John R. Carlos wants you to think about what it means to be human.
In 2020, after forty-two years as a Royal Australian Air Force Wing Commander, he retired and turned his hand to writing. He has just published Cryonic Dreams: Awakening, the first novel in a science fiction trilogy set in 2169 that explores humanity’s attempts to preserve meaning and agency in the face of tyranny, advanced technology, artificial intelligence, space colonisation, and the all-too-terrestrial struggles for wealth, power, and resources.
With a story set over a hundred and forty years in the future, John needed to envision in great detail how its world would function. He also had to understand how the dystopia he imagined had come into being organically, as a result of what is happening around us now. To do that he adopted a systems approach, mapping out dystopian trends to chart their trajectories and outcomes, a task that led him to have serious concerns about where civilisation is headed.
In this episode, he shares his creative process, his concerns about current socio-political trends, and his wish for humanity as it slouches towards a technologically intrusive, possibly totalitarian future.
You can find Cryonic Dreams: Awakening wherever books are sold and visit his website to explore the lore of the world he is creating.
