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What made you want to write a
book?
As a highly trained
researcher specialized in coral
reef ecology, I have spent many
years doing surveys of coral reefs
and investigating the ecology of
patch reef fishes. With over 5,000
hours spent underwater, It has
been heartbreaking to watch the
decline and destruction of these
magnificent ecosystems.
Unfortunately, the
surveys and experimental
artificial reefs that I conducted
and built in the Hawaiian Islands
and Micronesia haven't done
anything to stop widespread coral
bleaching.
So... I have turned to
science fiction to try to reach a
larger audience that may be
inspired to actually do something
about climate change.
Tell
us about you and where you
live.
I live in Aptos,
California near the sunken ship at
the end of the pier in SeaCliff
Beach. I spend most of my days
working out, running, writing and
performing tech patent
research.... quite a leap from my
early days in Western Kansas where
I shared the farm outhouse with a
nest of half frozen rattlesnakes
and learned to read by the light
of a Coleman lantern!
My marine biology
doctoral studies at Scripps
Institution of Oceanography and my
career as an environmental
consultant has taken me to many
exoreic places--one of which is
now considered on of the most
radioactive islands in the
world--which I describe in my Backstory
Blog.
What
have you written and what are
you working on now?
I have just finished the
second book in the Metamorphosis
Chronicles series entitled Met
Chron New-Humans. Set in
the year 2030, it is a Sci-Fi
Technothriller of a world near
the global warming tipping point
and where humanity’s survival is
threatened
This is a short
description.
Timing is everything. If
the intern at the SpeeZees Lab
hadn’t accidentally selected the
wrong sequence of avatars in a
training program, the world’s
first New-Human would not have
been 3D printed and brought to
life.…and without Chron’s
genius, the strategy of
developing a space elevator to
convey pods of seawater into
space and generate snowfall over
tropical seas, coastal cities
around the world will face
catastrophic flooding.
Furthermore, if Chron had
not assisted her longevity
research, Dr. Astra Sturtevant
would never have made her game
clinging discovery of how to
control the genetic clock and
arrest the aging process.
Meanwhile, the AI androids that
had mutated in the high RAD
zones following the nuclear
detonations in the Bay Area have
launched campaigns to gain their
independence and annihilate all
organic humans.
The innovative pioneers
that operate the Deep Space
Mining Moonbase have a plan that
will solve humanity’s problems.
The question is will anyone out
there listen?
How
do you see technology
evolving?
As robots and androids
become outfitted with
post-singularity Artificial
Intelligence they will be
formidable allies…or competitors.
What jobs can humans do that
robots can’t do better, more
efficiently and with less time and
cost? Will they have the right to
vote, own property or assume a
government office? Still it seems
like there may be the hope that
AI's and humans will work together
to defend against the threat of a
planet killing asteroid as well as
conduct asteroid mining to
construct colonies in space.
What’s unique is that that
androids will be able to mutate
and test the survival of the
fittest in simulations in seconds
instead of decades.
What
are your thoughts about
prolonged life spans in
humans?
The quest for
immortality is also a major
feature in both Met-Chron
Sanctuary and Met Chron
New-Humans.
With advances in
nano-scale tissue and organ
bioengineering New-Humans will
become more android like and live
longer lives—maybe even for
centuries and beyond. The problem
is limited resources….and of
course we will have to share those
resources with robots and android
populations.
Will
android’s have feelings and
desires?
If an AI android
studies the concept of love and
how it is manifest and that has an
impact on certain abilities that
are analogous to the chemistry of
emotion, and then creates an
algorithm to mimic its behavior
and ultimately establish a reward
system that encourages the android
to incorporate that behavior into
its subroutines, it will act as if
it has feelings of love. That
algorithm could then be broadest
to the android population.
An important factor
will be whether AI-Droids have the
right to reproduce. Will
procreation be regulated? Will
they develop the concept of
desire? Will factions with
different and opposing priorities
develop?
In
the Metamorphosis Chronicles
series you portray national
governments as corporations. How
does this relate to your views
on politics?
There are three major
opposing governments in the story.
United States Corporation (USACO),
a joint Iranian-Venezuela
(IRANVEN), China, Russia and North
Korea (CHIRUS).
As long as
corporations can make campaign
contributions I expect their power
to increase. The problem with
corporations is that they have no
soul and are essentially
immortal—as long as they make a
profit. Much of the goodwill they
disseminate is image marketing and
the human leaders come and go over
time.
The question is ‘Will AI
androids secure the right to
vote and hold office’? ....Will
they pay taxes?
How
do you market your books and
do your promotion methods
work?
I really just put on my
PROMO ball cap because my
strategy has been
to author and publish
three novels in a chronological
series and then begin marketing.
The idea is that prospective
readers will want to read the
other two books after reading
the first. We’ll see.
Where
can readers find your book for
sale?
The Telepathic
Dolphin Experiment and
Met-Chron Sanctuary are
currently (and
Met Chron
New-Humans will
soon be) available on Amazon,
Google Play, Nook and all of the
retailers serviced by
Smashwords.
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