"Proteus Rising," a mainstream science fiction novel that explores the "what-ifs" of the new genetic and computer modeling sciences in a suspenseful chase across a Martian colony during an ethnic insurrection.
The direction of "Proteus Rising" is set in the heading of the first chapter by a quote from the main character: "What if I told you I'd discovered a genetic cure for Original Sin?" - George Mills, Ursa University, Mars, 2321 A.D. "Proteus Rising" quickly turns into a trek across the landscape of a twenty-fourth century Martian colony by physicist George Mills and his exotic associate, Dr. Joanne Zhu. They struggle to find out who is slowly peeling away the layers of a secret they initiated in a fertility clinic 15 years earlier. Despite their efforts, the authorities soon discover the emergence of a new nonhuman species and the existence of the most powerful computer ever created. So starts a paranoid chess game between a small group of scientists, a self-aware computer and the invincible security forces of a fleet admiral in a desperate gambit to save a group of synthetically bred children from imprisonment and medical experimentation. "Proteus Rising" is at once chilling and sexy. Though its venue is futuristic, "Proteus Rising" has a tone that is strangely familiar.
Research physicist Peter Dingus posits a time that transforms today's possibilities in genetics and computer modeling, and speculates on the impact of a future when human beings can "remake" themselves so completely that they bear little resemblance to the beings that evolution took a million years to forge. In "Proteus Rising," Dr. Dingus immerses us into a fully developed frontier world where social upheaval, issues of ethnic identity, a burgeoning separatist movement and a harsh environment conspire to force a split in the human race.
So what is Speculative Fiction? Speculative Fiction is a way of writing stories that explore the human condition in the context of a science world-view. The science world-view opens up the human condition to many exotic possibilities. At the center of the science world-view is a search for truth. The proof of this is simple, if science didn’t have truth as its objective, the gadgets wouldn’t work. These stories are speculations, what-if scenarios that have at their center possibilities that “could-be” real. Thus, Speculative Fiction.
Worlds in Transition is a set of three stories that explore the limits of reality and perception.
In Parallax, two people discover strange messages in the detector of a scientific experiment deep under the mountains of Montana.
In The End of the World, two survivors on an isolated Mars base investigate a strange dead region on the shores of an ancient Martian sea after an apocalyptic war on Earth.
In One Way Ticket, an Earth anthropologist travels an impossible distance through space and time to study the first extraterrestrial species ever found. But what he finds is that the strangest species of all is the human species.
