
Meet Irish #SciFi #Author, #Journalist, and Prolific #Blogger, Richard Gibney!
Where did you get the idea for your work in progress, The Quantum Eavesdropper?
The concept came from documentaries on black holes. I watched a description of a craft going into a black hole and the narrator suggested that the craft would look frozen to us if we could observe it from a safe distance, but actually the spacecraft would have long been swallowed up. I speculated "Well what if it wasn't swallowed? What if it was frozen permanently, forever stuck on the Event Horizon (or whatever it’s called now)? And the black hole, coupled with the ship's technology, allows communication through time to every point in Earth's history from the establishment of electric communications – the telegraph – to the present and future? So you could – in theory – get a cellphone call from my hero Tremayne today, from his time in 2095.
I also have a lot of detail related to the alien planet the four faster-than-light space pioneers visit. The aliens have had a presence on Earth since 1979, and they are tied-in somewhat with the time travel elements.
What’s your favorite science fiction book?
I don’t read sci fi to be honest. I understand that makes me an irresponsible sci fi novelist! Novelisations of Star Wars A New Hope and Back to the Future were childhood faves. Arthur C Clarke had some good stuff. A novel set in the V universe (the lizard aliens series from the 80s) based on the New York City equivalent characters of the LA-set tv show was the first book in which I read the word motherf***er! It was called V: East Coast Crisis by Howard Weinstein and AC Crispin. I’ve read some Trek books, which were okay. Shatner’s co-authored revisionist resurrection of Kirk was good, I thought.
Peadar O’Guilín is an Irish author who launched a YA series that pre-dates The Hunger Games novel series by a year, and features a similar blood sport theme, and sentient-species cannibalism. The Inferior is the first book in this series and I recommend it.
1984 was a really enjoyable read in recent years, but a pal asked me why I was reading a kid’s book. So probably Orwell's 1984 if I have to choose. Again – I’m not a huge sci fi buff! But Orwell has both an emotional richness in such a short work, and a hard sci fi aspect, that are difficult to top.
You are from Ireland. What misconception do you think the US has about the Irish?
I think that's an unfair question for Americans. It's like asking me what misconception I might have about Timbuktu. We can develop prejudices and insights about the US very easily here because we get so much of its culture on television and through movies. But I don't hold a view either way on Timbuktu beyond its purported remoteness. I do think - given our histories – that many Americans know an awful lot about Ireland.
One recent misconception could have been Irish-American support for the armed struggle. I think this support was higher among the Boston and NY Irish than the Irish in Dublin. But then of course Bill Clinton got involved hugely in the peace process, and went to great lengths to end the conflict.
Now if you’ll excuse me for a few moments, I am just going to mix myself a quick whiskey, and put the potatoes in the oven.
Your novel, Quantum Eavesdropper, deals with a dystopian world view. What is your greatest fear for the future of human kind?
Good question. I am not a futurologist by any stretch. So please don’t confuse me with someone who knows what he’s talking about, and do check my facts.
In the 70s and 80s, some scientists claimed - based on the information they had - that the world's oil would be gone by 2000.
There’s a lot of xenophobia in Eavesdropper, by which I mean anti-immigrant sentiment rather than hatred of extraterrestrials. Brexit (which could be a good thing in the right hands) was predicable enough for me to allude to in the novel, where London and Brussels introduce very similar legislation related to rationing in the 2080s. This kind of international fractiousness could exacerbate tensions – although governments can pull out of unions and alliances for the right reasons as well as the wrong.
A related point is that sweatshops and worker underpayment in the Poor South clearly drive immigration. Capitalist tendencies have been embraced by people of far more enlightened cultures (in terms of personal happiness, acceptance of struggle and whatever else), with a concurrent abandonment of their superior ethics. But you can’t expect to buy three pairs of socks for five dollars and also choose who lives next door to you, or who serves you drink, or who prescribes your meds. People come here for a better life because we don’t pay them what we owe them in their own. That’s economics: That’s not even covering victims in warzones. But my Eavesdropper main character, a white male called Tremayne, is racist in part due to his own personal circumstances. And he vents at an American girl who is no more responsible for the world’s ills than he is – in fact she’s less.
I think we're innovative as a species and the dystopic elements entering into our lives today have positive aspects too.
Big Data, for example – which is also clearly touched on in Eavesdropper, given its title– usually pertains to the hoarding of our personal data. But it extends to the retention of medical data, which can be de-personalized and used for the common good.
There are vast databases of information collected now on any number of diseases and conditions from patients, right? So this is stuff that the doctors, scientists and statisticians can put together and examine in ways that were impossible in the past.
This is better than market research because these are genuine medical conditions, or treatments that are monitored. There’s work undertaken by Carolyn McGregor in Ottawa (and now internationally), related to premature babies – and it’s only that the data is stored nowadays that she could work with it. In the past, the information had to be dumped due to the overhead with respect to storage capacity – but they can store that stuff now.
McGregor looked at the incubator data related to each fatality over a period of time and spotted similar changes in temperature from all these babies, just pre-mortem.
She introduced methods to intervene in cases where it was clear the babies would not survive. Alarms go off if the babies are about to expire, and many more are now saved as a result of this research, just finding the matching aberration that would otherwise lead to death.
We can infer that this sort of thing has applications everywhere – people with locked-in syndrome or in comas on similar monitors that collate data related to respiration, temperature, and whatever else, information taken from pacemakers, enhanced hearing aids, GPS technologies for road or air traffic refinements. All that data is captured and is there right now – it’s either being worked on or can be or is held in storage, to be worked on later. It just takes statisticians like Dr McGregor to take a serious look at it, spot the patterns, and develop treatments.
So Big Data is not just about all the bad stuff. Wikileaks, Google, the CIA, Anonymous, Russia, China and North Korea. You can see the benefits in a lot of apparently dystopic stuff.
Fuel and food shortages will and do encourage sustainable, greener living.
Frankenfoods may address food shortages; I’d probably agree with them to a limited extent, from what I’ve read. But again, that’s also an endorsement of massive multinationals, the same broad crowd – in fear of generalising – who are killing the bees with their pesticides. It’s a bit like beating somebody up, and then driving him to the emergency room. And that problem is replicated in industry, society and government policy across the world.
So, you see better things ahead?
I find it difficult to foresee a future without poverty or hunger, and that's ridiculous. We are in the main all decent people. Why aren't we electing leaders to end that?
Statistics are used to levy taxes in ways that don’t take into consideration personal circumstance enough, or national deficits, or the skewing of the balance sheet in favour of the developed world or the bank against the mortgage holder, the landlord over the tenant. Perhaps the aspects of Big Data I mentioned will be able to address that in the future on such an ultra-personal level that society becomes more equal, and ideological difference pales to irrelevance. Good Samaritan behaviour could be rewarded and incentivised. The Share economy could be regulated for the better.
A daft scenario: Your kid finishes school at 3pm, you leave work to meet him there but your bus breaks down with no replacement until after three. So you hail a cab, which you ultimately can’t afford. In terms of checks and balances, the state could calculate immediately how much that cab would cost the government, which is less than what it will cost the government to accommodate you and your kid if you are evicted from your home due to non-payment of the rent which comes out of your account later today. But this daft scenario might work. The fear – and the fear played up in science fiction – is placing too much weight on the computers, which claim you don’t exist, or a miscalculation of probabilities, or whatever else.
So achieving moderate success might be made easier, getting good healthcare might be easier, but the outliers of falling into dire poverty or of entering billionaire status would be rarer (rare as the latter is already).
Speed Round:
Star Wars or Star Trek?
Short answer: Star Wars.
I asked fellow scribe JD Estrada for his view on this and I agree wholeheartedly: He said Trek is “almost psychoanalytical” while Wars is “emotional”.
Trek is more philosophically ambitious in respects (think Data’s introspection or his need to have his rights acknowledged, for instance) while Star Wars has the visceral edge. But I could be very critical of both franchises.
Ice Cream or Froyo?
Frozen yogurt? I think I would choose Froyo for the health benefits over the ice cream. (If I loved ice cream the way I love chocolate, I’d choose ice cream. But not chocolate ice cream. I could take or leave that stuff.)
Ale or Miller Light?
I like Miller. I don't like Bud. I love Guinness in an Irish pub, poured in the right way, with a coooool, creamy head that you have to wait to settle, and the refined but unmistakable… [TRAILS OFF. DROOLS.]. Nah, I would be happy with coke! A few lines of that and you can drink anything. Pfff!
Seriously, I prefer to drive and can no longer handle hangovers. So I don’t really drink that much. What’s your point please? Is this an Irish misconception from above?
Thanks for the thoughtful interview, Richard!
Richard Gibney is seeking an agent for his novel The Quantum Eavesdropper now.
Find out more about Richard Gibney:
Blog: http://ragtaggiggagon.blogspot.com/
Twitter: https:/twitter.com/ragtaggiggagon
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richard.gibney
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ragtaggiggagon/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCySQMiAvL5mb_MImt4KM0jQ
Where did you get the idea for your work in progress, The Quantum Eavesdropper?
The concept came from documentaries on black holes. I watched a description of a craft going into a black hole and the narrator suggested that the craft would look frozen to us if we could observe it from a safe distance, but actually the spacecraft would have long been swallowed up. I speculated "Well what if it wasn't swallowed? What if it was frozen permanently, forever stuck on the Event Horizon (or whatever it’s called now)? And the black hole, coupled with the ship's technology, allows communication through time to every point in Earth's history from the establishment of electric communications – the telegraph – to the present and future? So you could – in theory – get a cellphone call from my hero Tremayne today, from his time in 2095.
I also have a lot of detail related to the alien planet the four faster-than-light space pioneers visit. The aliens have had a presence on Earth since 1979, and they are tied-in somewhat with the time travel elements.
What’s your favorite science fiction book?
I don’t read sci fi to be honest. I understand that makes me an irresponsible sci fi novelist! Novelisations of Star Wars A New Hope and Back to the Future were childhood faves. Arthur C Clarke had some good stuff. A novel set in the V universe (the lizard aliens series from the 80s) based on the New York City equivalent characters of the LA-set tv show was the first book in which I read the word motherf***er! It was called V: East Coast Crisis by Howard Weinstein and AC Crispin. I’ve read some Trek books, which were okay. Shatner’s co-authored revisionist resurrection of Kirk was good, I thought.
Peadar O’Guilín is an Irish author who launched a YA series that pre-dates The Hunger Games novel series by a year, and features a similar blood sport theme, and sentient-species cannibalism. The Inferior is the first book in this series and I recommend it.
1984 was a really enjoyable read in recent years, but a pal asked me why I was reading a kid’s book. So probably Orwell's 1984 if I have to choose. Again – I’m not a huge sci fi buff! But Orwell has both an emotional richness in such a short work, and a hard sci fi aspect, that are difficult to top.
You are from Ireland. What misconception do you think the US has about the Irish?
I think that's an unfair question for Americans. It's like asking me what misconception I might have about Timbuktu. We can develop prejudices and insights about the US very easily here because we get so much of its culture on television and through movies. But I don't hold a view either way on Timbuktu beyond its purported remoteness. I do think - given our histories – that many Americans know an awful lot about Ireland.
One recent misconception could have been Irish-American support for the armed struggle. I think this support was higher among the Boston and NY Irish than the Irish in Dublin. But then of course Bill Clinton got involved hugely in the peace process, and went to great lengths to end the conflict.
Now if you’ll excuse me for a few moments, I am just going to mix myself a quick whiskey, and put the potatoes in the oven.
Your novel, Quantum Eavesdropper, deals with a dystopian world view. What is your greatest fear for the future of human kind?
Good question. I am not a futurologist by any stretch. So please don’t confuse me with someone who knows what he’s talking about, and do check my facts.
In the 70s and 80s, some scientists claimed - based on the information they had - that the world's oil would be gone by 2000.
There’s a lot of xenophobia in Eavesdropper, by which I mean anti-immigrant sentiment rather than hatred of extraterrestrials. Brexit (which could be a good thing in the right hands) was predicable enough for me to allude to in the novel, where London and Brussels introduce very similar legislation related to rationing in the 2080s. This kind of international fractiousness could exacerbate tensions – although governments can pull out of unions and alliances for the right reasons as well as the wrong.
A related point is that sweatshops and worker underpayment in the Poor South clearly drive immigration. Capitalist tendencies have been embraced by people of far more enlightened cultures (in terms of personal happiness, acceptance of struggle and whatever else), with a concurrent abandonment of their superior ethics. But you can’t expect to buy three pairs of socks for five dollars and also choose who lives next door to you, or who serves you drink, or who prescribes your meds. People come here for a better life because we don’t pay them what we owe them in their own. That’s economics: That’s not even covering victims in warzones. But my Eavesdropper main character, a white male called Tremayne, is racist in part due to his own personal circumstances. And he vents at an American girl who is no more responsible for the world’s ills than he is – in fact she’s less.
I think we're innovative as a species and the dystopic elements entering into our lives today have positive aspects too.
Big Data, for example – which is also clearly touched on in Eavesdropper, given its title– usually pertains to the hoarding of our personal data. But it extends to the retention of medical data, which can be de-personalized and used for the common good.
There are vast databases of information collected now on any number of diseases and conditions from patients, right? So this is stuff that the doctors, scientists and statisticians can put together and examine in ways that were impossible in the past.
This is better than market research because these are genuine medical conditions, or treatments that are monitored. There’s work undertaken by Carolyn McGregor in Ottawa (and now internationally), related to premature babies – and it’s only that the data is stored nowadays that she could work with it. In the past, the information had to be dumped due to the overhead with respect to storage capacity – but they can store that stuff now.
McGregor looked at the incubator data related to each fatality over a period of time and spotted similar changes in temperature from all these babies, just pre-mortem.
She introduced methods to intervene in cases where it was clear the babies would not survive. Alarms go off if the babies are about to expire, and many more are now saved as a result of this research, just finding the matching aberration that would otherwise lead to death.
We can infer that this sort of thing has applications everywhere – people with locked-in syndrome or in comas on similar monitors that collate data related to respiration, temperature, and whatever else, information taken from pacemakers, enhanced hearing aids, GPS technologies for road or air traffic refinements. All that data is captured and is there right now – it’s either being worked on or can be or is held in storage, to be worked on later. It just takes statisticians like Dr McGregor to take a serious look at it, spot the patterns, and develop treatments.
So Big Data is not just about all the bad stuff. Wikileaks, Google, the CIA, Anonymous, Russia, China and North Korea. You can see the benefits in a lot of apparently dystopic stuff.
Fuel and food shortages will and do encourage sustainable, greener living.
Frankenfoods may address food shortages; I’d probably agree with them to a limited extent, from what I’ve read. But again, that’s also an endorsement of massive multinationals, the same broad crowd – in fear of generalising – who are killing the bees with their pesticides. It’s a bit like beating somebody up, and then driving him to the emergency room. And that problem is replicated in industry, society and government policy across the world.
So, you see better things ahead?
I find it difficult to foresee a future without poverty or hunger, and that's ridiculous. We are in the main all decent people. Why aren't we electing leaders to end that?
Statistics are used to levy taxes in ways that don’t take into consideration personal circumstance enough, or national deficits, or the skewing of the balance sheet in favour of the developed world or the bank against the mortgage holder, the landlord over the tenant. Perhaps the aspects of Big Data I mentioned will be able to address that in the future on such an ultra-personal level that society becomes more equal, and ideological difference pales to irrelevance. Good Samaritan behaviour could be rewarded and incentivised. The Share economy could be regulated for the better.
A daft scenario: Your kid finishes school at 3pm, you leave work to meet him there but your bus breaks down with no replacement until after three. So you hail a cab, which you ultimately can’t afford. In terms of checks and balances, the state could calculate immediately how much that cab would cost the government, which is less than what it will cost the government to accommodate you and your kid if you are evicted from your home due to non-payment of the rent which comes out of your account later today. But this daft scenario might work. The fear – and the fear played up in science fiction – is placing too much weight on the computers, which claim you don’t exist, or a miscalculation of probabilities, or whatever else.
So achieving moderate success might be made easier, getting good healthcare might be easier, but the outliers of falling into dire poverty or of entering billionaire status would be rarer (rare as the latter is already).
Speed Round:
Star Wars or Star Trek?
Short answer: Star Wars.
I asked fellow scribe JD Estrada for his view on this and I agree wholeheartedly: He said Trek is “almost psychoanalytical” while Wars is “emotional”.
Trek is more philosophically ambitious in respects (think Data’s introspection or his need to have his rights acknowledged, for instance) while Star Wars has the visceral edge. But I could be very critical of both franchises.
Ice Cream or Froyo?
Frozen yogurt? I think I would choose Froyo for the health benefits over the ice cream. (If I loved ice cream the way I love chocolate, I’d choose ice cream. But not chocolate ice cream. I could take or leave that stuff.)
Ale or Miller Light?
I like Miller. I don't like Bud. I love Guinness in an Irish pub, poured in the right way, with a coooool, creamy head that you have to wait to settle, and the refined but unmistakable… [TRAILS OFF. DROOLS.]. Nah, I would be happy with coke! A few lines of that and you can drink anything. Pfff!
Seriously, I prefer to drive and can no longer handle hangovers. So I don’t really drink that much. What’s your point please? Is this an Irish misconception from above?
Thanks for the thoughtful interview, Richard!
Richard Gibney is seeking an agent for his novel The Quantum Eavesdropper now.
Find out more about Richard Gibney:
Blog: http://ragtaggiggagon.blogspot.com/
Twitter: https:/twitter.com/ragtaggiggagon
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richard.gibney
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ragtaggiggagon/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCySQMiAvL5mb_MImt4KM0jQ