Review Tour: Bulb

Review 

Bulb by Bradley Wind builds a unique and imaginative tale where immersive technology of the future infiltrates all areas where light penetrates, allowing entire lives to be visible to all and recorded in every detail in the ‘Grand Archive’, a technological miracle designed by the antagonist, Dr Mamon. Ben, the protagonist, takes the reader on his journey, from the life-changing events of the ‘accident’, to the myriad of experiences he has, real and surreal, as he tries to come to terms with loss. 

Mr Wind ambitiously delivers a multi-faceted view of a future, impacted by exponential technology advances, and its impact on what are considered cultural norms. How does one act in a world where there is no privacy? This is no mean feat, but his writing style allows him to tackle the challenging subject matter in a unique and imaginative way. 

Descriptive prose and quirky characters such as the twins, Ed and Francis and Ben’s friends, Laurel and Lenny, allow us a foothold into the writer’s psychedelic world, as seemingly normal events are turned into mind bending experiences. Convincing world building enhances that experience with the use of futuristic technology such as computer hover screens, ‘whigs’ containing life memories and the ‘Tornado’ games room enhancing believability, as does infrastructure settings such as shopping mall homes and cities built in the sky.

I admire Mr Wind’s boldness, but at times, I felt pacing was an issue. For example, the introduction stretched almost halfway into the novel. Overly long dialogue bordering on information download also unnecessarily slowed the story down.

That said, I highly recommend BULB to sci-fi buffs, particularly for fans of cyberpunk writers like William Gibson (Neuromancer).

Blurb 

If light records everything we do, can even shadows hide our secrets?

Imagine your entire life is available for review.

Imagine each day any event can be watched over and over again - your birth, your first kiss, your recent shower, that private itch - all replayable from any angle. Now imagine these can be viewed by anyone at any time. 

In a world where there is far less ego, little crime, and even the smallest moments are recorded and available publicly through the ‘Grand Archive’ a Utopia or Dystopia? Traumatised by memories he does not want to recall, artist Ben Tinthawin is recruited by the enigmatic, Grand Archive creator, Dr. Mamon, who seeks help for his nextgen designs to enhance the world. Ben stumbles across a secret revealing the doctor’s true scheme in all its surreal splendour and questions whether the doctor really is the benevolent soul he claims to be. As the paths of the paths of the broken man and a brilliant revolutionary cross, the world shifts and cracks start to appear. Even our most fundamental codes can be encrypted- or corrupted. If the wrong information is discovered, more than Ben’s life will be in danger of total shutdown.

Prepare yourself for full exposure.

Excerpt 

“There must have been some of that freakweather going on here. There’s a whole damn forest on the highway. Take the next exit, or I will.”

“Bah, it’s only threatening to rain. Why does everything have to be freakweather? A few branches won’t kill us,” Dad said.

This was more than a few branches. Something ahead looked like piles of dir as if there had been a small rockslide off to the side. The streetlamp shone directly above it, and when we got closer, you could see it was two little dead deer. They faced each other heads to tails like some kind of strange yin-yang symbol.

“Oh, look at those poor baby deer,” Mom said with her fingers pressed to the window. Their eyes, glazed and open, appeared almost alive.

“Look up there,” Dad said, pointing off to our left.

A considerable deer herd speckled the hillside, small points of glowing yellow eyes reflected the headlights. In the past, our family made deer spotting a competition. Dad liked to say this region was “infested” with them. I watched his face in the rearview mirror, a smile on his lips from his big score with the deer game, but it melted away as the rain started hitting the windshield. The fading grin was the second last thing I saw before it happened. The fear in the profile of Mom’s face was the last.

Mom shouted something unrecognisable as our headlights brought the deer standing in the road to bright view. The first deer looked like an albino, all white from the side - head turned to us, eyes blank and SLAM!

Author Bio and Links

Bradley Wind was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He is a prolific visual artist whose work has exhibited in the 20th century wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

He worked as a toy designer for K’nex Industries, a manager of IT for Pearl S. Buck International and is currently a director of IT for a child focused non-profit. He raises chickens and two lovely girls with his wife in Chester County, Pennsylvania.BULB is his latest novel

Review: Cosmos Other World's

As a fan of the Cosmos series hosted by Carl Sagan in the 1980’s, I eagerly awaited this new series, particularly given Sagan’s voice was used to promote the new series. Whilst there was an episode devoted to his contribution to science, both as a scientist and an effective mass communicator of science, the new series failed to live up to the original. Where Sagan had a unique ability to deliver dry scientific material in a poetic and motivational way, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s delivery was often excessively verbose, overpowering the story telling and with it, the ability to inspire. 

Tyson remains front and centre, either in front of the camera or behind it when voice overlaying the visual story. Detail rather than pacing is Tyson’s strength. Unfortunately, the cheesy music score, more suited to an old Star Trek episode, furthers that distraction. It’s a pity though, for the visual story told through various methods ranging from simple cartoon style history lessons, to high quality digital graphics, shines.

That said, it’s gratifying to see the Cosmos series live on, to inspire a new generation of ‘popular science’ fans. In this fast changing world of alternate facts, deadly pandemics and accelerating technology, educational/ entertaining shows such as Cosmos, play an important role in bringing the wonders of science to the masses.

Review: The Third Industrial Revolution

In the Third Industrial Revolution, Jeremy Rifkin describes the fast approaching third industrial revolution and what it means for the future. The first industrial revolution was the combination of print technology and cheap steam power leading to increased speed and availability of print material, priming the western public school system. The second industrial revolution was where communication and energy converged creating centralised electricity mediums such as television, phone and radio, thus dispersing the message ever wider. Additionally, fossil fuel energy and the development of the combustion engine led to suburban construction and the mass consumer society. 

Rifkin postulates a third industrial revolution where the internet’s lateral communication system combines with a new kind of (natural) energy source requiring a collaborative approach. The benefits of collaboration is all around as relatively free data becomes available to all. Increasingly, big data in the shape of algorithms will increase productivity and reduce marginal costs toward zero, unleashing an unstoppable disruptive force. Examples abound, ranging from the free encyclopaedia - Wikipedia, to sharing renewable energy, the ultimate global disrupter. Rifkin predicts the next big bubble will be the 100 trillion dollar fossil fuel industry as businesses increasingly plug into solar and wind and park excess energy into the social grid. Like Spotify changed the music industry, ever larger numbers of small users will create a new kind of energy gathering process, akin to the cooperative systems of old but on a global scale. 

No industry will escape the disruptive nature of the new digital economy. Logistics on the transport system will be overhauled as large fleets of trucks collect data on the highways, preparing for a driverless future. Will this lead to the well documented prediction that human capital will be replaced by technology and robotics? Not immediately, Rifkin postulates, arguing that there will be one generation (millennials) where wide scale activity will be required to retro-fit city buildings for renewable energy systems, transform the electricity grid to digital and upgrade the transport systems to electric vehicles. Every building will become a node to create an internet of logistics.

As the transformation gathers pace, will the population accept such dramatic change? Rifkin postulates that it will require a change of consciousness and given humans are a social animal, story telling remains the quickest way to turn thinking, just as long as they get the story right. Millennials will need to be convinced that the ‘ownership or market economy’ will not work in the third industrial revolution. Ownership will be replaced by access, market by network and consumption by sustainability. Sharing talents will replace independent autonomy, top down pyramid structures will be replaced by lateral networks. Classes that look like factories will be replaced by sharing talents and skills on internet modules.

Rifkin’s vision is positive, but he does note the dangers of the dark net and the challenges of data security and cyber terrorism. It certainly made me think about how future society will operate in the year 2120, the time setting of my next novel, Sentient. In this world, Earth’s management is willingly handed to AI to ensure the restructure and fit out of the third industrial world is carried out efficiently, in the face of the climate emergency facing the planet, a world of ten billion, half human and half ‘post-human. In this world, humans, biots and castes (humans with biot implants) grapple with emerging new visions such as interplanetary and intergalactic colonisation, as technology gathers pace, challenging the very future of humans as the next stage of evolution begins to emerge.

Review: Homodeus

This book is packed full of so many ideas. If you’re interested in the future of our planet, buy this book! I read this while writing my latest novel, Sentient, a science fiction story set in the year 2120. Futurism fascinates me. That’s why I write science fiction. Harare’s book ignites with potential futures we may face, some exhilarating, some terrifying. If you were like me and missed the massive hype that surrounded this book a few years ago, pick it up. It is illuminating, challenging and always interesting.

Yuval Noah Harare’s Homodeus creatively takes on the challenge all futurists face. What will our world be like in the future? Harare clearly states the difficulty of prediction, given the rapid pace that technology is moving, but he bravely tackles the task. A major premise is that human nature will be transformed by Google-like information networks so powerful, human intelligence will be uncoupled from consciousness. Even today, vast data processing networks are beginning to know our feelings better than we know ourselves. This can only accelerate as technology continues to rapidly advance. He suggests evidence that the human capacity to re-shape their environment is all around. War, famine and disease have fallen into retreat, as a result of our ability to effectively communicate in networks. 

As this capability grows exponentially through processes such as machine learning, the fundamental of what it means to be human will be challenged. Harare postulates that homosapiens could be coming to the end of their remarkable evolutionary reign. Modern human belief systems such as liberalism and democracy will give way to a new frontier where lifespans are extended by the power of technology. A new belief will evolve where early adopters willingly marry their personal identity to machines. Harare warns that ultimately, a small priestly caste of seers could gain access to the ultimate source of knowledge, leading to a new belief system -  dataism. 

This brave new world will pose new threats and challenges to the human race. For example, what will humans do in a world where they increasingly become irrelevant? Harare likens it to the same situation that animals have faced in a human dominated world. Will superior, highly intelligent robots treat us with similar violent indifference?

Harare’s work always fascinates and it certainly influenced how I ‘world built’ my novel, Sentient, set a hundred years into the future. The Earth in 2120 has undergone rapid transformation as governments grapple with the effects of climate change. The population has peaked at ten billion, but it consists of an equal mix of humans and ‘post-humans’ (castes and biots). 

World governance had been handed to AI four decades earlier in order to avoid an ecological disaster. Rapid re-optimisation of resources lead to the development of ‘super cities’ around the globe. Where human population declined, the ‘caste’ (humans with major technological implants) population grew rapidly as they, together with biots (genetically engineered humans) become the new elites of a world increasingly uncoupling its human consciousness to machines. 

Super corporations hold power in a world where networks of data became the new currency. States and religion are now artifices of the past, giving way to ‘dataism’. Increasingly, power resides with the new technological elites, whereas humans are assigned to the restoration and revitalisation of the world’s natural environment. Human’s increasingly form ‘splinter groups’, defending the case for returning the Earth to pre-industrial natural levels. Castes oppose them, seeking the acceleration of technological change, unnatural selection to ‘cosmic man’ and the allocation of resources to the rapid advancement of inter-solar and intergalactic exploration and colonisation.