LUCAS, WRITER AND COGITATOR

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Story of my story Red Queen's Race

My futuristic SF story Red Queen's Race (RQR) has recently appeared in the Winter 2023 issue of Cirsova Magazine. I thought people might be interested to know how I wrote it, so here's an account.

Web link to the Winter 2023 issue of Cirsova Magazine on Amazon.com

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For a short while in the early 2000s, there was a science fiction magazine called Spectrum SF. It was published in Scotland by a guy named Paul Fraser, and I used to really enjoy it. If memory serves, he published the first version of Charles Stross' novel The Atrocity Archives over several issues.

I particularly enjoyed one short story, Lunar Classifieds by Mary Soon Lee. I can't remember the details because I've packed the complete run of Spectrum away in a box in the loft, but it was an experimental story told through, as you've guessed it, a series of classifieds in a science fictional setting. There were various adverts set over a span of time, and several different stories were implied through the adverts.

I felt inspired by this, and came up with my own idea for futuristic classifieds, but with even more of a 'cyber' feel to them. I took loads of different science fictional ideas and tried to push them to the extreme, coming up with ever more bizarre extrapolations. I remember sitting in a local cafe for hours with a notebook and pen, my brain on fire, scribbling down advert after advert in a massive stream of consciousness. One of the themes that I wanted to work on, and which came through really well, was that the human body would be commodified and 'corporatised', just like everything else in the real world of the day. At the time the human genome was being mapped and there was a lot of talk about patenting genes. If a corporation could do this, of course it would.

A similar theme that came through as the story developed was that the human brain would be programmable, just like a computer. It’s one of the assumptions that is hidden at the core of a lot of modern science fiction – that the brain works using similar processes to computers. I disagree with this, but it’s one of the assumptions out there and is worth playing with. If you go along with this, what effects would this have on society?

Well, the thing that seemed most obvious to me is that corporations would try to flog you upgrades for the brain, ways to tune it and make it more efficient – new operating systems to replace the natural way that your brain works. Of course they’d do this. If they can make a buck... And once they have a route in to your brain, they’d never give you a moment’s peace. You think those hoardings with moving adverts on them at football pitches are bad? Imagine what those adverts will be like when we have brain-to-computer interfaces. You wouldn’t be able to shut your eyes to ignore them any more. Do you think the big boys of the corporate world will allow you any peace inside your own skull with tech like that? Unlimited spam, forced software upgrades, pop-ups, cookies- everything that you hate about modern technology would be forced into your consciousness, your internal mind’s eye, 100% literally.

The earliest version that I can find is dated August 2004, but that was very rough, just lots of random adverts. It took shape as a real story by the end of September. I've just been reading this version again, and my draft was full of great adverts, like the one headlined "Change Your Biometric Identity Now, While It's Still Legal".

"Never be worried about forensic surveillance again. Genetic re-sequencing, fingerprints altered, cloned-blood ampoules at discount cost. Brain-waves re-programmed while-U-wait. Query us for full body suit, hair etc. Skin samples guaranteed to come off under any fingernails!

Only at Crrrrazy Dave's Biometric Warehouse! vrtp://crazy-dave/ "

Faking one's biometric identity, I can see it happening. People have already experimented with makeup and hair styles to fool facial recognition systems, so why not something even more extreme? "Skin samples guaranteed to come off under any fingernails!" I can't believe I came up with that one. That level of free marketism and legal duplicity is something that would only exist in a libertarian's idea of heaven - but that's where I saw (and see) the world heading. We already exist in a version of the Red Queen’s Race; how much worse will that race be as technology gets more ‘advanced’?

The story ended with every person's body being forcibly purchased by one of the companies that offered 'operating systems' for the human brain. But never mind, everyone was offered the chance at transcending into higher dimensions and becoming godlike entities - all available through Crazy Dave's Interdimensional Warehouse, of course! Some things never change: no matter how high you ascend the spiritual ladder, there will always be someone trying to make money off you.

A few years later, I attended an art course, and did some paintings based directly on quotes from the story, and used them in my end of course show.

So, I had something that outdid Lunar Classifieds in its strangeness, but I quickly realised that it was completely unpublishable. There was a plot, but it was implied rather than being laid out; worst of all, it wasn't tied to an individual, it was about the progression of society as a whole. That's interesting, but without identifiable characters, any story is a hard sell.

At about the same time that I had been generating all of those original crazy adverts, (January 2003, in fact) I'd written the start of another story called Breathing Space, about a man who lived in an ultra-consumerist society. I never got beyond the first two scenes, but at some point I realised that the wacky adverts could form a part of this. I was looking for something to break up the story at crucial moments, a bit like the end of those old movie serials from the 1930s and 1940s, where there would be a cliffhanger as Flash Gordon was fed into a disintegration machine. It's a cheap but effective way to add tension - cut away at the vital moment, keep the reader in suspense, before coming back to the real action. I also wanted a quick way to communicate the feel of the future society effortlessly. What better way to understand a society than to see its adverts? The original Robocop movie used them perfectly. And who cares if I took elements of two stories and fused them? It worked for The Beatles with A Day in the Life, didn't it, two songs jammed together to create something different? That's the advantage of sexual reproduction for you - two sets of DNA create something more varied than the one set of DNA you have in asexual reproduction.

So, I smushed a load of the ultra-consumerist adverts into Breathing Space (the original opening scenes are still identifiable) and hey, presto, the result was Red Queen's Race.

I don't want to say too much more about it, because I don't want to spoil the story for you, but Red Queen's Race takes the concept of the corporate takeover of the human body and the human brain, and turns it up to 11 and beyond. In fact, the reviewer at Tangent Online loved RQR, and made a great observation: "it’s like jumping into the deep end and going even deeper."

=>https://tangentonline.com/print-quarterly/cirsova-17-winter-2023/ Tangent Online review of Red Queen's Race.

Going even deeper with the concepts - that's what I try to do with my stories, but in an entertaining way. Give it a try; I'm sure you'll love it.

=>https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0CMD8XMZF Web link to the Winter 2023 issue of Cirsova Magazine on Amazon.com

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=>gemini://gemlog.blue/users/PaulLucas Link to my homepage

PAUL LUCAS, WRITER AND COGITATOR

paul.lucas0001@gmail.com