Monday, August 29, 2011

Are Intelligent People Cold and Unemotional? And Is Science Fatally Dangerous Or Even Wicked?

Barbara : My husband Damien and I didn't think so. One of the reasons we wrote Post Mortal Syndrome was to show that greater intelligence can lead to a higher level of empathy and respect for other people.

Damien
:
We've tried to do an impossible thing: create a thriller meant for us ordinary folks without special training in biology or neuroscience--with the extra value that we depict scientific developments, and deep changes in the way people view life and the defeat of death, in a positive light.

Barbara: All the techno-thrillers we could think of involve scientific experiments that go horrible wrong. We thought it would be refreshing to see a thriller where experiments go wonderfully right.


Damien: But there are plenty of scares, love tangles, and danger along the way, and more than one heartbreaking ethical dilemma. That's how it is, here in the 21st century. Nothing's ever simple. Especially using science to find a cure for aging and death. Oh, and with an intelligence boost thrown in for free. But only if our characters have enough common sense and, well, character, to follow through on what they learn along the way.

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So here's the plug:


Our near-future science fiction novel Post Mortal Syndrome is now available in trade paperback print.

An earlier version was serialized on the website of the Australian popular science magazine COSMOS, and got some 100,000 hits. We've now tuned that version up a bit, and we hope you'll click on the link above and take a closer look. And come back here for some more chatting about life, death, and the meaning of
caring and intelligence at a time when wonderful possibilities stand ready to be opened, yet too many people seem determined to shut those doors in your face.