Speculations on what the next day, year, decade, or century might bring have fascinated writers and readers for thousands of years. Whether a far-flung and improbable fantasy or science fiction based on contemporary events and trends, whether optimistic or dire warning, a glimpse at what might become our destiny is sure to arouse controversy and discussion. Unfortunately, whether the story revolves around authoritarian rule (Orwell's 1984, Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), environmental catastrophe (Robinson's Forty Signs of Rain, Ballard's The Drowned World) or the apocalyptic aftermath of a devastating war (Stephen King's The Stand, McCarthy's The Road), we never seem to learn from our historical failures and maladaptive behavior.

 

My first attempt at creating a dystopian future was SurrogaCity (2022), located in San Francisco and the surrounding area. The disaster centered on a sterility-causing virus affecting most of the world's males. The result was social upheaval, with women assuming leadership (the International Progressive Gynocracy or IPG) and opposition by groups of men who believed that war was the most viable substitute for sex and normal social relationships. At the same time isolated teams of researchers were perfecting artificial humans, more advanced than androids. The tagline: perfect societies require perfect humans. Additional disturbances arose from a giant solar flare that squelched global communications, leading to international chaos. After resolving the major character conflicts and arriving at an uneasy truce,

 

I concluded the novel, but the extension of artificial intelligence and the relationships between biological and artificial humans intrigued me enough to write a sequel (SurrogaCity Requiem, 2024). A second sterility virus, origin also unknown, renders 100 percent of females infertile, creating a human extinction event that results in further collapse of civilization with the exception of isolated communities. The same characters continue the narrative arc, but in a future with further development of sentient artificial humans and the creation of advance androids with installed human consciousness (sentienoids). Questions arise as to what is humanity, what is sentience, and is there a way forward for the survivors?

 

The third and final novel is SurrogaCity Ascension (2025), in which successful ectogenesis is achieved. After artificial insemination from stored ova and sperm, fetal development occurs in artificial wombs, but violence and chaos continue to threaten the efforts to revive hopes for human survival.

 

Is an all-encompassing sterility virus a possibility, naturally occurring or created in a laboratory? There seems little doubt that such an infectious agent could arise, especially if a radical group with an Earth First! mentality should create and release it. The incredible progress in AI development and deployment leaves even less doubt that humanity must plan and control the potential benefits and hazards of this technology. Can we capture the mental capacity of a person, including creative potential, past experiences, dreams—everything that we define as consciousness—and install in an artificial matrix that is essentially immortal? What would that do for the behavioral repertoires and social relationships of these sentienoids?

 

I welcome your thoughts at ucapanacea@gmail.com.