Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Book Nook: Unfettered Journey

I had a chance to review Unfettered Journey, the story of an AI scientist who seeks to create robot consciousness and discovers the resilience of the human spirit. He travels to a small college to progress his quest, but instead finds love, a secret plot by unjust forces, and the answers to his fundamental questions - the nature of the conscious mind and free will.

It was chosen as November Book of the Month by, and I can see why. It is set in a futuristic world, but one that is both realistic and imaginative. It combines action/adventure with relationships/romance, has strong characters, touches on a social justice theme (which is very important in today's world), and manages to raise philosophical questions without being preachy.

I had a chance to interview the author to learn more.

Why did you write this novel?
After a career in Silicon Valley, I turned to passion projects. I went back to school for nearly a decade, studying physics and philosophy. My philosophy master’s thesis led me deep into the philosophy of mind, to try to understand human consciousness, and what our minds actually are. After nearly another decade of thinking about these questions, I’ve written both a rigorous philosophical book—Unfettered Journey Appendices—and then the more accessible novel, Unfettered Journey. It was the philosophy that started the project.

How do you come up with ideas that are unique for your writing?
The philosophical ideas behind the novel have been percolating in my head for thirty years, and the novel story and characters for over a decade. But the hard work of writing the novel took only three years. That process is a blend of free association thinking and planning. I like to plan, so I outlined the novel—only a skeleton at first, then with more detail as the story became clearer to me. Then I roughed out the scenes. Along the way, my characters began to wake me up at night, to whisper in my ear (“No, I won’t do that…”). That’s when the writing truly became a lot of fun. The interaction of characters and story, in a roughly planned structure, then allowed me to dive deep into my experiences, dredging up gems of ideas that fit the scenes perfectly. That experience is one joy of writing fiction.

Why should people read science fiction?
It’s been said that science fiction is at least as much a reflection of the time when it is written as the imagined future. For example, worries of WWII and Hitler informed Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. Speculative fiction therefore can do a great service to culture, to point to the issues that need addressed.

That is one reason for my interest in hard-science perspectives. Humankind has many challenges in this century. If we as a species are thoughtful, and work together, perhaps we can do a better-than-average job to deal with them. If we do not focus on the right problems, and we do not work together, then we shall surely fail.

Science fiction can change our future. Here are just a few of the issues that I shine a light on in Unfettered Journey: When machines can do nearly every job, what is the nature of work, and how do we spend our time? What kind of society might we have, and most importantly, how is the wealth produced by our machines divided? How do we manage concerns for individual privacy versus a government’s needs for access to personal information for law enforcement? How can a thoughtful, logical person committed to a scientific perspective can think about his place, and his purpose, in the universe? Or particularly, can we square a scientific perspective with any spiritual system?

I hope that Unfettered Journey will help us more realistically imagine the future, so that we can work productively to build the future that we wish for humankind.

How can people explore philosophical concepts through fiction?
We all have an unfettered journey. We have a limited time on this earth, and we should think deeply about how we spend it. Unfettered Journey has many layered themes. It is a love and adventure story. It traces struggle and resilience in an imperfect world. Its themes are the future that we are creating, right now; the continuing fight for social justice; and deep philosophical questions about consciousness and free will. I hope that my readers will be willing to think deeply about their own lives, and find something to take away from the novel to help them find their own special purpose.

Gary F. Bengier is a writer, philosopher, and technologist. After a career in Silicon Valley, Gary pursued
passion projects, studying astrophysics and philosophy. He's spent the last two decades thinking about how to live a balanced, meaningful life in a rapidly evolving technological world. This self-reflective journey infuses his novel with insights about our future and the challenges we will face in finding purpose. Before turning to writing speculative fiction, Gary worked in a variety of Silicon Valley tech companies. He was eBay's Chief Financial Officer, and led the company's initial and secondary public offerings. Gary has an MBA from Harvard Business School, and an MA in philosophy from San Francisco State University. Today, he and his family live in San Francisco.

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