Peter McChesney is the author of the new novel Quinto's Challenge.
Q: What inspired you to write
Quinto’s Challenge?
A: A combination of curiosity
and unexpected life experience.
On the curiosity side, I’ve always been fascinated by questions like: What
exactly is consciousness, and could it ever be artificially created? Are fears
of AI ending the world overblown, or entirely valid? What do advances in
genetics mean for our future?
Is a Theory of Everything
possible, and if so, what powers might it unlock? Will our political
institutions evolve toward greater unity or collapse into fragmentation? Is
death truly the end of our conscious selves, or could the basic afterlife ideas
of religion actually be made possible through science?
That last question ties into
unexpected life experience, and is perhaps the most powerful driver of Quinto’s Challenge, which explores the scientific pursuit of
resurrection.
In my teens growing up in
Australia, I converted to Mormonism and felt fortunate to be part of a deeply
positive, close-knit community. Though I never expected to move on from Church
participation and belief, life eventually led me there.
While some who experience a
major shift in worldview and leave a religion like Mormonism carry bitterness,
I never did. It can all depend on the particular experiences we’ve
had. While conversations about why I stepped away weren’t
always easy with practicing members, I continue to hold the Church and its
members in high regard.
That said, moving from
believing in an actual afterlife, where resurrection through Christ is real,
where we’d be reunited with family and
friends in heavenly kingdoms, leaves something of an existential hole, at least
for a while.
But one idea stayed with me:
in Mormonism, there’s no real divide
between miracles and science. Everything can be explained scientifically, even
if so much of it is currently beyond our grasp. That perspective stayed with
me, and became the seed from which the core idea of the book was born.
Q: How did you create the
future United States in which the novel takes place?
A: My educational background
in political science, especially U.S. politics and history, informed how I
created the future United States depicted in the novel. I focused on
extrapolating three major threads in a way that, to me, feels grounded and
plausible.
The first is technological.
To quote from a political speech in the book, set in the 2060s: “We’ve reached 100% energy sustainability and built a
net-zero emissions economy. Atmospheric cleansing technologies helped us avert
the climate crisis. Economically viable fusion power has been achieved and is
now in early implementation. Once-extinct animals again walk the Earth … and we’ve developed advanced means of communication with
animals in general.
“We edit the genomes of our
unborn to eliminate disease before it begins. We are the generation that began
curing cancer. We’ve developed
techniques to revive the brain-dead and extend human life beyond any age
previously experienced. And this medical revolution continues to
accelerate—curing diseases that, just decades ago, were fatal.” (Quinto’s
Challenge, Chapter 2, page 25)
That sets the stage for life
in the 2060s, but most of the book takes place in the 2090s, where life has
advanced even further.
Quantum computing has long
since gone mainstream. Therapeutic cloning, where lost body parts are regrown
from one’s own DNA, is the norm. The
equivalent of today’s smartphones are now
augmented-reality contact lenses that wirelessly pair with the user’s mind, making tablets, laptops, and desktops redundant.
And Artificial General
Intelligence has a successor: Manufactured Sentience, the dawn of truly
conscious, thinking, and feeling androids.
This is life in the United
States, and around the world. But it isn’t all
sunshine and digitally augmented rainbows. The rapidly advancing technological
landscape has caused significant societal disruption, with many arguing that
the digital modern world is fundamentally at odds with human nature and that
its side effects are showing up in various social ills.
This leads into the second
extrapolated thread: the political, both domestic and geopolitical. For better
or worse, and at the risk of oversimplifying, the U.S. has almost always been a
two-party system.
Even during Washington’s two terms, before formal political parties formed,
there were essentially two ideological camps: those who supported Washington’s administration, and those who opposed it.
This quickly evolved into the
Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans respectively, known as the First
Party System. Later came the Democrats versus the Whigs, then variations of the
Republicans versus the Democrats, and finally the present-day Sixth or Seventh
Party System, depending on who you speak to.
The point is that, despite
radically different times, America has consistently operated with two dominant
parties despite the existence of other political parties and factions.
In my novel, the two-party
system continues, but it’s the
Democratic-Republicans (named after the original party and formed as a merger
of today’s Democrats and Republicans) versus
the American Freedom Party. Again, the nation is polarized, but this time one
of the main issues dividing voters is whether or not to introduce Manufactured
Sentience into society.
Geopolitically, the novel
imagines a world where China has become the sole global superpower. While some
debate today whether China will truly surpass the U.S. in economic or military
power, others argue that it will. That trajectory is extrapolated in the novel
to show China dominating the latter 21st century.
Still, the United States
remains a great power, one of three global giants, along with China and the
United States of Europe (another informed extrapolation). But America’s hegemony was lost in the mid-21st century to an
ascendant China led by a dynamic new figure.
The third thread is economic.
In the future United States of the novel, a new social class has emerged: the “supported class.” This group receives a form of
universal basic income, the first time a class of people has had all basic
needs met, and more, even if they choose not to work.
As automation continues to
displace human jobs and advanced AI systems can rapidly construct housing
without human help (drastically increasing housing supply), the formation of a
supported class becomes not only feasible but inevitable.
A senator who introduced the
legislation that created this class ends up becoming president during the novel’s main narrative. The Democratic-Republicans support the
existence of the supported class, while the American Freedom Party argues that
its excesses rob people of dignity and kill incentive.
While this may sound like a
lot, I went to great lengths to weave these elements into the story naturally,
in ways that serve the narrative.
Q: Did you know how the novel
would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the
way?
A: The broad strokes were
always there, but the ending definitely evolved as the writing progressed and
certain ideas crystallized and found their proper hierarchy of importance.
Perhaps the biggest change was that the original ending doesn’t
appear in this novel at all.
I eventually realized that my
early drafts were simply too large for a single book by a debut author.
Fortunately, there was a natural and satisfying point midway through the
original manuscript to end the first book. The rest now forms the draft for book
two.
One element that was added
late in the writing process was the epilogue, designed to introduce a bit more
tension after the resolution of book one and to generate interest in the next
installment.
Q: What do you hope readers
take away from the story?
A: I hope readers come away
with a mix of wonder, reflection, and awareness, though what they take from the
story may vary depending on age and perspective.
A few core themes I hope will
resonate include:
The power of collective
scientific pursuit. When humanity unites behind science, done properly and free
from political interference, remarkable breakthroughs are possible. In the
world of Quinto’s Challenge, that
includes nothing less than the conquest of death itself.
A spark of hope. For those
who don’t believe in traditional religious
afterlife doctrines, the story offers a scientific pathway to consider the
possibility that death might not be the end.
Greater appreciation for
neurodiversity. Many of the revolutionary insights and inventions throughout
history have come from people who were wired to see the world differently. I
hope readers come away with a deeper respect for those whose minds work in unique
ways.
The dual nature of power. Any
new discovery, no matter how noble its origins, can be used for harm as well as
good. This demands that our most powerful tools be safeguarded by the wise, and
especially the restrained.
A more discerning view of
politics. Just because a politician echoes our beliefs or appeals to our
instincts doesn’t mean they deserve
our trust. I hope readers reflect on the difference between someone who seeks
power for their own ends and someone who can be trusted with it for the public
good.
Q: This is the first in a
series--can you tell us what’s next?
A: This first entry in the
Dawn of Immortality series introduces questions that future books will explore
in greater depth, especially the implications of a world where science can
bring back the dead.
If resurrection becomes
possible, then who decides who gets to come back? What form of consent would be
needed to resurrect someone? Our current laws and economics are built on the
assumption that life is finite, and then you’re gone.
What happens to that structure when people can return? What rights should the
resurrected possess?
And then there’s
the more emotional side of things. Many often imagine a blissful afterlife
where we reunite with loved ones in harmony. But if our resurrected selves
still carry the same human nature, would those reunions remain idealized? Or
would familiar dynamics of conflict, jealousy, even the saying “familiarity
breeds contempt,” gradually re-emerge and complicate what was once seen as a
perfect ending?
In addition, the surveillance
technology that is a component of resurrection will play a larger role. Its
intelligence implications could reshape geopolitics and personal freedoms
alike, as the scope of events broadens beyond the resurrection theme alone.
I’ve
outlined the full plot of the series, and several future entries are already in
the works, at least in note form. Each one builds on the philosophical and
political questions introduced in Quinto’s
Challenge, while continuing the personal journeys of key characters.
Q: Anything else we should
know?
A: I poured a lot of heart
and thought into this novel, and I hope it gives readers something meaningful
to reflect on, about science, belief, memory, and what it means to be human.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
