The 12 months is 10151. For the final ten thousand years, Nick Hindman—a microbiologist and member of the celebrated analysis workforce the Centauri Challenge—slept in a state of cryogenic suspension as a quantum-powered system initially designed for interstellar journey propelled him ahead via the millennia, a check topic for an emergency challenge to safe the survival of the human species by colonizing not the celebs, however a deep future Earth. His protocol? 1) Survive. 2) Discover if there are every other people left alive. 3) Hope towards hope for the arrival of a second check topic, a feminine.

That includes a believable mechanism for one-way time journey, a voyage throughout the post-apocalyptic seas, and lovers separated by ten thousand years, The Afterlife Challenge is a meditation on the way forward for humanity and the pure world we have now unbalanced, the true which means of deep time, and the potential for hope within the darkness.

Darkish fiction is nice for you.

One of many issues fiction does higher than every other artwork type is to permit us to vividly expertise the world via a consciousness not our personal, imagining different lives and different futures—generally very darkish ones—from the relative security of our favourite studying nook.

Darkish fiction isn’t for everybody, however should you prefer it—should you’re drawn to the writing of Stephen King, for instance, or Shirley Jackson or Margaret Atwood or our personal Chuck Wendig—then it’s doable that you simply’re the type of reader for whom the horrific provides a specific type of studying pleasure.

As a result of let’s face it: there’s energy in darkness. It’s an important supply of narrative drive for one factor—what retains the pages turning—and it’s additionally a wholesome response to private stress and the continued shit-show of present occasions.

Placing ourselves within the place of fictional characters as they confront tense and tough challenges, then processing these experiences and the feelings they evoke into knowledge or not less than working theories about life, is a cathartic, wholesome, uniquely human follow. “We have to play out our fears throughout the secure confines of the imaginary,” wrote Ian McEwan, “as a type of hopeful exorcism.”

Life on this planet goes to be okay in the long term. However humanity? Nicely . . .

if there’s one piece of knowledge I’ve taken away from researching and writing The Afterlife Challenge, it’s that we’re not going through the top of the wonderful, ever-evolving panoply of life on Earth. Removed from it. Fairly, we’re—or ought to be—going through the top of the phantasm that the human species shouldn’t be half of nature. That we haven’t from our very emergence as a species been embedded within the ebb and stream, the stew and ferment, of this advanced and exquisite 4.5 billion year-old planet. The widespread adoption of this mind-set can be a well timed and essential paradigm shift. As a result of it’s nonetheless not too late to save lots of ourselves.

One-way time journey into the deep future isn’t all that far-fetched.

A part of the inspiration for The Afterlife Challenge was a dialog I had with an eminent astrophysicist in Tierra del Fuego (it’s an extended story) who was sort sufficient to provide me his opinion on the plausibility of one-way time journey into the deep future. Utilizing quantum physics and a sequence of advanced mathematical equations scribbled on napkins, he was capable of theorize a mechanism based mostly on current or simply foreseeable expertise to ship a check topic 10,000 years into the long run.

There are good causes we should always need to discover this feature—for instance to facilitate the type of interstellar journey that may us to colonize the closest viable exoplanet, or, as within the case of the workforce of scientists in The Afterlife Challenge, to colonize a deep future Earth after the present iteration of humanity has performed its worst.

Time’s a river, not an arrow

Time doesn’t really exist in the best way we understand it. It’s not an arrow, it’s a river. That is mathematically confirmed.

The water within the river of time does stream downstream, however should you have been to hint the river again upstream a number of miles you’d discover the identical water flowing between the identical banks—so in a sure sense all of the moments which have ever handed are nonetheless unfolding.

Due to the best way it feels for us to dwell in our getting older our bodies, it’s virtually unattainable for us to to just accept this reality intuitively, however relaxation assured: it’s one of many elementary precepts of physics.

Overlook in regards to the market. You actually do have to put in writing what’s in your coronary heart.

I do know you’ve heard this earlier than, however you really want to hear. I do know novelists who haven’t listened, and it by no means ends nicely.

I imply it’s okay to consider the market earlier than you begin, and also you’ll want to consider it will definitely if you wish to pitch and promote it, however don’t focus available on the market once you’re writing!

I wrote a bizarre, darkish novel. I didn’t got down to make it that approach, it simply occurred. It turned out to be a kind of books that felt prefer it was being dictated from on excessive, although, and when a narrative seems like that—when it begins to inform itself like this one did, you simply trip the wave and hope for the most effective. As a well known Mexican novelist and filmmaker not too long ago jogged my memory, you’re writing in your personal specific “species.” You simply must belief that there are different members of that species on the market, and that they may discover your e book.

Be taught in regards to the market, after all; research it and perceive your genres. However should you attempt to write purely for the market, the muse will flip her again.

Tim Weed is the writer of three books of fiction. His work has gained or been shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer E book Award, the Author’s Digest Annual Fiction Awards, the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, the Fish Worldwide Quick Story Award, the New Rivers Many Voices Challenge, and lots of others. Co-founder of the Cuba Writers Program, Tim is on the core college of the Newport MFA at Salve Regina College. His new novel, The Afterlife Challenge, was a finalist for the Prism Prize in Local weather Literature and Uncharted journal’s Novel Excerpt Award.

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