Science Fiction Friday: Greg Bear

by Damon Gambuto     Department: Correlations

Welcome to the very first installment of Science Fiction Friday!  I am thrilled that we have one of the great SF writers of his generation, Greg Bear, for our conversation today. I've admired Greg's work for years and now, after having chatted with him, I can say that he's as interesting to talk to as he is to read.  

The idea to interview Greg Bear came about while looking for ideas for the show.  Executive Producer David Axelrod sent me a news article about science fiction writers.  Of course I was thrilled as I am always looking for ways to tease out some fiction from the (WIRED) Science.  The article was about how the government had enlisted the help of a collection of science fiction writers to dream up scenarios with which the United States' Department of Homeland Security might be faced.  They called themselves Sigma.  When I saw Greg's name among the group of six authors, I immediately knew whom I'd be tracking down to chat with me about the experience.  

While the story behind the Sigma didn't make sense as a television segment (strangely WiSci cameras don't have the proper security clearance), I was thrilled to listen to Greg and all that he had to say.  I knew he'd be a perfect guest for Science Fiction Friday.  He graciously agreed to be interviewed about his new book QUANTICO and whatever else came up for my new segment here at Correlations.  For those of you who aren't aware of just how cool Greg is, you can find a brief biography here.

The interview was quite involved so I am dividing it into multiple posts.  Please keep checking in over the weekend for the follow up segments.  Okay, enough of me gabbing.  Let's listen Greg!

Damon Gambuto: So can you talk about QUANTICO, give a brief outline of the plot for our readers?

Greg Bear: Well, QUANTICO is set pretty close to tomorrow afternoon.  We've got America still recovering from - kind of - a series of body blows.  Not just 9/11, but there's another attack.  The Middle East is in dire straits.  Nothing surprising there, but it's getting worse.  It looks like Saudi Arabia is starting to come apart at the seams.  Oil revenues are threatened and we have a number of agent trainees that are about to graduate from the Academy and go out into the real world.  One of whom, William Griffin, his father is a veteran FBI agent.  His father is tracking a... kind of - a domestic terrorist in the Northwestern states - Washington State.  Along the way, another agent Rebecca Rose, who is a veteran agent - a female agent of some years standing in the FBI who still faces prejudice in the FBI for being female - subtle prejudice, but it's there - is working a long term case involved with the American Anthrax crimes and she's tracking down inkjet printers actually.  And these inkjet printers may have been used - she believes - in the American Anthrax case.  But when a whole truckload of these printers is found abandoned near a police car in Arizona and the police patrol officer has been murdered and the car has been burned and the truck is wrecked and three hundred inkjet printers are spread over the freeway that alerts her attention.  The FBI is called, she shows up and that begins a long trail of evidence leading to a pretty spectacular plot against religious institutions around the world.  QUANTICO is pointing towards America's and the world's frustration with arguments that never stop.  How they spiral out of control.  How people can use technology and their own misguided cleverness to get us into even deeper trouble.

DG: What made you pursue this story?

GB: I began thinking about American politics and the legal system and technology way back in 1990's when I was working on books like QUEEN OF ANGELS and eventually on SLANT and it just seemed to me that there was this change in American politics over towards a more punishment oriented, grumpy view of the world.  I was always interested in how technology would support or not support that.

In 2000, I had the privilege of visiting the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia and giving a talk there about the future of crime and law enforcement.  While there I met a lot of very interesting people. A lot of agents, a lot of law enforcement people from around the country who had convened to try and figure out what the problem might be in the 21st century and along the way I was able to get out in the cafeteria and walk around the grounds and see what the FBI Academy was like.  Even to be given a tour of some of the training areas and try out some of their equipment.  I was utterly fascinated by it.  By the personalities there.  The agents in training and the agents who had been there for years all reminded me of my upbringing as a Navy brat when I ran into military personnel.  That same kind of attitude prevailed in the FBI Academy. 

In fact, a lot of their recruits come from military or ex-military. But it also seemed that the FBI Academy had a lot of the old traditions still in place from the 1930's and 40's.  And I felt that to be fascinating too.  And the personality of law enforcement made itself perfectly clear.  I just thought that the was a possibility of a book here. And think an outline as a possibility and eventually propose it.  But something happened along the way. . . 2001 was not the year that we science fiction fans had anticipated by long shot.  With 9/11 suddenly everything began to change and I realized the FBI Academy that I had visited was no longer going to be the same.

I thought through a plot outline, proposed it to a publisher, they picked it up and I spent two years actually writing the book.  During that two year period I did an extraordinary amount of research, for me anyway, because I was not that familiar with the day to day aspects of law enforcement, with what it meant to be a police officer, or an agent.  And hat's why it took me so long to write the book.   But I noticed there were a lot of technological changes going on in military equipment which would certainly apply to the FBI and to law enforcement in general.  So I started taking some of those ideas, picking up from my research, expanding on them a little bit, adding a few things, and discovering as I went along, if I tried to make something up I would eventually find out it was being developed.  So I realized the speculations in my novel were going to be pretty close to the bone they were going to be pretty close to being actualized in real time.

I'll give an example.  One of the things I thought of along the way is what I call "Cop Block" which would be. . . I was looking down the road a little bit and I was saying: if we're going to be a more security conscious nation then we're going to give up on some of our personal freedoms.   That's just the quid pro quo that has to happen here.  And if we give up on some of those personal freedoms what's going to happen, for example,  to our patrol officers in his car on the freeway?    What are we going to give him the ability to do if he feels that laws are being broken or our security is being impaired?  Then I though, well, "Cop Block."   You can install in a vehicle a control system such that  a cop could send a signal - a police officer could send a signal to your car and simply stop it where it is or reducer it to a slow safe speed then stop it.  And you could do that to trucks, you could do that to interstate commerce, you could do it to automobiles, whatever.  And now I find after QUANTICO was published that General Motors has been developing just such a system.  So now I don't think I actually influenced General Motors' planning on this, but obviously they're tuned into the same wavelength.  I don't know though whether that will be a popular feature or not, but in QUANTICO it's a reality.

These kinds of technological developments. . . They reflect what we want in a nation.  They reflect what we think we need.  After 9/11 I realized this country had been kicked in the balls.  We were going to have some very specific...and...and quite American reactions.  Among which would be xenophobia.  And about that time I was writing the sequel to DARWIN'S RADIO, DARWIN'S CHILDREN, and I put that political perspective in DARWIN'S CHILDREN and it didn't sit very well with a lot of the people supporting the current conservative administration.  They got very angry about the book.  Didn't matter if there was a balanced perspective in it, they were just very, very reactive.  And I thought, "This is interesting.  This is another example of how our psychology is changing." 

After QUANTICO was published, I noticed the reception to QUANTICO, a couple of years after DARWIN'S CHILDREN, was quite different.  And a sea change had occurred in politics.  And this is a part of American history as we are...we are so variable in our emotions and so flamboyant at times that things can change in six months, eight months, a year.  Things can change when we get disappointed in leadership.  All of that stuff can happen very rapidly.  What continues to move on though is the technology.  The development of the technology.  The powers that we give to law enforcement to our military leaders... these things continue onward because there on the procurement stream.  And so I don't see too much of that technological innovation being affected by changes in politics.  In fact, I'm not sure we're seeing a sea change in politics.  I have to say, in QUANTICO I make predictions that are a little more dire than I'd like to see in real life.  I'd like to see them disproven, but I'm not sure they're going to be.

...to be continued!

Tags: Greg Bear, Quantico, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Friday

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.pbs.org/mt4/mt-tb.cgi/289

+ Add Comment