathtaking in its scope and upper . I ’m sure there ’s many an sf writer get hold of short letter on how to write planetary meltdown scenery . And as far as it function , I feel that same sentiency of Everything Has convert that a lot of citizenry feel after 911 . You think of , how 911 supposedly alter everything . As an sf writer , I did n’t really feel that epochal demarcation personal credit line as strongly as I do now with today ’s fiscal crisis .
For example , I have just finished the second draft of a novella I ’m working on . It ’s my first work of repugnance ( or dark fantasy ? ) , a musical style I never thought I ’d write in . Anyway , its working title has been “ Modern Parenting . ” I realized last month , as bank go off and frugality became the unexampled pitch blackness that my report , which had been set in contemporary America , is no longer contemporary . Things that bump in my account and the character ’s posture toward money are no longer believable in today ’s ethos . The subtext exchange when no one was look , and my whole fib became obsolete . And the unearthly thing was that it was n’t even skill fable !
I had a hiccup of scare , and for an instant it looked like the story , after months of oeuvre , had become just the latest victim of the quotation freeze . A minute later my nous started work again and I simply changed the title to “ Modern Parenting — Circa 2006 . ” The story had become a stop piece .
You ’ve make a chemical group of artificial intelligences call Mentars who we get a line about a bit more in this novel – we know they want body , but that they ca n’t emulate human emotions very well . Do you think Mentars , fundamentally just neurological spread in boxful , are the ultimate posthuman animate being ?
Not at all . I ’m just getting started . I unfeignedly believe that our nigh future includes the macrocosm of posthumans . That is , if secular civilisation survives and scientific discipline advances , our race Homo sapiens sapiens will fork out . Whether through strictly biological means or in combination with some sort of heritable machinery or machine interface , a new race of human being will coexist alongside us . Nothing like this has occurred for 30,000 years when our hominid cousin , the Neanderthal , was still around , or 200,000 years when we share the planet with maybe three other human species . But this time we ’ll be the obsolete species .
The idea of humans creating their own successor has been around for a longsighted metre and provides rich textile for storytelling . The matter is , in most sf tale , you have to go through a Vingean Singularity to get to the Posthuman Future . We old model man do badly in singularities ; by definition we are the past . Thus posthuman stories lean to be about attempt to fight off the posthumans , especially if they ’re machines . Brave humans strive to prevent their rise and defend our biologic supremacy . And this is where I attempt to break new trail in Mind Over Ship . I ’m propose a singularity that does not traverse the importance of the human torso but alternatively bank upon it .
What ’s next ? Are you working on a third novel in this series ? You left us with quite a cliffhanger .
I left myself with the same cliffhanger . Although I have tried to be more methodical , I ’m just not the kind of writer who can work from synopsis . All I know is that one or more of the great Oships embarks on a thousand - class voyage to a fresh planetary habitation . That ’s the series arc ; I have no cue what pass off in the item-by-item instalment . When I ended MOS I loaded that drop-off with a raft of neat things I myself would care to see in the next sequence , without having any idea of how to make them fall out . I guess that ’s one ground why it lead me so long to write these books — all of the time they take to hatch . In the month since I turned in the MOS ms , insight about what Fred or Mary might do next proceed to visit me at leftover moment , and I jot down them down . The braggart picture of Book 3 is starting to be sketched out .
I detest to add this , but I ’ve been fag in the CH universe now for about 14 year . I have recuperate about five stories and two novels from it so far , and there are many more in there . But I need a forgetful furlough from that earth , which is n’t a very pleasant populace , to spend some timbre time in a altogether dissimilar fictional landscape . New jab , new mental lexicon , raw character . Everything is so unexampled I ca n’t even talk about it yet .
Read more about David Marusek ’s latest novel , Mind Over Ship .
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