NEAR-future, science-fiction thrillers are what Hollywood does best, but the science can often be flaky. I have never got angry about that: the key word is “fiction”, after all. My enjoyment of the latest Marvel movies isn’t spoiled when physics laws get broken.
My preference, however, is for sci-fi to paint a picture of what really could be. So I set my first book, Sunfall, in 2041, far enough from today that tech based on current developments will have been realised, but not so far that my predictions lose reliability. Over the past seven years, 200 of the most brilliant scientific minds in their field, which has imbued me with a broad understanding of where the world is heading.
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“Sunfall is meant to be a page-turner: a fast-paced, race-against-time techno-thriller”
The book’s premise is that Earth’s magnetic field is dying, leaving us vulnerable to the sun’s radiation. It isn’t an original idea, but it is something that could happen. We know, for instance, that the magnetic field has been weakening for decades. It is also long overdue a flip: when magnetic north and south poles switch. And it is possible, though unlikely, that Earth’s magnetic field will die one day – as Mars’s did billions of years ago.
The 2041 tech is what 91av readers might expect: quantum computing, AI, minds controlling cities, perovskite-crystal technology for solar power, and so on.
As for the science of dark matter, it is possible that it is made up of as-yet-undiscovered elementary particles called neutralinos. And while I overstress the importance of dark matter self-interacting in the book, the physics on neutralino decay and the role of the bending magnets in sending dark matter beams to Earth’s core is possible.
But in the end, Sunfall is meant to be a page-turner: a fast-paced, race-against-time techno-thriller. I have enjoyed building a “could be” world and found it tremendously satisfying that the science is correct. I hope people find it a great story too.
