Luna is an artificial intelligence being created for the 7.4B people in today’s world. The non-profit organization, Robots Without Borders, focuses on three applications of artificial intelligence: education, medical assistance and humanitarian aid. In many ways, Luna exemplifies Luis’ life and his passion for an artificial intelligence that guides all. … And I respectfully ask the world this question: How could an artificial intelligence help humans during and after natural disasters (such as hurricanes and wildfires); in the midst of deliberate, human-engineered atrocities, such as the Las Vegas shooting?

Tsng comes at Luna from a wider perspective than I was expecting, and enters some of the territories I’m exploring in Chaos Engine, a novel that’s in production.

Humans have a gift for creating amazing things to help us do exceptional things, but then we also create terrible things that enable us to do horrendous things. But the worst thing we do is nothing, when something could or would change the world — and an Artificial Intelligence won’t help us there.

Religious conservatism, in particular, is a bunch of men — regardless of colour — shaking an angry fist at the world, who can’t get it up without beating someone down, women for the most part.

It’d be comical if it weren’t true. It’d be hilarious if these men weren’t so numerous, so empowered, and so dangerous. It’d be a relief if they weren’t politicians, police officials and officers, legislators, educators, pastors, padres, imams, and rabbis, or the owners of major multi-national corporations.

Terrorism, in this modern age, is as much a notion, or an idea, as it is an act or deed.

Michelle Rodriguez weighed in on the subject of race with regards to superheroes, and in doing so contributed to an on-going discussion about race in fiction.

If you’re not familiar, then Idris Elba as a possible future James Bond, the hispanic Spider-Man, and the female Thor are prime examples of race — and also gender — becoming lost in a furore that needn’t be such.

As a disclaimer, I am not of a racial minority; being of Anglo-Saxon stock kind of greases the wheels of life for me, which I take great care to be aware of, to avoid that sense of entitlement, privilege, and of victimhood from creeping in, which is so prevalent in parts of Northern Europe.

No, we Caucasians are not under threat from a tidal wave of immigrants. If anything, we’re a danger to ourselves.

A few years ago, I would have known little of the on-going superhero-of-colour debate (I’m not much into DC or Marvel comics), but I did understand — or at least, was aware — that there weren’t many minority superheroes, and that even fewer of them were British.

So I wrote A Darkening of Fortune, a near-future sci-fi crime thriller, to address both of these issues. But more important was the need to address some of the aspects of what it means to be British and Asian — or at least as to the best of my own abilities, observations, and vicarious experiences.

Let’s imagine for a moment A Darkening or Fortune becomes a huge success and I receive an offer of a cinematic adaptation. If during those discussions the movie studio was to propose changing Yusef “Joe” Iqbal to a white Caucasian, there the discussion would come to a grinding halt. End of story.

I made the decision to create my own universe, or more specifically, a continuum.

“What, like the Marvel Universe?” Christy suggested.

Not quite, no. But then again, yes. I don’t pay too much attention — if any at all — to what other people are doing, as I have my own ideas.

In my universe, every novella and novel is part of a constellation of stories, each connecting with another in some way, be it a character, a technology, an event, a business, a location, or an idea.

“They won’t really care.” Christy reasoned. “The readers, I mean.”

She had a point.

“I write for myself.” I said.

Yes, I am a selfish author.

It’s the creation of these nebulous connections, and the challenge of ensuring every story is a part of the same continuum that motivates me as much as anything.

However, it does impose certain rules; certain ideas I have are out of bounds, since they do not fit within the scope of the continuum.

You’d think that there’d be plenty of room in an entire universe. No, certain genres just don’t fit.

I have made a commitment, which I intend remaining true to, come what may.

If you look at it from an external perspective — through the lens of the imaginary reader, often not anything like the real reader — it quickly becomes a series of no-win scenarios that would make even the head of John Nash spin.

So you’re writing for yourself? How vein. Are you writing to entertain? How presumptuous. What, you write to be famous? You are such an egotist. Or, are you writing in the hope that you become wealthy? How selfish.

Personally, I don’t concern myself with what people think in so far as what my reasons for writing might be. In truth, I write for all of the aforementioned reasons. But if, as a writer, you are bothered what other people think, be humble and write for respect, though I suspect that might limit your imagination.

You can’t please everyone, but it’s often easier to please yourself.

In essence, success — be it financial, commercial, or fame, or a rich mixture of the three combined — relies on three things:

1. an array of influential family, friends, and colleagues;
2. extreme good fortune, or at least the ability to act upon fortuitousness moments, and;
3. talent.

No, talent alone really isn’t going to cut it, I’m afraid. How do I know this? I’m a business owner of some thirteen years, and I have a propensity to observe. What successes I’ve had are wrought from many years of hard work, mostly not in the glare but the shadow of friends and fortune.

And if I were to have presented the aforementioned three ingredients proportionally, the third would be visualised as some tiny speck, while first and second would have planetary proportions.

Ah, the one-hit-wonder

Consider the endless succession of one-hit-wonders in art, literature, and business. Clearly they had little talent, or they would have enjoyed more than one hit, surely? But since they’re no longer around, we can assume — with some degree of latitude —that they didn’t have the necessary talent to ride the initial wave and keep their success going.

The amount of times I’ve read some autobiographical comment by some previously lionised entrepreneur, singer, writer — whatever or whoever — discussing their ascension to success, only for them to just drop in the fact that some relative or friend or colleague happened to mention what they were doing to someone of an unparalleled and unrivalled connection to the very thing that would thrust them forward like a rocket sled.

Know thyself!

Most of the time, these people don’t even realise the deeply serendipitous nature of their success, or how that without both friends and / or chance, they would be toiling away to this day, just like the rest of us.

Talent take-away

So what can we learn from this?

1. Firstly, don’t allow the reality of your predicament to undermine your faith.
2. Surround yourself with influential people and be useful to them in some way without being sycophant.
3. Adopt a mercenary attitude towards chance and be both predatory and opportunistic.

Anything else and you really are leaving your fortunes (such that they are) to chance.

Justifying hate

Almost anything can be used as an excuse and as a means to inflict harm upon others, like the Christian Bible, for instance. Do we see people protesting against the sale and distribution of religious texts in the same way as Christians — and particularly Conservative Christians do — in the southern states of the United States of America? No, we don’t.

Or what of the Qur’an, or the Torah? Again, silence. Yet religion is the original weapon of mass destruction, one responsible for unparalleled cruelty and destruction, visiting death not just on mere people, but on entire cultures and civilisations, which have been swept from the face of the Earth.

So clearly, what we see is not knowledge itself as being harmful, but what people choose to do with it.

If he were alive, you could ask Robert Oppenheimer for his thoughts on the potential of hydrogen atom, and how it was harnessed to unleash unimaginable devastation upon the Japanese. Specifically, we could ask Oppenheimer what he thought of his part in the harnessing of this element, yes?

“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer

Knowledge is potential, not power unto itself

The internet is another much maligned entity, which is essentially a repository for knowledge of many kinds.

“The internet is a reflection of our society and that mirror is going to be reflecting what we see. If we do not like what we see in that mirror the problem is not to fix the mirror, we have to fix society.”
― Vint Cerf

Substitute the internet for almost anything, like Facebook, and again you find something that contains various things of varying edifying quality, and many things some — or most —people would describe as challenging or troubling. But what you’re seeing is only ever a reflection of society itself.

Yes, there are blueprints for bombs on the internet, but that blueprint is nothing but bits of data without the want of someone to harm someone else.

Belief — and by extension religion itself — does not require anything so stoic and solid as proof or evidence, and relies entirely on fear, uncertainty and doubt. Darwinism — or any other theory of science — does not require such an ephemeral thing as belief to exist, only the persistence of human enquiry and the willingness to learn.

And if we were to use an island analogy I read earlier, I’d encourage people to rely as much as is practicably possible on their own skills, to continue their toil in isolation (which is good practice for those times when you have almost no choice), and channel your inner autodidact.

I’m a firm believer in self reliance, because you cannot trust that you’ll have the support you need, when you need it most. I’ve learned this lesson at some considerable cost.

On those occasions where you need to broaden your skills, don’t roam too far, and instead build your own archipelago of suppliers and partners.

I say this not just as an author, but as a business owner since 1999.