City of Sand
Page 26
The character of William Glazier/David Stockton was inspired by legendary technological pioneer William Shockley. During World War II, Shockley was involved in radar research for Bell Labs in New Jersey. This research, as well as Bell Labs’ other work on counterintelligence technology, was the inspiration for GLARE/WISE. (There’s no indication Bell Labs worked on anything more exotic than scrambling radio communications, but Benjamin’s accounts of MKUltra, Operation Paperclip, and CIA conducting experiments on unsuspecting civilians are horrifyingly accurate.) William Shockley, like Glazier/Stockton, was a proponent of eugenics and seemed to be a believer in a rather brutal ends-justify-the-means ethos—as well as an interest in prognostication. The excerpt in chapter eight from Glazier’s report in on probable casualties from an invasion of the Japanese mainland was copied verbatim from an actual report written by William Shockley. That report provided justification for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Shortly after the end of the war in 1945, Bell Labs formed a solid state physics group assigned to find a solid-state alternative to fragile glass vacuum tube amplifiers. The ultimate result of this work was the development of the transistor in 1947. Virtually all modern electronics are based on this discovery. In 1956, Shockley moved to Mountain View, California to start Shockley Semiconductor, the first company to specialize in manufacturing semiconductors.
After winning the Nobel Prize in 1956 for his contribution to the invention of the transistor, Shockley became increasingly authoritarian, erratic and paranoid. In one well-known anecdote, he claimed that a secretary’s cut thumb was the result of a malicious act and demanded lie detector tests to find the responsible party. In late 1957, eight of Shockley’s key employees (the “traitorous eight) quit in protest over his management style and went to on to form Fairchild Semiconductor, a loss from which Shockley Semiconductor never recovered. Over the course of 20 years, these eight men started 65 new enterprises, shaping the future of what became known as Silicon Valley.
I should clarify that although Shockley was a controversial figure who held some distasteful views, I have no reason to believe he was a villain on the level of Glazier/Stockton. Glazier/Stockton is a fictional character who, while he shares many traits with Shockley, is really more representative of the American security-industrial complex than any particular person. And whatever one might think of Shockley, it’s thanks to him and a few other brilliant individuals that I was able to write this book on a portable machine filled with semiconductors.
Rob Kroese, 2/6/2015
About the Author
Robert Kroese’s sense of irony was honed growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan - home of the Amway Corporation and the Gerald R. Ford Museum, and the first city in the United States to fluoridate its water supply. In second grade, he wrote his first novel, the saga of Captain Bill and his spaceship Thee Eagle. This turned out to be the high point of his academic career. After barely graduating from Calvin College in 1992 with a philosophy degree, he was fired from a variety of jobs before moving to California, where he stumbled into software development. As this job required neither punctuality nor a sense of direction, he excelled at it. In 2009, he called upon his extensive knowledge of useless information and love of explosions to write his first novel, Mercury Falls. Since then, he has written seven more novels.
I love to hear from readers! Email me at rob@robertkroese.com or connect with me on the Internet:
Website: sfauthor.net
Facebook: facebook.com/robertkroeseauthor
Twitter: twitter.com/robkroese
If you enjoyed City of Sand, I would also greatly appreciate a review on your favorite book retailing website. Thanks!
More books by Robert Kroese you might enjoy
Schrödinger’s Gat
The Foreworld Saga: The Outcast
“Mercury Begins” (short story)
Mercury Falls
Mercury Rises
Mercury Rests
Mercury Revolts
Disenchanted
“The Chicolini Incident” (short story)
Starship Grifters
The Force is Middling in This One
Get email updates!
Want to be the first to know about new books I have coming out? Sign up for my mailing list! Don’t worry; you won’t be barraged with spam. I’ll just email when I have a new book out and for occasional other exciting news. And if you sign up now, you can get free copies of three short books: Into the Dark (And Two Other Stories), Mercury Swings, and Monday Morning in the Mailroom of Good and Evil. These books are only available to mailing list subscribers, so sign up now!
More Books from
Westmarch Publishing
Westmarch is an author-run publishing cooperative. We publish fiction in a variety of genres, including science fiction, fantasy and mystery. Check us out at Westmarchpub.com!
Imaginarium: A Collection of Westmarch Fiction by Denise Grover Swank, Robert Kroese, et al.
Half a Prayer by Rick Gualtieri
Mercury Revolts by Robert Kroese
Ansible 15715, Ansible 15716, Ansible 15717, Dante's Heart, The Running of the Tyrannosaurs by Stant Litore
The Bellbottom Incident by Neve Maslakovic
Stolen Spring by Cynthia L. Moyer
The Big Keep by Melissa F. Olson
An Officer and a Gentleman and The League of the Sphinx: The Purple Scarab by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.
Learn more at Westmarchpub.com!