Twenty-first century technology inspires new twist on old sci-fi plot.

 

If you’re a science fiction fan searching for a new twist on the time travel genre, Talking To Herself  is your next book to read. Setting aside the 1963 British police call box of Dr. Who , you’ll enjoy the way characters fall back into their past in a new 21^st century mode of transport. How? No spoilers here.

Or, if you prefer your fiction grounded in realism, Talking To Herself is that, too. What! How can time travel be part of a story based in realism?  Jack Finney did it in his novel Time and Again.

While living in the year 2049, Amara Vivian Graves somehow finds herself back in 1999. In order for her time journey to appear plausible, I looked to the future and thought about what ordinary life will be like thirty years from now. How will we get around in 2049? How will we live? Entertain? Look after one another?

Inspired by technology futurists, I stretched the capabilities of actual medical and robotic advancements to create a somewhat believable world where Amara, with the help of a first-rate medical plan and a couple of robotic friends, travels to another time dimension.

Today, advancements in medicine delivery systems and genetic therapies are treating cancer and other maladies more effectively. Think what another thirty years of development will bring. Thanks to the Human Genome Project, we’ll have an opportunity to outlive our genetic projections for longevity.

The robotics industry is also excelling exponentially. Two decades ago manufacturers and the U.S. military began designing robotic manpower to perform dangerous, strenuous, and repetitive tasks. These types of bots are now common throughout manufacturing industries. The first generation of robotic technology is well passed its design and development phases and has quickly moved onto application deployment stages. Think of the flawless executions of  SpaceX’s self-launching and self-returning booster shuttles, they’ve become as common as commuter trains from DC to New York. The quick acceptance of self-operating vehicles is another example of universal robotic use. Some of these vehicles are rolling around on the surface of Mars.

In this new century, waves of second and third generation robotic helpers are emerging. Google Boston Dynamics and Hanson Robotics. With the benefit of artificial intelligence (computer science building “smart” machines to perform tasks requiring human intelligence), it’s only a matter of time before we’re sharing our 55+ living quarters with a robot like Mia from the tv show Humans.

I hope you share my optimism about the future. With such optimism we can dream that time travel into our past might be possible in the near future. To find out one way it could happen, read Talking To Herself.

Melissa Powell Gay

2020

Talking To Herself, print and ebook format, will be available at

Amazon and other online bookstores by the end October 2020.