Rebecca's Interview with Nowick Gray

Author of Future.Con

Rebecca :
This summer seems to have been a struggle for me to get organized & stay inside at my keyboard.

With prodding & help from my scifi fan Webmaster, I've come up with these questions, hoping to catch you before you head "over there" for your walking tour of Portugal & Spain. Tell me about Future.Con?

Nowick :
Thanks for writing with your interview questions. I've been busy getting organized to leave, plus hiking in the great summer weather and also rehearsing and performing with a local African drum-dance troupe.

It's a novel of alternative reality in many forms. The main character has to come to terms with his life choices, and he's challenged to do this by a computer virus-program which appears to be the villain, but which might be considered as helpful in the personal growth process, in retrospect. Alternate realities in this novel take many forms, including "virtual reality"; eventually, we can realize along with the character that everything is subject to choice. You can create your own reality, or at least improve it with your own choices. But they have to be your own.

Rebecca :
Where did the idea of virtual reality come from? Is this a world that's real to you or a dream like Joe Norton's?

Nowick :
The technical version of virtual reality is out there right now. Ten years ago when I started writing the novel, it was more theoretical, but I think it's panned out pretty much as expected...so far. I wanted to take the idea a little deeper, to connect with the fact that in a sense, all reality for humans is virtual, is subjective. I've also been fascinated with computers as a form of virtual brain. We can work with it more objectively, we can organize clearly and play with it, yet it's kind of like another compartment of our brains, linked by fingers-to-keys, eyes-to-monitor, concepts and words to folders and files. So I wanted to explore this whole connection, too. The dream that begins the novel, the voice speaking to Joe from "the program," began for me as a real dream, and gave me the inspiration or fictional seed which grew into the novel.

Rebecca :
Are you an avid science fiction fan & if so who are some of your favorite authors?

Nowick :
Oddly enough, I don't read a lot of science fiction these days, with some notable exceptions: everything I can get my hands on by Jack Vance, Michael Crichton and also James P. Hogan. I read more of it as a kid, mostly Edgar Rice Burroughs; and my favorite movies and TV shows were along the lines of "The Twilight Zone" and "The Outer Limits." In the eighties I read everything by Stephen King. Other favorites along these lines tend toward the literary, such as Borges, Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum, Peter Straub and John Fowles' The Magus.

Rebecca :
How did those authors influence the direction of Future.Con?

Nowick :
What I like best about all the authors I mentioned is the way they use offbeat or speculative concepts in combination with artful language and style, presented in the form of a strong plot, with in-depth characterization and universal themes. That's asking for a lot, which is why I'm pretty selective in my reading tastes. I don't like to read merely literary efforts without strong story telling, and I don't like to read mere action and concept without compelling characters, voice and style. When it comes to my own writing, I try to meet that high standard of putting it all together.

Rebecca :
How did your interest in computers start?

 
Nowick :
When I arrived at Dartmouth College in 1968, I found they were pioneers of the time-sharing system, and the BASIC programming language. So I could walk right in and play simulations of baseball games, something I'd already become addicted to in the form of a board game that used dice and computer-generated statistics cards. I also did a bit of elementary programming in my math courses. But then I got away from computers altogether until my first laptop in 1990. (I started with a laptop so I could use it with my 12-volt micro-hydro home power system in the backwoods of B.C.). From that point on, there was no turning back: because as a writer I hated the drudgery of cutting and pasting, typing and retyping manuscripts, and word processing and printing eliminated all that.

Rebecca :
Would you give me a short syllabus on your perspectives of the future in computing - writing & living with the things?

Nowick :
Now that Y2K is a nostalgia theme, there's still the environmental issue to be worked out...not only specific to computers, of course, but the planetary disasters in the making. The other side of that shadow is the limitless potential ahead. It's hard to predict what can be useful to the person in everyday life, but in my own situation I look forward to greater mobility and connectivity. I'm about to go walking in Spain with a plan to rendezvous with a friend now in France, and it would be great to fine-tune our meeting point with e-mail on the hoof, so to speak, even if we're in the remote countryside or mountains. On the further edge of computing, I'm most fascinated with nanotechnology, featuring robots and computers the size of molecules. Hard to imagine, from here, but I guess we're going there if we can.

Rebecca :
Why did you use an eBook format & where do you think this medium is going for future authors?

Nowick :
I'm tired of playing the paper shuffle and the endless waiting game that you have to play with traditional print publishing. It takes months and years for simple correspondence and manuscript turnaround, not to mention actual publication. With Future.Con in particular, I wanted to get this kind of story out there when I think the climate is ripe for it. eBook technology and publicity has dramatically improved in the past six months, so I think my own readiness to publish and the readiness of this new medium has come together. At the same time, eBook technology can only improve, to the point where it'll be cheaper and more readable. We're at the beginning of this revolution. And despite the opportunity to add in bells and whistles, it's going to be the virtual fireworks of a great story that'll continue to be the real product for readers to enjoy.

Rebecca :
How did you end up in British Columbia on a homestead that's off the Grid & so far away from the subject matter of Future.Con?

Nowick :
That's a long story, but the answer to your question is maybe more simple than you might expect. Though Future.Con is about a computer programmer in Philadelphia, virtual reality and a computer virus, it's also about a person taking a deeper look at his lifestyle and quality of life, from the inside out. In this way it's a universal story; and it's about what started my own journey away from the urban world. I'm from Baltimore, near Philadelphia, and I only got to B.C. through a process of examination of my life choices and options. That's a process that has a starting point for every person, and Future.Con ends where Joe Norton's real personal journey begins. Aside from this deeper theme, there's the universality of computers and the Internet, that puts us all on the same footing as nodes of the cyber-grid--even if we generate our own electricity from a mountain stream.

It's really just an extension of my stubborn self-reliance. Having learned from scratch how to build my own house and homestead in the woods, along with everything else that goes with it (from making tofu and ice cream to home birthing and home schooling), learning how to set up hardware and software and websites was a logical next step. I don't consider myself an expert, by any means; but necessity plus curiosity has led me to explore most aspects of the "world of cyberspace." Future.Con didn't really demand an expert level of technical know-how, as it's more a "psychological thriller" than a work of hard science-fiction.

Rebecca :
Tell my readers about your website efforts: what they are, how they impact your life & where you see them growing.

Nowick :
Cougar WebWorks began in 1996 as a kind of glorified personal website, covering all my areas of life interest. I set it up according to a principle of organization I found useful in my own life, the chakra system. So there were seven areas lined up accordingly, from nature, health and wilderness, to work and lifestyle, politics, networking, music, writing, and spirituality. This scheme has been modified this year, with each area narrowed down to a stronger focus, and featuring more material by other writers.

This year's overhaul was also intended to get me more focussed on profitable goods and services to offer. So along with all the free material I've posted, I sell several books, provide links to Amazon books and other products and services that I recommend and which fit with the theme of alternatives. This last new direction (editing) has been a good one for me and one I'd like to pursue more fully in the future. Having said all that, however, my heart is closest to the vast writing project that awaits continuation at HyperLife-- my real life story, in hypertext.

Rebecca :
Do you have any other writing projects in the works? A sequel to Future.Con, perhaps?

Nowick :
Ouch--"sequel" has a ring of obligation to it. (Thanks for the implicit appreciation, though :)). Actually this year I've been busy getting two other novels and a collection of stories ready for publication, as well as Future.Con. They are all currently being considered by other electronic and print publishers, and I'll be glad to get them out into the world to make room in my life for the next projects in the pipeline. These include first of all HyperLife, which I already mentioned, and a book of stories by four men of my acquaintance who are all great natural storytellers. For these I'm using transcripts of my taped interviews with them, edited for readability. I'd also like to work on a lingering project on the back burner, a book of essays along the lines of Emerson's "Nature"--an updated version, naturally.

Rebecca :
What are your future projects?

Nowick :
The Hunter's Daughter is the story of an RCMP corporal looking for a killer; of a young Inuit woman seeking escape from an oppressive father; and of the modern shaman who links their destinies. This book draws from my three years as a teacher in Inuit villages in arctic Quebec.

The last book is an ambitious continuation of Thomas Mann's last, unfinished novel, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. It ventures from its literary ancestry into a New World of political - and at times supernatural -intrigue.

Strange Love: Romance Not for Sale includes 18 short stories dealing with love's wrong turns, and a longer piece of metafiction, "Rendezvous," set in the Canadian wilderness.

Rebecca :
I really found this interesting, Nowick, & thank you for your time & effort. Hopefully we'll see more of your work in the near future.

Nowick :
Thanks for the opportunity, Rebecca!

(Published October 08, 2000)

Rebecca Brown