Fantastic Metropolis

Tony Daniel is the meta-talented author of three science fiction novels. His most recent, Metaplanetary, is published by HarperCollins. He’s also written numerous short stories, including “Life on the Moon,” a 1996 Hugo finalist. Daniel’s fiction is noteworthy for its combination of fierce intelligence, high literary quality, and a cool-idea quotient that’s in the Sterling/Stephenson class. Daniel also writes and directs drama—most recently he worked as the senior story editor at SCIFI.COM’s Seeing Ear Theatre. His radio plays can be heard on the NPR radio show “The Next Big Thing.” Originally from the southern U.S., Daniel now lives in Brooklyn.

Paul Witcover: I understand that, like many New Yorkers, you watched the collapse of the Twin Towers from your rooftop. Now that some months have passed, how do you think you’re assimilating this experience as a writer? Have you noticed any effect on your writing, either in terms of your ability to sit down and work or your choice of subject matter?

Tony Daniel: I did indeed watch the whole thing with binoculars from my rooftop (including the falling bodies). It had a galvanizing effect on me. One thing it did was to remind me that, for better or worse, I believe in the idea of America. I’m convinced that democracy, as rag-tag a scheme as it is, is the only political system that will ever keep humans from destroying each other. I found the various excuses for the act, given here and abroad, to be ludicrous nonsense. It made me want to subvert and convert the children of the perpetrators by insidiously telling the truth when I write.

Paul Witcover: Your new novel, Metaplanetary, is nothing if not ambitious. The action is set in a dazzlingly complex future where, among other things, artificial intelligence exists in embodied and bodiless forms, and people can shed their bodies entirely, choose new ones (not necessarily human or, for that matter, organic), or diffuse their consciousness among numerous cloned bodies connected in a kind of continual gestalt despite the vast distances often separating them. Some individuals are even products of the intermixing of human (and animal) genes with computer coding! In describing this aspect of your book to friends, I’ve been surprised by the aversion it’s evoked. Some have even expressed sympathy with the aims of your character Amés, a dictator bent on “defending” the purity of the human species (somewhat hypocritically, since he himself is a LAP, or Large Array of Personalities). Do such reactions disturb or surprise you?

Tony Daniel: Of course I’m not surprised. Many people are terrified of anything that disturbs the status quo. I don’t blame them. It is terrifying. Unfortunately, there’s absolutely nothing any of us can do about it. We never could. Culture is what makes us human. Consciousness is our adaptation—and technology is the extension of consciousness into the non-conscious world. That’s what culture is. Have you noticed that we are all naked when we take off our clothes? We’d all be living at the equator if we had to give up that technology. And what about cars? Seems to me that’s pretty much the perfect example of a human-machine hybrid. Every time you take your kid to music lessons—you become a cyborg! See what I mean? This is the way the future “trans-humans” will view their being and their lives. Amés, my bad guy, is doomed not because he’s evil, but because he’s blind to reality. He’s a rationalist, not an empiricist.

Paul Witcover: Assuming we don’t destroy ourselves first, do you believe a trans- or metahuman future is the logical end-point of current research in such areas as genetics and nanotech?

Tony Daniel: I think it’s inevitable. Unless, that is, we create some sort of eternal cultural stasis for ourselves and plunge into it, closing the door behind us. Hard to imagine how we might do this, since the universe around us seems bent upon our change and adaptation. Maybe jump into a black hole. I’ll bet that wouldn’t work, either.

Paul Witcover: Well, some religious and cultural systems do seek to create an eternal cultural stasis. I mean, it seems to me that’s one difference, and a pretty major one, between “us” and “them” in our current conflict.

Tony Daniel: But it won’t last. I don’t think reactionary Islam wants stasis—it wants a return to the 13th century, then onward from there. Of course, none of the mullahs I’ve seen want to give up their eyeglasses and wristwatches.