Arctic Rising

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have two people to initially thank in a big way for encouraging me to create Arctic Rising: Karl Schroeder and Paolo Bacigalupi. Karl and I collaborated on a short story back in 2007 called “Mitigation” about a mostly ice-free Arctic. It appeared in the anthology Fast Forward 2, edited by Lou Anders, and was also reprinted in one of the Year’s Best anthologies shortly after. The idea to do something like this book has been stuck in the back of my head ever since spending that weekend in Toronto with Karl brainstorming the geopolitical intrigues of a new, seventh ocean. Both Karl and I lamented the lack of fiction in this sort of setting, and we wished to write more near-future explorations ourselves.

I had also come to know Paolo well through shared time at the novel workshop Blue Heaven. His infectious enthusiasm for probing all manner of around-the-corner ecological futures and similar milieus (to amazing success and acclaim, as we were all to soon find out) also lit a fire under me to do more of this when I met him, leading to my writing a novella and another short story in this vein.

In 2008, when my editor, Paul Stevens, asked if I would do something different for my next book after Sly Mongoose, I already came prepared with a rough idea for Arctic Rising thanks to conversations with Paolo and Karl.

Due to a genetic heart defect that took me out of the game for a while in late 2008 and early 2009, getting a full draft took a lot longer than expected. In a way, it’s been quite a marathon for me, but one I’m glad to have finished, even if it was mostly by walking. My thanks go out to the folks at Tor, particularly my editor, Paul, again, for being patient as I put my life back together. I also have to thank Eddie Schneider and Joshua Bilmes, my agents, for being patient as I limped my way back into finishing this project.

Another round of thanks goes to the crew of Blue Heaven 2009, who read and critiqued the first fifty pages. Big thanks go to Greg van Eekhout and Paolo Bacigalupi, who helped me brainstorm pieces of the last third of the book.

More big thanks go to the various branches of the military that release publicly funded studies and foresight materials online where greedy little authorial minds like mine can hunt them down for future idea mining. Most of the ideas and scenarios in this book came from reading about what those dudes are worried about. The amount of time they spend worried about peak oil and how to run armies on solar power, you’d think the armed forces were a bunch of hippies who wanted to run their Humvees on fry oil. Certainly, one thing I came to find is that there is a massive disconnect between people who study the future, whether it be scientists, weather experts, or military strategists and brass, and politicians and talking heads who seem to think there aren’t some challenges around the corner. When I started writing this novel in 2008, the navy reports I was using in regards to Arctic ice didn’t include ice-free scenarios in the possibility charts; by the time I was done with a draft it was on the worst-case plot, and now it looks like ice-free summers are a given very soon. I hope this book comes out before my “science-fictional” plot idea of a generally ice-free Arctic isn’t quite so shocking.

Lastly, I’d like to thank all the readers who’ve waited so long for the latest book. Thanks for sticking with me—it won’t be so long until next time!