Hominin

I wish I could say I sat down to write a galaxy-spanning sci-fi novel.

But in fact, it started with a short story I began over twenty years ago. It describes Pete Cassidy, who would become my main protagonist, essentially a loser, in a rust bucket car, with a flat tyre in a torrential downpour. It didn’t get any further, and sat there, in a folder, doing nothing for twenty years. 

What became the opening chapter, where the first human sets up home in a cave, was really part of a thought experiment regarding the availability of fresh water, and private ownership of what should be the most basic human right.

I kept writing about this man as more people arrived and the cave community grew. It just started writing itself. I went to bed at night to write a few chapters, and much like reading a book, I did not know what was going to happen next!

I then realised joining this story, to that of our hapless hero Pete Cassidy, could be a novel. 

I explored the wider question of how humanity develops and interacts with nature and with one another.

In the latter half of the book, after writing about a society developing over thousands of years, I explored the role of Artificial Intelligence and whether it will be of benefit or hindrance to humankind.