I love cars, but I hate traffic. As I said on my “me” page I am a veteran with some fractures and failings. When I’m alone in the car and and the level of moronosity around me goes up, I go a little crazy. Really. I’ve made maneuvers in my Mercedes at speeds that should only be accomplished by professionals. My car goes really fast and I like the accelerator. Gives me back control. Kind of important because if I lose control my PTSD kicks in, and like I said, I go a little crazy.
Okay, maybe more than a little.
But this post is about acceleration, not my commuter craziness. As I mentioned in an earlier post Elon Musk and the crew at SpaceX just accelerated 119,900 pounds of awesomeness from a dead stop to the outer limits of Earth’s gravity. It is loud, earth shaking, all around impressive, and a critical step to realizing what writers like me imagine everyday.
While SpaceX was building and preparing the Falcon Heavy, other bio-engineers have been quietly accelerating our knowledge and the application of genetic engineering to provide new cancer therapies, grow pig organs for transplant to humans, and clone primates. Let me repeat that, clone primates. A different kind of acceleration.
Recently I have started to see, hear about, and read articles describing how we are tinkering with embryos for this or that, cloning and manufacturing stem cells, and reversing genetic birth defects. I find all of this exciting and terrifying at the same time.
Then there is Artificial Intelligence. The rise of the machines, Asimov’s future, Hal, and of course, Skynet, manufacturing a whole race of terminators. Are we on the way down these roads? I don’t know, but it certainly provided a great foundation (Asimov pun) for my Acceleration series, of which the first manuscript, “The 9th Acceleration: Ignition” is complete and in final editing before I start querying.
This book and the series is pure science fiction with an eco-fiction after taste. Here is the premise. Several hundred years in the future after a geneticide wipes out most of mankind throughout the solar system, humanity must now leave Earth in order to save her. For decades eight sections of a massive space station have been accelerated into orbit around Saturn. The final and main section is about to launch with the rest of humanity when it is seized and held for a peculiar ransom. A three hundred year old book and a secret file.
Find out more on the book’s page, titled “9th”. Also, listen to Boston’s “Smokin” while reading this post and I think you’ll get a little accelerated yourself. Number 7 on the music player. The monkey below was cloned by the Chinese. Too cute right?
words & worlds 