Phantastisch Magazine, Issue #62 - Carsten Kuhr Interviews Daniel Suarez, May, 2015

The following interview was conducted in English then translated and published in the German-language magazine Phantastisch Issue #62. German-language versions are available here: Phantastish Ausgabe #62

[Carsten Kuhr] Hello Mr. Suarez. I´d like to start by asking you a little bit about yourself – family, profession besides writing?

[Daniel Suarez] Sure. I was born and raised in New Jersey. I attended the University of Delaware and majored in English literature. I moved out West to Los Angeles in the late 1980's where I met my wife, Michelle. We've been happily married for nearly twenty years, and it was here in Los Angeles that I got into the software development business. I'd always loved tinkering with computers, but I wrote my first enterprise code while managing commercial real estate.

[Carsten Kuhr] How did you become a writer?

[Daniel Suarez] I loved reading sci-fi and fantasy novels as a child, and I also enjoyed writing stories of my own. In high school I acquired more literary aspirations. By the time I went to college I was determined to become a novelist. But along the way I took a detour writing for an audience of computers (software). My nearly two decades in tech gave me a solid platform to write fiction about the sweeping changes technology is causing all around us. As it turns out, technology now looms large in everyone's life-- whether you use computers or not.

[Carsten Kuhr] What does Daniel Suarez do, when he is not writing – any time for hobbies?

[Daniel Suarez] I love to travel, hike, and spend time with friends. Of course, my travel sometimes includes research for upcoming books. In fact, that's one of the great things about travel -- it gives you a new perspective and sparks creativity.

Of course, I also still love to tinker with technology -- everything from drones, building computers, hardware hacking... (I have a lot of unfinished side projects.) Oh. And gaming. I've got friends who are game developers, and so to keep up to date I get every console. I also built a water-cooled, over-clocked multi-GPU, 3-screen system to play PC-based games like Arma III, Kerbal Space Program, DayZ, etc. I assure you, it's all quite necessary...for research.

[Carsten Kuhr] The question of who inspired you and more important why comes to mind.

[Daniel Suarez] A great many writers inspired me. When I think back on my childhood: J.R.R. Tolkien, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov -- and then in college Jon Dos Passos, Norman Mailer, and yes even Douglas Adams. When it came to inspiring my own writing, I gravitated to William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling because of how they incorporate the transforming effects of technology on people and society into their stories. That was of central interest to me when I began writing fiction in earnest.

[Carsten Kuhr] Which books lay on your bookshelf ready to read?

[Daniel Suarez] Book VI of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I'd never read the series, and lots of people have recommended it.

[Carsten Kuhr] What are you currently working on?

[Daniel Suarez] I sincerely appreciate you asking. Yet, I never discuss books in progress.

[Carsten Kuhr] Lets get down to the nitty gritty, your books. You kind of burst on the scene out of nowhere. And you offered your reader something that was new – you kind of started a whole new sub-genre. Your thriller didn´t need a special forces crew fighting the evil like in the blockbusters Matt Reilly or Rollins offer us – your evil comes out of our daily use of technologies we have around us all the time. Are you a lone prophet who warns about the dangers ahead of us?

[Daniel Suarez] A prophet? Certainly not. But I do like to educate myself about emerging technologies and ponder long and hard potential shifts they can bring about. It's this type of disruptive change that's leveling entire industries, remapping political and economic power. If that's not worth writing about, I don't know what is.

[Carsten Kuhr] With Daemon and FreedomTM you described a world in which a computer virus plans and commits crimes, manipulates the world and this in a very clever and succesful way. You yourself worked for 18 years as a systems analyst in technology. Do you still like technology, is it a threat that is going to kill humanity sooner or later or the saviour for our many problems?

[Daniel Suarez] Advanced technology is going to be critical in solving the many serious challenges facing humanity. Renouncing technology and crawling back to the 18th century is not an option. That won't feed and clothe 7+ billion people. No, we need to embrace technology-empowered change, but at the same time, we need to ensure that our social, economic, and political systems don't become more centralized and less transparent in the process. Social media algorithms, for example, are largely a black box; we don't get any meaningful input into what winds up in our timeline or on our stream. Unlike civil society in the real world, we don't have inalienable rights in walled social media gardens. The companies that run them can (and do) make unilateral decisions about our data, how to use and sell it to third parties, and whether to give us access to it. These networks are rapidly becoming the social fabric, and so it will fall to us to establish checks and balances in this new, network-based terrain.

[Carsten Kuhr] Has human kind lost its inner compass due to the fact, that soldiers who are working in the US steer drones all around the world, and can kill with the press of a button?

[Daniel Suarez] Remotely piloted drones are just the latest iteration in a long trend of devices built to 'at a distance' remove people who disagree with us from this Earth. It started with the thrown rock, moved to the atlatl, the bow and arrow, firearms, cannon, dropped bombs, missiles, ICBMs -- and when it was realized that this would annihilate the entire human race, technology was focused on pin-point targeting of much smaller stand-off weapons.

The concept of targeted assassination from the air wasn't technologically feasible until now, and as with all technologies that bestow perceived advantage, once it became practical, it was immediately put into use. It's what we do next that reveals whether we've lost our moral compass or not. Will we -- the nations of the world -- descend into an arms race of autonomous robotic weapons, or will we collectively realize that this would benefit no one (much like the nuclear arms race before it)? I suppose the rise of autonomous drones -- robotic weapons that kill without direct human control -- will bring us rapidly to the conclusion that no, it's not worth it. That's one reason why I support the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and Human Rights Watch and their Stop Killer Robots campaign -- and why I'm on the executive board of Responsible Robotics

[Carsten Kuhr] Humanity has gone a long way – but, meanwhile think-tanks in the US are seriously thinking about a new war in Europe against Russia, individual freedom is a myth and we all are spied upon from the NSA and other institutions. Thinking back – in the 60s many people went on the streets to fight for freedom and peace – we kind of lost that mission off our inner radar. What is your opinion – will our modern society sacrifice freedom and peace for wealth, power and domination?

[Daniel Suarez] That little smart phone in all our pockets is quite a transformative piece of tech. Seemingly benign, but no greater change agent have we seen in modern times. Who would have thought that the overwhelming majority of people would not only consent to have a tracking device on them 24/7 but that they would passively consent to having their most intimate communications opened and read by advertisers as well. Whom they associate with. What they say to each other. It boggles the mind.

This devil's bargain was struck because most people want the capabilities and entertainments the smart phone and the Internet offer us in exchange. However, all this tracking perfectly suits centralized political and economic power. If we let things continue as they're going now, in thirty or forty years I don't think the public at large will have any real power at all. It might not even take that long.

John Gilmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, once famously said that 'The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.' That was perhaps true before today's unparalleled physical control of the Internet infrastructure by huge telecoms. It was also perhaps true before legions of sock puppets were able to cost-effectively drown any reasoned debate in trollish noise.

But protest? No. I say build. Build new networks. Route around the damage ourselves. That's what Tor was meant to do, of course, but the physical control of major chokepoints on the fiber optic grid compromised even Tor. No, instead it will require local, mesh networks that allow us to speak and act locally, while making it highly impractical to surveil the average person. That's the problem with the Internet as it is currently constituted: it made complete surveillance cheap. Certainly former Stasi member, Wolfgang Schmidt, felt that way in 2013 when he responded to revalations of the U.S.'s surveillance infrastructure by saying: “You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true.”

I can think of no more compelling reason to change it.

[Carsten Kuhr] We kind of got dependent on that what we are told. The newsmagazines tell us a lot about everything, the www even more – but we all know, that not everything in the newspaper or in the press-conferences is really true. Do we get too much information, in which the truth is but a small piece of the news and we are manipulated into acting like the ones dominating the newscompanies want us to think? Is this a threat and if so, what can we, the single person do, to find out what is true and what not?

[Daniel Suarez] Misinformation by those in control of mainstream media is indeed a threat to an informed citizenry--but it's not a new threat. Propaganda has been around for centuries. It became a major field of study in the U.S. during the First World War and was later refined into a science by Madison Avenue. Basically: if there's money to be made or power to be had, people are going to lie to get it.

The best defense for any society is to teach young people to think *critically*. Acquiring the skills necessary to sift fact from fiction should be one of the primary goals of public education. For example, as a boy I attended New Jersey public schools in the 1970's, and I received an excellent math and science education. In high school I studied formal logic (essentially language math), and was taught how to assess arguments and ferret out false conclusions based on shoddy or inconsistent thinking. All of these skills have served me well in adult life, so it's definitely possible for society to equip young citizens with the tools they need to remain free. Clearly that's not everyone's goal.

From the prevalance of nonsensical policy issues in the United States (denial of climate change, disbelief in the theory of evolution, etc, etc.), it's plain to see that entrenched political and economic interests are working hard to muddy issues of science and critical thinking in public schools and the media. I suspect these issues are *not* muddied in expensive private schools where the powerful send their own children...

[Carsten Kuhr] Lets turn to your latest novel about the BTC – was the NSA kind of a blueprint for the BTC – keeping secrets upon secrets without anybody controlling them, without even knowing, what kind and mass of infomation they collect.

[Daniel Suarez] The BTC (Bureau of Technology Control) in my novel was very much a metaphor for unaccountable power -- especially when that power tries to retain control through *fear* (in this case, fear of the future). My book, 'Control', was written before the Snowden revelations, but I'd already become concerned about growing secrecy in post-9/11 America. This isn't just about government. Few people realize that 70% of the functions of the NSA (from telecom, to IT, to human resources) have been outsourced to private corporations -- and there's a legitimate question of how accountable those private entities are to civilian oversight. Don't know the names of any of these corporations to whom surveillance has been outsourced? I'm not surprised. Look up Verint and its former CEO, Kobi Alexander (here's a hint: he wound up on the FBI's Most Wanted list for securities fraud). Perhaps access to confidential information was too tempting...

So my latest novel, 'Control' (titled 'Influx' here in the U.S.), is about unaccountable power of all types -- no matter whether it's governments, corporations, religions...who or whatever. Unaccountable power and excessive secrecy are the bane of any true democracy.

[Carsten Kuhr] Do we already live in a surveillance system?

[Daniel Suarez] Yes. I suspect that will remain the case as long as consumers tolerate this. I do think there will be a movement for 'privacy as a service', where people pay extra to opt-out of constant tracking. I, for one, would take advantage of it, and I think there's a strong business case to be made. The sad part is that you'll have to pay extra for privacy in the future. But then, you know what they say: "If you're not paying for a service, you're not the customer -- you're the product being sold."

[Carsten Kuhr] Do you see your books, besides the fact that they entertain their reader, as a warning about certain aspects in modern day society?

[Daniel Suarez] I prefer to think of my books as metaphorically spotting icebergs. I say this because I don't dread the future; I'm actually optimistic that technology can be harnessed to do wonderful things. Just look at the fact that the human lifespan has literally doubled in the past century or so. Technology made that possible.

But we need to work hard at successfully incorporating new technologies into society. That's what I mean by 'spotting icebergs.' In my books, I like to ponder the implications of potentially disruptive technologies or trends. These frequently involve unexpected combinations of existing technologies (for example: the phone and the computer = the smart phone). Each new, disruptive tech has the potential to sink us, but with careful navigation destructive collisions can be avoided -- and we sail onward, wiser and still intact.

[Carsten Kuhr] Has technical progress actually really slowed down? We haven´t had the next big thing for more than a decade – no fusion power plants, no treatment against cancer, we haven´t reached the planets nor the stars etc.?

[Daniel Suarez] That aspect of my latest book is a tongue-in-cheek indictment of what passes for 'innovation' at the moment -- namely, think up some software service that disintermediates the hell out of an existing industry or piggy-backs on an existing social media platform; then cash out. That's not the whole innovation picture, of course, but it is remarkably common.

That sort innovation *does not* compare favorably with, say, the development of the railroad, the polio vaccine, the Internet, or literally anything that Elon Musk is up to these days. I remember as a child thinking that not even the sky felt like the limit. I took it as a given that we would have a permanent base on the Moon by now, and possibly one on Mars, as well. I miss that tendency for Western society to dream big. To aim for the impossible. Now we seem to be focused on three things: entertainment, zero-friction purchasing, and fear -- and this last one is the most damaging. Fearful societies don't dream big. In fact, they don't dream at all because they're afraid of having nightmares.

[Carsten Kuhr] Where and how do you do your research for the novels?

[Daniel Suarez] I do HUGE amounts of Internet research when I'm gearing up for a book. Then, depending on the subject I might travel to certain locations or seek out subject matter experts. For example, with the sequel to my first book, Darknet, I traveled all around the American midwest for months in 2008, just after the economic collapse. I wanted to get a sense for what these folks were dealing with, to get the lay of the land. For my book about autonomous drones (Kill Decision), I interviewed special forces operatives, experts in robotics, and read dozens of books about social insects, swarming intelligence, and robotics.

I think many writers have a passion for research. There's a powerful temptation to keep researching once you've started--to keep looking for what's beyond the next bend. Thankfully, as I've gained experience as a writer, I've learned to know when I've done enough research so that I actually get to writing the book!

[Carsten Kuhr] As far as I know, you are a full-time writer. Don´t you miss people around you with whom you work, with whom you discuss your ideas?

[Daniel Suarez] Yes, I suppose I do to some extent. When I worked in software development with big corporate clients, I'd work closely with a team of a dozen or more very smart, resourceful people. I really liked the challenge of us tackling a thorny logic problem together.

However, I *love* being a novelist. Yes, it can be more isolating while I'm heads-down, writing, but if I'm honest, there was a lot of that when I was writing computer code, too. Likewise, in writing tech thrillers, I get to reach out to interesting people all over the world in interesting places while doing research. I also travel promoting my books and have connected with countless other people who found my books interesting -- those who reached out to me to speak at a function or to attend a conference on some interesting topic.

[Carsten Kuhr] I heard somethings about your books be optioned for going on the big screen – any news on this?

[Daniel Suarez] Yes, so far all but one of my books have been optioned by major film studios (and I expect that one will be, too, soon enough). The rights to Daemon and its sequel came back to me recently, and I'm pursuing an adaption of those two books for television. I've also met recently with the screenwriters 21st Century Fox hired to adapt 'Control', and I'm optimistic they'll do a wonderful job with the story.

[Carsten Kuhr] Meanwhile you are an experienced author with quite a couple of books under your belt. Is there a difference in the way you approach the novel writing now with all the experience you gained throughout the previous work and the time you sat down in front of the keyboard for the first time trying to put your story to paper?

[Daniel Suarez] I'm sure there is, but it's happened so gradually that it doesn't even seem like a change. I will say that I don't ever feel trepidation about which book to start or how to begin a book. I seem to have a plethora of ideas, and these are usually the result of ingesting a constant stream of news and information about the world. In short, there's always something I'm itching to write about.

As for sitting down and actually starting a book, I just do it, and I do it without hesitation because I know one thing for certain when I write that first chapter: it is going to wind up in the trash. Seriously, I very often deep-six my first paragraphs and sentences, but in writing them, I feel that I'm building a scaffold upon which I climb to reach the rest of the book. So I say to would-be novelists: don't hesitate. Write with enthusiasm, but equally: edit your own work with brutal self-honesty once it's cooled off.

[Carsten Kuhr] How long does it take to write a novel beginning with the first stretches til it is finished?

[Daniel Suarez] It takes me just over a year to write one of my books. It generally breaks down like this: three months of research, four months of character development & story structure, and five months of actual writing. As you can see, the writing itself is not the majority of the work. I find research and structure to be crucial elements of my process. That said, some novelists just make stuff up and have great success (though that's certainly not an option when you're trying to write authentic thrillers about high-tech).

[Carsten Kuhr] Daemon was first pubished by yourself – was it a hard road to travel getting noticed by the publishing companies?

[Daniel Suarez] Yes, it is hard getting noticed by major publishers. Fortunately, I didn't wait around for that. Way back in the dim recesses of history (2006) I self-published Daemon. I did so because I couldn't get a literary agent interested in my book. I was told repeatedly that it was 'too technical' to be of general interest.

Back in 2006 it was much harder to self-publish (Kindle didn't appear until 2007). You had to actually create and distribute a physical book. Fortunely, I figured out a way to do that cost-effectively and to reach my target audience: IT folks and game developers. Word-of-mouth eventually brought me to the attention of more and more readers. Wired Magazine did an article on the book, and then literary agents and publishing houses approached *me.* Dutton then republished the book, and Daemon made the New York Times bestseller list in 2009.

If all of the above sounds difficult: it was. But then, if you really want to write and publish books, nowadays it's easier than ever to do. Rising above the din is an issue, of course, but then, I have this advice: enjoy the process as much as the writing. It's all part of the experience, and in truth, once you've finished your manuscript, approximately 3/4 of the work still lies ahead of you.