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Michael
Paul cut his "political teeth" at Stanford University in the
sixties, where he majored in psychology and played in a rock band.
Horrified by the Vietnam War, he became a conscientious objector, and a
lifelong "student of socio- political affairs."
His
wide range of interests finds their way into his prose. He has
been involved in ensemble theater, meditation, comparative theology,
musical instrument retailing, and finally, free-lance journalism.
His columns, covering what Paul calls "human future- technological,
political and social," were instrumental in shaping his work as a
novelist.
Q. How did you research your novel?
A. Some of the research accrued over a period of years (1998-2000)
during which I was publishing a future-focused online journal called
Global Situation Report (interested readers can find Paul's work at
http://www.gsreport.com).
Apart from that, when I started writing EXCELSIOR in earnest, I turned
to the WWWeb. :-) I must have logged hundreds of browsing hours
studying everything from roadmaps of Bangkok, Chinese surnames and
stages of viral infection to orbital mechanics, rice cultivation, desert
flora and very expensive wines. However, when it came
to certain aspects of space station design and spacecraft behavior, I
sought advice from several flesh-and-blood experts affiliated with NASA.
Q. EXCELSIOR features a commercial space station, human cloning, and
bio-weapons. How plausible are the technological advances you
depict?
A. Everything I've written about space station Excelsior and civilian
space travel is technically feasible today; only fiscal and political
indecision stands in the way. Government entities like NASA or the
European Space Agency will never create a commercial space station on
the scale of Excelsior, but visionary entrepreneurs are bound to, very
likely within three decades or less. Human cloning is a bit less
predictable, but I'm confident that it will occur (if it hasn't already)
in the near future, and from there it could become commonplace in two
decades or less, irrespective of political, religious or even medical
opposition. As for advanced bio-weapons, they are now being developed in
the secret labs of many nations. Only the exact nature and degree of
their terrible effects remains to be seen.
A major strength of EXCELSIOR lies in the author's fully integrated
vision. Some science fiction projects technology, some projects
politics, and some projects cultural changes. EXCELSIOR presents a
consistent picture of all three.
Q. How did you manage such an inclusive vision of the future in
EXCELSIOR?
A. Mainly, I kept in mind that fiction lives or dies on the strength of
its characters. People make politics, people make culture, people make
and use technology, for good or ill. So it was my characters who
provided the substance and glue for everything else. On the tech side,
one lead character is a biotech entrepreneur, another a biotech product,
another a criminal abuser of biotech. On the political side, one
character is
Secretary of State, another the Chinese ambassador, another the Director
of Central Intelligence; and so forth. In a way, too, I treated space
station
Excelsior as a character in its own right, not just a big chunk of
technology. The station has its own unique pulse, its own life, like a
tiny but lush island in the middle of the ocean. So, to the extent that
all these characters behave and interact convincingly, they weave [the
novel's] dense fabric of political, cultural and technological threads.
Q. On one hand, the changing ethics that tech advances allow (require)
seems to argue for a relativistic view of ethics in your book. On
the other hand, the human responses to those changes seem predictable
(in EXCELSIOR cloning leads to slavery and prostitution as the Internet
seems to have given a rebirth to the porn industry), which would
indicate that there are universal, repeatable ethical questions.
What are your thoughts on the issue?
A. I'm of the school that regards human nature as pretty much immutable,
which implies that ethical dilemmas, criminal behavior, and the struggle
for peace, social justice and human dignity in the year 2035 will be
pretty much the same as today. Technology might change the range of
opportunities (or the palette of tools) a bit, but the fundamental range
of human motivations and behaviors, from very exemplary to very hideous,
will not change. Example: both slavery and prostitution have been around
at least as long as recorded history, in nearly every culture throughout
the world. Modern technology might assist police to more
effectively interdict illicit sex/slave traffic, but it also breeds
ingenious new expressions of this age-old human behavior. One of the
unsavory things I've intentionally
emphasized in EXCELSIOR is that the traffic in human slaves does not
decrease by the year 2035, just as it has not substantially decreased on
a global basis during the 138 years since the United States formally
abolished the U.S. slave trade. Indeed, slave trafficking --
particularly of women and children for illicit sex -- is so prevalent
today that even President Bush drew attention to it in his latest
address before the United
Nations General Assembly. At the same time, I also believe that
the bulk of human misbehavior is driven not by some demonic force of
"Evil" but by common ignorance, fear and emotional immaturity.
By and large, people "know better"; and given half a chance,
most people will struggle against their own dark side and try to do the
right thing in difficult circumstances.
NEW CARAL, the sequel to EXCELSIOR, is due from Chancellor
Publishing
(http://chancellorpublishing.com)
in the Spring of 2005.
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