Equations of Life

meet the author

DR. SIMON MORDEN is a bona fide rocket scientist, having degrees in geology and planetary geophysics, and is one of the few people who can truthfully claim to have held a chunk of Mars in his hands. He has served as editor of the BSFA’s Focus magazine, been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was part of the winning team for the 2009 Rolls Royce Science prize. Simon Morden lives in Gateshead with a fierce lawyer, two unruly children and a couple of miniature panthers. Find out more about the author at www.bookofmorden.co.uk.

interview

Doctor Morden, I presume?

Guilty as charged. I got my PhD in planetary geophysics at the tender age of 24—unfortunately I’d managed to specialize myself into a corner and when the grant money ran out, I had to take on a series of bizarre jobs beloved of authors for their biographies. Then I became a full-time househusband looking after my kids. I now teach part-time at a local primary school, where I’m responsible for building hovercraft, airplanes, bomb shelters and gravity cars. There might be some blowing stuff up, too.

So you became a science fiction writer because you’re a scientist?

It’s almost the other way around: reading SF lead me to become a scientist. I was a horribly precocious child who started on adult books at a young age—I was just let loose in the library and told to get on with it, which led me to read some gloriously age-inappropriate novels. But one of the first I picked up was a James White Sector General story: that put me on the right path for the next thirty years or so. I devoured Clarke and Azimov, read every Niven and Bradbury story I could lay my hands on. That sort of thing is like dynamite to a kid’s brain.

I don’t think it occurred to me that I could be a writer until quite late on: seventeen or so. Yes, I made up stuff—a very rich interior life, as the psychologists would say—and it was all genre, but it was more directed toward role playing games. I discovered Dungeons and Dragons through my interest in wargaming, and I was hooked instantly: I could be in stories like the ones I read. I started designing my own scenarios; adding in history, geography, ecology, and ending up with some serious world building. But that’s Morden’s First Law of writing: nothing is ever wasted.

I finished my first novel at the same time as my thesis—fantasy, because it was different to my studies, and what I was used to GMing—fortunately the thesis was more impressive. That novel is in a drawer slowly turning into coal, but I had caught the bug: I wrote another book, SF this time (also unpublished and unpublishable), and just kept on going. I finally sold a short story in 1998, eight years after that first novel. I don’t know whether you’d call it persistence or sheer bloody-mindedness. But it was a good apprenticeship, all the same.

There’s a very rich back-story to Equations of Life.

Yes. Yes, there is, and it has a story all of its own to go with it. Some of this is in the dedication, but here’s the rest of it.

Back when I was a new writer and I was looking for markets for my short stories, the editor I was working with at the time (and eventually, the publisher didn’t take the novel) noted that I lived quite close by another writer who’d just pitched a charity anthology to him, and that I ought to make contact. That story was “Bell, Book and Candle” and was one of my first “pro” sales. It was also the first story I’d written set in the London Metrozone after Armageddon.

I kept on coming back to that world, and I realized I’d almost written enough stories to make a collection—something I successfully pitched to Brian Hopkins at Lone Wolf Publications. Thy Kingdom Come—twenty stories in all—was published in 2002. That was where Petrovitch, Harry Chain, Madeleine and the Sorensons all first appeared. I’d been kicking the idea for a novel set in the aftermath of Armageddon around for years, and I’d had repeated stabs at the idea before, but nothing that anyone would publish.

Then I wrote Equations of Life, and everything that was missing before suddenly turned up. Theories of Flight came without a break, and Degrees of Freedom charged relentlessly behind. By this time, I’d sold the trilogy to Orbit and had a deadline—and I put in some seriously stupid hours getting it finished: books two and three in little more than a year.

There are some continuity issues between Equations of Life and Thy Kingdom Come, and I have thought about going back and retconning the short stories so they fit. I still might. If you’re interested, all the stories in Thy Kingdom Come are free to read or download from my website.

It’s not a particularly happy view of the future, is it?

Or the past—I have the timelines splitting in 2000. But it’s difficult to answer this question without looking back at to what I thought the future was going to be when I was a kid. I grew up, almost literally, in the shadow of the nuclear holocaust. My house was stuck between Aldermaston, where they built atomic bombs, and RAF Burghfield, where they armed them. Greenham Common was just down the road. If war had broken out, my atoms would have been some of the first in the stratosphere.

But it didn’t happen. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union collapsed. The EU have integrated former communist countries into a partnership based on trade and cooperation, not fear and armaments. I live in a future that my parents would never have dreamed of forty years ago.

I’m a father myself now: what makes me hopeful is that people of goodwill, of all colors, creeds and political persuasions, want to work together to make the future viable for all of us, and that’s certainly what I’m raising my own kids to be part of. What makes me fearful is that it might not be enough.

Now’s your chance to say something nice about Americans.

Sorry about that. But it’s not like other countries have had it easy, either. Britain has ceased to exist as a political entity, Ireland is entirely depopulated, Russia is a barely-functioning kleptocracy, the European Union couldn’t come to a joint decision on anything more complicated than which biscuits to serve at meetings and Japan has sunk beneath the waves. The U.S.A. voting a highly conservative, isolationist, quasi-religious party into power is mild in comparison.

I have been to the U.S., and everyone was uniformly lovely to me, even immigration and customs officials. The beer, on the other hand, was pretty dreadful.

You don’t shy away from religious characters or using theology in your plots—which is not the norm for SF books.

Which is a fancy way of asking, why the god-bothering? Faith is something that seems to be hard-wired into many people—like music or storytelling. Faith, in whatever form it comes in, can inform and direct someone’s choices, show in their characters, lead them to points of crisis and moments of decision. It doesn’t have to be an individual’s religious faith: it can be a child believing their parents love them, or a society believing in scientific progress.

It’s often an important part of people’s lives, along with class, wealth, nationality, race, sexuality, and politics. I’d find it strange to have smart characters who didn’t consider the big questions that science, philosophy and religion try to answer, and stranger still that they wouldn’t try and behave differently because of their beliefs.

That doesn’t mean that their behavior is predictable, consistent or compatible with the general good, though. Much like real life.

You’re on record as saying that reading science fiction is a virtue.

It is. For example, a reader is simply smarter for having picked up this book. Not just because I wrote it, but because it’s a science fiction book. One of the biggest questions anyone ever asks themselves is ‘what if?’ Science fiction is all about ‘what ifs,’ and SF stories are deliberately told to explore the possibility of, whatever—time travel, genetic engineering, computers in people’s heads, teleportation, what happens when the oil runs out, what do we do if we’re contacted by aliens.

It doesn’t just explore though, it works through the scenarios—it trains you to think differently, to dream differently. Ray Bradbury, one of my all-time favorite authors said: ‘People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it.’ I’m certain that if more politicians read science fiction, we wouldn’t be in half the messes we’re in now, because they would have foreseen the problems beforehand.

Ray Bradbury went straight on to say: ‘Better yet, build it.’ Science fiction inspired me to become a scientist: he, and the other great writers I read all those years ago helped to make one scruffy, awkward English kid think about all his possible futures, and made him want to live in the good ones. We’re not there yet: we may never arrive at our destination.

But the journey? Oh yes…

introducing

Petrovitch stared at the sphere in his hands, turning it slowly to reveal different parts of its intricately patterned surface. Shining silver lines of metal in curves and whorls shone against the black resin matrix, the seeming chaos replicated throughout the hidden depths of the globe; a single strand of wire that swam up and down, around and around, its path determined precisely by equations he himself had discovered.

It was a work of art; dense, cold, beautiful, a miracle of manufacture. A kilometer of fine alloy wound up into a ball the size of a double fist.

But it was supposed to be more than that. He let it fall heavily onto his desk and flicked his glasses off his face. His eyes, always so blue, were spidered with red veins. He scrubbed at them again.

The yebani thing didn’t—wouldn’t—work, no matter how much he yelled and hit it. The first practical test of the Petrovitch–Ekanobi laws, and it just sat there, dumb, blind, motionless.

Stanford—Stanford! Those raspizdyay kolhoznii amerikanskij—were breathing down his neck, and he knew that if he didn’t crack it soon, they’d either beat him to his own discovery or debunk the whole effort. He was damned if he was going to face them across a lecture hall having lost the race. And Pif would string him up by his yajtza, which was a more immediate problem.

So, the sphere didn’t work. It should. Every test he’d conducted on it showed that it’d been made with micro meter precision, exactly in the configuration he’d calculated. He’d run it with the right voltage.

Everything was perfect, and still, and still…

He picked up his glasses from where he’d thrown them. The same old room snapped into focus: the remnants of Pif’s time with him still scattered across her old desk, the same pot plants existing on a diet of cold coffee, the light outside leaking in around the yellowed veins of the Venetian blinds.

Sound leaked in, too: sirens that howled toward the crack of distant gunfire, carried on cold, still winter air. Banging and clattering, hammers and drills, the reverberations of scaffolding. A tank slapping its caterpillar tracks down on the tarmac.

None of it loud enough to distract him from the hum of the fluorescent tube overhead.

He opened a drawer and pulled out a sheet of printed paper which he placed squarely in front of him. He stared at the symbols on it, knowing the answer was there somewhere, if only he knew where to look. He turned his wedding ring, still a cold and alien presence on his body, in precise quarter-circles.

Time passed. Voices in the corridor outside grew closer, louder, then faded.

Petrovitch looked up suddenly. His eyes narrowed and he pushed his glasses back up his nose. His heart spun faster, producing a surge of blood that pricked his skin with sweat.

Now everything was slow, deliberate, as he held on to his idea. He reached for a pencil and turned the sheet of paper over, blank side to him. He started to scratch out a diagram and, when he’d finished, some numbers to go with it.

Petrovitch put down the pencil and checked his answer.

“Dubiina,” he whispered to himself, “durak, balvan.”

The ornate sphere had taunted him from across the desk for the last time. He was going to be its master now. He reached over and fastened his hand around it, then threw it in the air with such casual defiance that would have had his head of department leaping to save it.

He caught it deftly on its way down, and knew that it would never have to touch the floor again.

He carried it to the door, flung it open, and stepped through. The two paycops lolling beside the lift caught a flavor of his mood. One nudged the other, who turned to see the white-blond hair and tight-lipped smile of Petrovitch advancing toward them at a steady gait.

“Dr. Petrovitch?” asked one. “Is there a problem?”

Petrovitch held the sphere up in front of him. “Out of the way,” he said. “Science coming through.”

He ran down the stairs, two stories, sliding his hand over the banister and only taking a firm hold to let his momentum carry him through the air for the broad landings. Now was not the time to wait, foot-tapping, for a crawling lift car that gave him the creeps anyway. Everything was urgent, imminent, immanent.

Second floor: his Head had given him two graduate students, and he had had little idea what to do with them. The least he could do to make up for several months of make-work was to include them in this. He needed witnesses, anyway. And their test rig. Which may or may not be completed: Petrovitch hadn’t seen either student for a week, or it might have been two.

Either way, he was certain he could recognize them again.

He kicked the door to their lab space open. They were there, sitting in front of an open cube of wood, a cat’s cradle of thin wires stretched inside. An oscilloscope—old school cathode tube—made a pulsing green line across its gridded screen.

The woman—blonde, skin as pale as parchment, eyes gray like a ghost’s… McNeil—yes, that was her name—glanced over her shoulder, her gray eyes growing impossibly round when she saw Petrovitch’s expression and what he was carrying.

“You’ve finished it.”

“This? Yeah, about a week ago. Should have mentioned it, but that’s not what’s important now.” He advanced on a steel trolley. In time-honored fashion, new equipment was built in the center of the lab. The old was pushed to the wall to be cannibalized for parts or left to fossilize. “Do either of you need any of this?”

He pointed to the collection of fat transformers on the top shelf. When he squatted down to inspect the lower deck, he found some moving coil meters and something that might have been the heavy-duty switching gear from a power station.

McNeil and the man—as to his name, Petrovitch’s mind was too full to remember it—looked at each other. Petrovitch waited all of half a second for a reply before seizing the trolley in his free hand and trying to tip it over. Some of the transformers were big ferrite ones, and he couldn’t manage it one-handed.

“You,” and he still couldn’t remember his name, “catch.”

He threw the sphere and, without waiting to see if it had a safe arrival, wedged his foot under one of the trolley’s castors and heaved. The contents slid and fell, collecting in a blocky heap on the fifties lino.

He righted the trolley and looked around for what he needed. “Power supply there,” he pointed, and McNeil scurried to get it. “That bundle of leads there. Multimeter, any, doesn’t matter. And the Mukhanov book.”

The other student was frozen in place, holding the sphere like it was made of crystal. Dominguez, that was it. Had problems pronouncing his sibilants.

“You all right with that?”

Dominguez nodded dumbly.

The quantum gravity textbook was the last thing slapped on the trolley, and Petrovitch took the handle again.

“Right. Follow me.”

McNeil trotted by his side. “Dr. Petrovitch,” she said.

And that was almost as strange as being married. Doctor. What else could the university do, but confer him with that title as soon as was practically possible?

“Yeah?”

“Where are we going?”

“Basement. And pray to whatever god you believe in that we’re not over a tube line.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Sure.” They’d reached the lift. He leaned over the trolley and punched the button to go down.

“Okay,” she said, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. “Why?”

“Because what I was doing before wasn’t working. This will.” The lift pinged and the door slid aside. Petrovitch took a good long look at the empty space before gritting his teeth and pushing the trolley inside. He ushered the two students in, then after another moment’s hesitation on the threshold, he stepped in.

He reached behind him and thumbed the stud marked B for basement.

As the lift descended, they waited for him to continue. “What’s the mass of the Earth?” he said. When neither replied, he rolled his eyes. “Six times ten to the twenty four kilos. All that mass produces a pathetic nine point eight one meters per second squared acceleration at the surface. An upright ape like me can outpull the entire planet just by getting out of a chair.”

“Which is why you had us build the mass balance,” she said.

“Yeah. You’re going to have to take it apart and bring it down here.” The door slid back to reveal a long corridor. “Not here here. This is just to show that it works. We’ll get another lab set up. Find a kettle. Stuff like that.”

He pushed the trolley out before the lift was summoned to a higher floor.

“Doctor,” said Dominguez, finally finding his voice, “that still does not explain why we are now underground.”

“Doesn’t it?” Petrovitch blinked. “I guess not. Find a socket for the power supply while I wire up the rest of it.” He took the sphere from Dominguez and turned it around until he found the two holes. His hand chased out a couple of leads from the bird’s nest of wires, spilling some of them to the floor. The lift disappeared upstairs, making a grinding noise as it went.

They worked together. McNeil joined cables together until she’d made two half-meter lengths. Dominguez set up the multimeter and twisted the dial to read current. Petrovitch plugged two jacks into the sphere, and finally placed Mukhanov and Winitzki’s tome on the floor. He set the sphere on top of it.

“Either of you two worked it out yet?” he asked. “No? Don’t worry: I’m supposed to be a genius, and it took me a week. Hugo, dial up four point eight volts. Watch the current. If it looks like it’s going to melt something, turn it off.”

The student had barely put his hand on the control when the lift returned. A dozen people spilled out, all talking at once.

“Yobany stos!” He glared out over the top of his glasses. “I’m trying to conduct an epoch-making experiment which will turn this place into a shrine for future generations. So shut the huy up.”

One of the crowd held up his camera phone, and Petrovitch thought that wasn’t such a bad idea.

“You. Yes, you. Come here. I don’t bite. Much. Stand there.” He propelled the young man front and center. “Is it recording? Good.”

All the time, more people were arriving, but it didn’t matter. The time was now.

“Yeah, Okay. Hugo? Hit it.”

Nothing happened.

“You are hitting it, right?”

“Yes, Dr. Petrovitch.”

“Then why isn’t the little red light on?” He sat back on his heels. “Chyort. There’s no yebani power down here.”

There was an audible groan.

Petrovitch looked up again at all the expectant faces. “Unless someone wants to stick their fingers in a light socket, I suggest you go and find a very long extension lead.”

Some figures at the back raced away, their feet slapping against the concrete stairs. When they came back, it wasn’t with an extension lead proper, but one they’d cobbled together out of the cable from several janitorial devices and gaffer tape. The bare ends of the wire were live, and it was passed over the heads of the watching masses gingerly.

It took a few moments more to desleeve the plug from the boxy power supply and connect everything together. The little red light glimmered on.

Petrovitch looked up at the cameraman. “Take two?”

“We’re on.”

Petrovitch got down on his hands and knees, and took one last look at the inert black sphere chased with silver lines. In a moment, it would be transformed, and with it, the world. No longer a thing of beauty, it would become just another tool.

“Hugo?” He was aware of McNeil crouched beside him. She was holding her breath, just like he was.

Dominguez flicked the on switch and slowly turned the dial. The digital figures on the multimeter started to flicker.

Then, without fuss, without sound, the sphere leaped off the book and into the air. It fell back a little, rose, fell, rose, fell, each subsequent oscillation smaller than the previous one, until it was still again. Only it was resting at shin height with no visible means of support.

Someone started clapping. Another joined in, and another, until the sound of applause echoed off the walls, magnified.

His heart was racing again, the tiny turbine in his chest having tasted the amount of adrenaline flooding into his blood. He felt dizzy, euphoric, ecstatic even: science elevated to a religious experience. Dominguez was transfixed, motionless like him. It was McNeil who was the first of the three to move. She reached forward and tapped the floating sphere with her fingernail. It slipped sideways, pulling the cables with it until it lost momentum and stopped. She waved her hand under it, over it.

She turned to Petrovitch and grinned. He staggered to his feet and faced the crowd. “Da! Da! Da!” He punched the air each time, and found he couldn’t stop. Soon he had all of them, young and old, men and women, fists in the air, chanting “Da!” at the tops of their voices.

He reached over and hauled Dominguez up. He held his other hand out to McNeil, who crawled up it and clung onto him in a desperate embrace. Thus encumbered, he turned to the camera phone and extended his middle finger—not his exactly, but he was at least its current owner. “Yob materi vashi, Stanford.”