Oracle
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But a number of my fans thought otherwise. Many of these have elected to friend me on Facebook, and they are truly amazing. Before I launch every novel, I post a draft synopsis on Facebook to learn what they think, and I’ve come to treasure their feedback.
This time, a number of my fans weren’t thrilled with the title. Some were reminded of the Matrix. Some the software company. And even some of those who were reminded of the Oracle of Delphi argued that my fiction is about the future, not the past, and felt that this reference was going in the wrong direction.
Yikes! None of them had read the novel, of course. So I couldn’t tell them that I had put historical references to the Oracle of Delphi on the very first page, and had taken to calling Anna an Oracle, because of the cryptic nature of her clairvoyance. They had no idea that I had Vega mention that the ancient Vorians had found a few women who confirmed their theory of human precognition, who later went on to become Oracles of Delphi.
Even so, this feedback was troubling, and I thought long and hard about changing the title to something like Seer, Clairvoyant, Foresight, Delphi, Visionary, and so on.
After much back and forth I finally, stubbornly, stuck with Oracle. Hopefully, it isn’t too horrible a title, and you aren’t the only one in the world who decided to read it. :)
If only I were clairvoyant, I could make sure I made the best decision. I could commit to a title and then look ahead and see how the book did in the future. Then I could commit to another title and see if it did better or worse.
On the other hand, if I really was clairvoyant, I probably wouldn’t waste this talent on book titles. If you’re thinking I’d use it to buy a lottery ticket, or try to find a single elusive future in which I actually win an argument with my wife, shame on you—I’d use it to bring about world peace, of course. :)
Why did I write Oracle? (part 1)
Several years ago I wrote a novel called Game Changer, which involves neuroscience. While preparing for Game Changer, I happened to read several books about the power of the human subconscious. I was blown away. I had no idea just how remarkable the subconscious really is, and how little we’re in control of our own actions and decisions.
In any event, the experiments briefly described in this novel with respect to the power of the subconscious are all real, and were actually conducted, including the four-deck experiment, dilated female pupil experiment, and the upside-down funhouse glasses experiment. The cocktail party effect is also a real phenomenon, and one that I find fascinating.
Chicken sexing is also real, of course, since I couldn’t have possibly made this up. I’d like to think I have a good imagination, but I never would have guessed that the early separation of baby chickens by sex was something anyone would ever care to do, let alone just how difficult it might be.
Finally, the power of intuition is also real (more about this in a later section). It may not be as powerful as it was for Anna Abbott in the novel, but it’s pretty powerful. I’ve read biographies of Einstein and Feynman (my two all-time favorite scientists), and both men recognized just how big a role intuitive hunches played in their careers. As I wrote in Oracle, I’ve come to believe that many of humanity’s greatest breakthroughs were made by hidden minds, and not the ones we think are in control.
Which brings me to my own experiences. I never know how one of my novels will end until I’m at least halfway through it. I’m stumped on the plot far more frequently than I care to admit, and at least once every novel I become convinced that I can’t finish it. I become absolutely certain that there is no satisfactory way to complete the work.
And yet I haven’t failed to finish a novel yet. So how do I find solutions that I’m so sure don’t even exist? The recipe is simple. First, I spend weeks pulling out my hair, and getting nowhere. Then, I spend time pounding my head against the desk. And all along the way, there’s plenty of cursing and screaming, and lamenting that finding a solution is impossible.
And then the answer comes to me one day. From out of the blue. From out of nowhere. It just appears, as if by magic.
My eyes go wide and I think, Wow! That’s it. I realize that my hidden mind was working tirelessly on the problem behind the scenes, and it just decided to hit me with the answer. And usually this answer is a totally novel way of looking at things, of reaching outside the box I had trapped myself in, of turning the problem on its head. These solutions can take my breath away as it becomes clear to me just how perfect, and how simple, they really are. They were there all along, but my stubborn conscious mind refused to see them.
So over the years, I’ve grown to have faith that my hidden mind will bail me out. I load up my brain with as much information surrounding the premise as I can. I think about my novel as much as I can, and try to consciously solve the plot. But I almost never do. Thankfully, my subconscious always does.
It’s humbling to realize that my subconscious mind is a much better problem solver than I’ll ever be. For the life of me, I have no idea how it does it.
So I decided it would be fun to introduce a character who really lives this reality. Whose hidden mind makes Oracle-like pronouncements that her conscious mind has to figure out. Whose hidden mind may even have different goals than she does. Almost as if she has multiple personality disorder (now known as dissociative identity disorder).
When this character says she’s of two minds about something, she really is of two minds about something.
And then I decided that having a character with extraordinary intuition wasn’t quite interesting enough, and that it would be more fun to add clairvoyance into the mix.
This was when I reached the tipping point, and began writing Oracle. I only start when my intuition tells me I have enough ideas to fill a novel. Like Anna, I’ve learned to trust my instincts.
So if you loved this novel, you can thank me for listening to my gut. If you hated it, you can blame my hidden mind for fooling me into thinking I really had something here. :)
Why did I write Oracle? (part 2)
Ever since I began reading about the technological singularity, post-humanism, and transhumanism, I’ve come to believe that the human race (or a runaway computer AI) will achieve transcendence within the next hundred years. Given how rapidly our technology is evolving, and given the awesome power of exponential technological growth, it seems inevitable to me (and to many others who are much smarter than me).
I love far-future science fiction and space opera. No power on Earth could keep me away from the latest Star Trek movie. But I’ve come to believe that this future is unlikely. Because if we self-evolve to nearly godlike status in the next hundred years, we’ll be unrecognizable as humans, and our motives will be unfathomable. We won’t be flying around in starships, like Captain Kirk, and trying to have sex with green aliens. We’ll be creating our own universes, or become beings of pure energy.
Ray Kurzweil has a vivid way to compare linear and exponential growth. “If I take thirty steps linearly,” he has been known to say, “I get to thirty. If I take thirty steps exponentially, I get to a billion.” And while Star Trek is the result of the next linear step in our development, the reality will be exponential.
I wrote a piece about this for a collection of stories and essays called Visions of The Future. My essay was entitled, “Scientific Advances are Ruining Science Fiction,” and I’ve included it at the very end of these notes, after the author bio, for those of you who have interest.
The bottom line is this, as much as I love space opera, I hesitate to write it given what I believe the far future will actually be like. But it occurred to me that perhaps I could have my cake and eat it too. I believe that transcendence is inevitable. But what about a future in which a mysterious entity is actively preventing this last exponential evolutionary leap from taking place? Then I could have my starships, and space battles, and galactic conquest, and also a mystery as to why this transcendence hasn’t happened yet.
So the second reason I wrote Oracle was
to give me an opening to delve into traditional space opera if I wanted, without feeling guilty about it. And I’d like to think that the galaxy I introduced in the novel is pretty darn interesting, also, and can give me plenty to work with if I were to pursue one or more sequels.
So will I write an Oracle sequel that leans more toward traditional space opera? One in which Anna Abbott is admiral of the Vorian Allied Fleet? And if I do, will my staunch technothriller fans forgive this space opera dalliance?
If only I were clairvoyant, I could be certain.
In any event, when I make up my mind, you’ll be the first to know. :)
Are UFOs real?
Given Oracle’s subject matter, this is a relevant question, especially now that UFO sightings have become increasingly common and their flight plans increasingly brazen.
So are UFOs real? My short answer: I have no idea. My long answer: I have no fricking idea, whatsoever, and I have no idea what to even think about all of this.
None of it makes sense to me. But the evidence has become ever more compelling in the past few years. Every day now military pilots and other trained observers are having close encounters with objects that defy physics. Hard to imagine there’s a pedestrian explanation for it all.
On the other hand, if advanced aliens wanted to stay hidden from us, I have no doubt they could pull this off. And on the third hand, why isn’t there any definitive evidence? I mean ironclad, super-definitive, unquestionable evidence?
Why would aliens toy with us by letting their aircraft get discovered hundreds of times a year? If they wanted their existence to be known, they could make this happen. Hover a few ships over the White House and Times Square, for example, and we’d get the message. Or land in my backyard, show me a futuristic anti-gravity device, and I would find a way to get the national news involved.
And UFOs aren’t just an American phenomenon. One would imagine that they are appearing with equal frequency everywhere around the world. So if unmistakable evidence is being hidden from us, does that mean that every government around the world is in on this? And if so, that all of them have managed to successfully keep it from their citizenry? Imagining extraterrestrial visitors is one thing. But imagining this many competent governments is really a stretch.
Finally, I’m plagued by the following logic. Members of any species capable of making an interstellar voyage would be so much more sophisticated than we are that they would self-evolve into veritable gods in the blink of the eye. Gods who would have no interest in lowly humanity, or who would be fully capable of sidestepping any of humanity’s feeble attempts to discover them.
So none of this makes sense to me. I wish I could give a better answer. It would be cool if aliens really were visiting Earth, but then again, any beings competent enough to make an interstellar voyage could wipe us out in the blink of an eye, and that’s a bit disconcerting. Unless, of course, they came through a portal that prevented their tech from passing through with them. :)
I’ll leave this section with an excerpt from a May, 2019 article in the New York Post, entitled “UFOs have come out of the fringe and into the mainstream,” although a simple search will reveal endless others like it.
EXCERPT: You’d have to be living on another planet not to have heard one of the biggest news stories in recent times: After years of denial, it turns out that the US government has a secret program, researching and investigating UFOs.
Details were released of multiple events where UFOs have been tracked on radar and chased by military jets, including a November 2004 incident where the USS Nimitz carrier strike group was buzzed by multiple UFOs. Videos of three of these spectacular midair encounters have been made public, though many more have yet to be released. Also last year, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) briefed Congress on this work. In a January 9, 2018, letter to key members of Congress, the DIA disclosed that they had researched anti-gravity, warp drives, wormholes and other theoretical physics concepts needed for interstellar travel, as part of an effort to understand what they termed “foreign advanced aerospace weapon threats.”
Does our subconscious control our lives?
Does our subconscious control our lives? The short answer is yes. The long answer is yes, so much more so than we would ever imagine.
Everything I wrote about in the novel in this regard is true. To learn more about this fascinating subject, I highly recommend starting with a book called Incognito, written by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine—but only after reading Game Changer and the rest of my novels, of course. :) There are also many other books on the subject you can readily find, as well as endless articles with simple internet searches.
We don’t realize just how many decisions are being made for us, without our conscious knowledge, because our conscious minds have evolved to believe that they really are in full control. Imagine how embarrassed our conscious minds would be if they had to acknowledge that something hidden from us was pulling our strings with frightening regularity.
There are a large number of experiments demonstrating this truth, and also the lengths the conscious mind will go to fool itself into believing it really is calling the shots. As an example, here is an excerpt from my novel Game Changer, which speaks to this point:
EXCERPT: “As we’ve discussed, if something bubbles up from the unconscious, our minds seize on it and construct a reality, a mythology, to explain it and pretend we’re running the show. There are patients whose brains are split, whose left and right hemispheres can’t communicate with each other. With these patients there are ways to give instructions to the unconscious without the conscious knowing this was done. Say you instruct a patient who doesn’t cook to walk to the kitchen and turn on the oven. His conscious mind doesn’t know you gave this instruction. But if you ask him why he did this, he won’t confess he has no idea. He’ll fabricate a story, a logic, sometimes laughably elaborate, to explain it. ‘I turned on the oven to make sure it still worked—in case I decide to sell the house.’”
Below, I’ve provided excerpts from two articles that I found interesting, among many others.
“Brain makes decisions before you even know it” (Nature, 2008)
EXCERPT: Your brain makes up its mind up to ten seconds before you realize it, according to researchers. By looking at brain activity while making a decision, the researchers could predict what choice people would make before they themselves were even aware of having made a decision.
The work calls into question the consciousness of our decisions and may even challenge ideas about how free we are to make a choice at a particular point in time.
“Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg,” says John-Dylan Haynes, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.
“Big Decision Ahead? Let your subconscious choose.” (Healthline.com, 2013)
EXCERPT: New research shows that our brains continue solving problems subconsciously when we turn our attention to something else.
The more we learn about our brains, the more we find that they work better without our input. In fact, a great deal of human behavior stems from our subconscious mind. Research into the subconscious has found that it helps to initiate goal-orientated behavior, creativity, insight, memory consolidation, and decision-making.
The funny thing about your brain, as researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) recently discovered, is that it’ll keep solving a problem for you while you do something else. In fact, giving your subconscious time to work makes for better decisions.
Intuition
Much of what is written in the novel about intuition is real. As a handy guide, if a passage seems like it might be real, it probably is. And if it seems like it probably isn’t real, it probably isn’t. For example, in the novel, Anna can use her intuition/clairvoyance to dodge bullets—but I wouldn’t try that at home. :)
I find this subject fascinating. Once again, I’ll leave you with excerpts from a few
of the many articles I read in preparation for writing Oracle.
“Science confirms women’s intuition is a real thing” (New York Post, 2017)
EXCERPT: Science has finally proven what we have long thought—women are better than men at reading people’s emotions. And they can pull off this magic trick just by looking at people’s eyes.
Researchers from around the world tested if there were genetic variants associated with cognitive empathy—that is, our ability to be able to understand another person’s emotional state just at a glance.
For the study, 90,000 people were shown different photographs of people’s eyes. They were then asked to say what they thought that person’s mood was. The results: women consistently outperformed men.
“The Science of Intuition: An Eye-Opening Guide to Your Sixth Sense” (Oprah.com, 2011)
EXCERPT: Some people think of intuition as a mystical power. Skeptics write it off as a matter of lucky guesswork. But scientists who study the phenomenon say it’s a very real ability that can be identified in lab experiments and visualized on brain scans.
Your powers of deduction, reason, and cognition are all important factors in your perception of the world. But your judgment is working even when you’re not conscious of the gears turning—and even when you’re not conscious, period.
If you had to guess whether it’s easier to take in new information when your attention is focused or when you’re distracted, you’d guess the former, right? If so, you’d be wrong. In a study published in Nature Neuroscience in 2009 . . . “Our intuitive brains are processing information even when we’re not paying attention,” says Ken Paller, PhD, a coauthor of the study. “And with the brain’s analytical system occupied by another task, the intuitive system—which excels at picking up the gist of a scene or situation—is better able to do its work.”