Well, it has been a busy few months. I have just finished work for the Electoral Commission working in the Wairarapa Electorate. It was a gig that was supposed to be only for several weeks supporting the head office. It got extended to a post-election manager role, where I supervised the teams doing the counts, special votes, and weeding out those who chose to vote more than once! It was interesting and very insightful into how elections are run.

But I am now out of that, with the results officially declared last week. Back into the main event, books!!!

A New God Rises

I have completed a complete first draft of my novel. Now for the review and redrafting.

Here is a quick summary of the first chapter: Station Pence

The year is 2,123. Earth has continued to be environmentally degraded and is now dominated by three large blocks with the UN still trying to exert some control. Space has become a contested arena, the only place for resources to feed and power Earth.

Sofia Archer, a young research scientist, is on a research station orbiting Neptune, working to develop a technique for quantum travel (theoretically possible). Her research station is compromised by something that extracts all their data, but is otherwise unseen. Suspicion falls initially on the Chinese.

They are withdrawn to a moon base where she rejoins her brother, Aden. He has thrown his lot in with the US military, which creates tension between the two of them. But a surprise awaits. They have been studying why we have never seen or heard from any other species, when all models suggest the galaxy should be teeming with life. This great silence is projected to be due to a ‘Christopher Columbus’ species. First contact may not be a joyous occasion, but one of genocide. There are many parallels in our own history.

Sofia meets Aden’s creation, Asie (And so I arise) for the first time. An illegal self-aware AI. More anomalies come to light where data is extracted from highly secure systems, always in a way that appears to have no source. Then they stumble on a message. Essentially it compels them to return to Earth, give up technology, and not venture into space again. Something that would spell the end of humanity.

That sets up a chain of events that propel Sofia and Aden, Asie, and an Earth taskforce of ships on a galaxy-spanning quest to try and save humanity. Will they succeed? What is the cost they are willing to pay? Will humanity unite or splinter?

I would be interested in hearing from you. Is this premise compelling for you?

Water

I am also turning my attention to my non-fiction book. I was very grateful to be appointed to the Waiohine River Advisory Group. This is the main river to the north of Greytown and it has a history of flooding. Our property sits on a one in one-hundred-year floodplain. We all know from recent events that it is more likely that a warming atmosphere makes severe weather more certain. In northern areas, the unlikely has become more likely.

The Advisory Group is set up under the Greater Wellington Regional Council to support flood relief for Greytown and protect the spiritual, environmental, and recreational values of the river. All themes I am very keen to explore. Flood relief without protecting the natural values would not be worth it. It makes a nice case study for my book.

As always, please reach out if you have any questions or comments. You can contact me by email, stephendunstan68@gmail.com; or via my website: www.stephendunstan.com.

Until next time, stay well.

On the Craft of Writing

Writing can be a difficult gig. You need to stay very focused, and while there are lots of people writing, it is a solitary profession to get into. Just you, your desk and a blank screen awaiting your inspiration.

That’s why I found the recent Featherston Booktown events last weekend so enlightening. It was a great opportunity to see many accomplished authors. I really enjoyed meeting Catherine Chidgey, who this week won for the second time the $64,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The Axeman’s Carnival, is a novel narrated by a Magpie. It was interesting to hear of the many months she spent finding the perfect bird to narrate!   

The writing world is often split into those who are ‘pantsers’, who write by the seat of their pants, and plotters who outline their novel in much greater detail. There is no one right way, it comes down to personality and type of book.

Stephen King is the archetypal pantser. He puts his characters in difficult situations and writes to discover what happens to them. The characters become alive to him.

I fall more into the pantser category. An author at Booktown described it as like driving at night. You can only see as far as the headlights illuminate. It often leads to twists and surprises as your characters take on a life of their own and react in ways that you didn’t foresee.

I am also a member of the Jerry Jenkins Writing Guild. Jerry is an accomplished American author with over 200 books. While still writing, he now mentors and runs workshops for members. It is a fantastic way to engage with a broader writing community. He also runs several monthly online workshops including one where he ferociously edits the first chapters of manuscripts submitted to him. A learning experience, and one where you need a thick skin!

A New God Rises

My novel ‘A New God Rises’ is nearing the halfway mark of the first draft. Usually, a novel will be 80,000 to 120,000 words: with many in the 80 to 90,000 range. I have just reached 40,000 words, with admittedly some judicious editing ahead of me. The novel is set around 2100, when we have our first contact with an ancient species. Earth at that time is still riven by divisions based on different cultures, religions, and economics. I am interested in seeing how we pull together as one in the face of a threat.

This species, who I am currently calling the Eluwilussit, are far from benevolent. They come from the galactic core and their machines and intelligences are tasked with removing threats to their continued existence. Guess what, humans have a long history of waring on ourselves, and creating our own instances of genocide. Perhaps we are not that different?

The main protagonists are a brother and sister, Roman and Jules Archer. Both are scientists but end up in the military. One thread is how they are affected and change throughout the story. The existential threat forces Earth to co-operate and given our particular human traits how we combine to drive towards combatting this threat. Therefore, the story revolves on how we face up to and combat this new force, and are ourselves changed in the process.

I am basing the story on things that are scientifically plausible. So yes, for those science fiction aficionados among you, there are fusion drives, wormholes, self-aware AI, and the quantum world comes into play. These are important as they provide a portent of our possible future. More important to me though is how humanity changes as we assume a place in a wider more complex community.     

Water

I am also actively working through how I am going to tackle my second, non-fiction, book. As you are aware, that will look at water in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I am intrigued by our relationship to it. Water has always been central to our myths and legends. Something changed over the last 200 odd years. We began to think of water as a commodity, something that we could use and pollute at will. Afterall, as we did with many resources, we saw it as unlimited. There is a story to tell here.

How did we move from respecting water (for example, Māori recognise many different types of water with each body of water having a life force/mauri) to where we have got to today. Where will we go from here, especially with the impact of a warmer climate?

One interesting fact about water is that it has an emergent quality. You will be familiar with H2O. One Hydrogen and two Oxygen atoms. There is nothing in those atoms that would give water it’s inherent wetness. It only emerges when you bring lots of those combined atoms together.

I have joined Water New Zealand who are doing some great work, and over the next few months will take up the offer of engaging with them. I still intend this book to have three broad themes:

• Aotearoa before 1840, what our water resources were like, what was the state of balance.
• The years of colonisation through to 2020. What happened to our water resources and why?
• What are the many things we doing to restore / renew / rethink our relationship to water. Is it sufficient, and where to from here.

Obviously, this topic is very of the moment, but it will require a lot of research and interviews. Imagery and photos will be central to developing what I hope will be an engaging book.

As always, please reach out if you have any questions or comments. You can contact me on my email, stephendunstan68@gmail.com; or via my website: www.stephendunstan.com.

Until next time, stay well.

I will use this newsletter to discuss my books, and to look at the themes and concepts I will be exploring.

I am really interested in your thoughts, comments and feedback as I progress. You can email me: stephendunstan68@gmail.com

or visit the blog at Stephen Dunstan Writer

I am working on two books:

• The first is a science fiction novel set in 2123, ‘A New God Rises’.

• The second is a non-fiction book ‘Aqua Pura? A history of water in Aotearoa / New Zealand’.

I believe these are interesting, timely, and I hope thought provoking topics!

‘A New God Rises’

The year is 2123. A research station near Neptune has contact with an alien race, a puzzling one. The novel explores, through a lot of twists, how to confront an alien race that slowly makes itself known but is threatening to our way of life.

My novel begins with the Fermi Paradox. This refers to the dichotomy between the high probability that extra-terrestrial intelligence exists and the fact that we have no evidence for such aliens. The Fermi paradox was also described by the late British science-fiction author, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who said:

“Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

One way to try and counter an alien species more advanced than us is to try and rapidly even the playing field. I have chosen self-aware Artificial Intelligence (or AGI, Artificial General Intelligence). This is becoming topical. We have very recently seen the emergence of massive natural language AI’s such as ChatGPT. Have a look at this link, if you haven’t explored it: Introducing ChatGPT (openai.com)

ChatGPT isn’t self-aware or anywhere near it, although it is interesting how the development of massive cloud computing power can allow such revolutionary AI to exist. People have noticed, and it has been a phenomenon. The big question for me is, can self-aware AI happen, and if so, how do we control it?

A Google engineer was recently fired for thinking it has happened already:  A Google engineer says AI has become sentient. What does that actually mean? | CBC News

Principles developed to guide AI work are usually high level and meaningless, such as those from Google: AI at Google: our principles (blog.google)

Sir Peter Gluckman (President of the International Science Council, and Auckland University Professor) recently said the world is at a “tipping point” beyond which technology may be beyond our control. He said AI is “as big as the Agricultural Revolution or the Industrial Revolution”.   Sir Peter is right. Although he doesn’t address an AGI, the fact that the field is unregulated and developed by a range of companies (and nations) also raises unnerving questions for me.

My novel takes it a step further and explores how quickly AGI could become like a ‘god’.

Aqua Pura? A History of Water in Aotearoa / New Zealand’

This book is obviously topical after the devastation wrought by the recent weather events in the North Island.

I have a real interest in climate change and the related harm we are causing to our world. 

This makes me think about Aotearoa, we should be an exemplar country, ‘clean and green’. We are a country surrounded by ocean, at the bottom of the world, and the last major land mass discovered. We have a small population and should not have had time to despoil our country.

However, we have seen massive changes to the environment we inhabit, deforestation, pollution and unthinking use of our water resource. We have waterways that are un-swimmable, eroded and polluted. Our hill country is losing its ability to absorb water, we hide streams in pipes, or treat them as urban drains. In effect, compared to other countries, we have made similar, or worse, mistakes.

We have not understood our fragile land, and how it has evolved.

While the book is still in the scoping stage, I envisage three broad parts:

1. What New Zealand water, and its use, was like pre-European settlement
2. What happened, and why, in the 180 or so years since Europeans settled the land
3. What are the possible futures?

This book could be completed by me, or with a Māori co-author (to bring in their world view). There have already been many kind offers of support from councils and Water NZ, but if you have ideas I would be really interested to hear them. The book style will use narrative technique and focus on the stories of people and what they have done or are doing. 

There is a lot of general material available on the topic, such as:

Water and Climate Change: Water and Climate Change | UN-Water (unwater.org)

How climate change affects freshwater: How climate change affects freshwater | Ministry for the Environment

Managing our wetlands:

 Managing our wetlands – Ministry for the Environment – Citizen Space

New Zealand’s environment: Fresh water | Stats NZ

Banks wrote about a system spanning civilization called the ‘culture’. It was a symbiotic relationship between AI of varying capabilities and other races, who seemed to be human based. The breadth of the vision, and the seeming imperative to ‘do good’ reminds me of the liberal west here on Earth. We have this underlying sense of our own rightness, we rely on science, perceive ourselves to be open, connected and value new ideas. From the outside looking in, I suspect others see the west as interfering, very happy to involve ourselves in the affairs of others and to manipulate to achieve our own aims.

If you have read the Culture books this reads as a close analogy of that civilization as it makes its way across the solar system, encountering, manipulating, and engaging with others in ways that come from a certain cultural sense of superiority. This does not undermine Banks achievement in writing compelling books that engage on many levels, but it does, for me at least, position the books inside a certain worldview. We never quite meet the unknowable, that which is totally different. If the Culture did, then the AI’s that essentially governed that society would deal with the issue. The humans in his books are effectively a tool.

This last year we have had the hottest year on record, with droughts impacting millions, water quality continuing to decline, and paradoxically we also have storms that deluge our world with too much of the stuff over too short a period. What does this all mean, and why are we not taking this seriously?

For too long we have taken water as a commodity, siphoned off so much that we have depleted underground reservoirs with no thought to the environments ability to replenish, or future generations need for water. To call this a crisis is probably understating the situation we have arrived at. Where do we look for answers? I would like to suggest that understanding the past, learning, and then adjusting our path forward is one path that we should take.

Indigenous people’s often had a symbiotic relationship with streams, rivers and lakes. They, I think, have a lot to teach us. We need to work to re-establish balance.

I love authors who take the bigger picture, think outside the box, but still write engaging prose linking individual lives with the larger events that propel the story. Authors such as Iain M Banks, Asimov, Stephen Baxter. These are authors who had great universe spanning stories. But they also demonstrate imagination that creates new but relatable worlds. They drove their story by focusing on those everyday events that we relate to. Which authors do you love to engage with?