Hi there. Following their recent release on audio, my Ingo Finch series is now out in paperback. They look great. Very pleased that they're now available in this format. Big thanks to Canelo and Kate Hordern. Thanks too for all the nice reader reviews.
No Ordinary Killing (Kindle no1, Historical Thrillers, UK/Can) is out today on audio, narrated by Jonathan Keeble. Available Amazon via Audible, Apple, Kobo, Google, etc. It's a brand new experience for me (and not a little surreal). Great job!
Was sent a documentary by an old pal from LA that, ambitiously, wrestles with the mighty concept of “genius” – defined, by one of its academic talking heads, “as the ability to simulate the future.”
From Da Vinci to Hawking, Aristotle to Marie Curie, the big brains are all glass-jarred, dissected by an array of thinkers including such luminaries as Theoretical Physicist Dr Michio Kaku, Astrophysicist Dr Feryal Özel, author Philippa Gregory and New Age guru, ahem, “Ramtha the Enlightened One”. Special attention is paid to those female prodigies airbrushed out of history, like Mileva Maric, the physicist/mathematician eclipsed in the public imagination by her husband, Albert Einstein. Though these figures act as a mere gateway to a far more expansive meditation on consciousness, the process of thought, the impact of technology and, ultimately, the mind's capacity.
Made by Mexican director Paulina Amador, employing some stunning imagery, Evolution: The Genius Equation is always good to look at and its interviewees engaging. Though with such a sprawling canvas – taking in, along the way, astrophysics, neuroscience, quantum physics, artificial intelligence, the Renaissance, God, the Creation, the universe, black holes, time travel, numerology, alchemy, the human genome, the Mona Lisa, even the feminism of Joan of Arc – it’s little surprise that her film becomes a tad unfocused. In a section on Mary Magdalene and the Sacred Feminine it veers into Dan Brown territory.
It's strongest when it foregoes the spiritual and sticks to the scientific, especially on matters that are every-day relatable. And here there are some real nuggets. The human brain isn’t a machine, reminds Psychiatrist Dr Norman Doidge, but “neuroplastic”, constantly adapting and remoulding. Given our utter addiction to screens, Big Tech is now employing not just psychologists but neuroscientists to influence – re-programme – the way we behave, bringing with it all sorts of implications for humankind’s future… and, indeed (stepping through a wormhole here) humankind’s past.
We’ve already put so much of ourselves “out there”, we learn – our digital footprints eternal (photos, videos, purchases, habits, communications, preferences) – that AI reconstructions of ourselves won’t prove much of a stretch for the scientists of tomorrow. Indeed, there’s already a company in Silicon Valley assembling “family albums” for future generations, enabling great-great-grandkids to interact with AI versions of their as-yet-undead forebears.
It certainly makes you think.
Evolution: The Genius Equation is released on Amazon Video, Nov 27th.
This is the digital version, btw, available on Amazon/Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play and others. The paperbacks and audio of the series come out as a set in 2021. Canelo, the publishers, have been busy with publicity. I like this ad, which reminds me of a classic album cover – Ingo Finch: Born to Run!
Set in 1905, the new story takes Ingo to New York (and beyond) as a fully-fledged British agent while the Great Powers continue their posturing in the build-up to what will become the Great War. It's an espionage thriller full of twists and turns and with a very strong female character I'm immensely proud of. It's an interesting period of history for me, what we call La Belle Époque but which America dubs The Gilded Age. The last book focused a great deal on London as the pre-eminent "world city". But you can see here that the US is on an accelerated path to global prominence, with a vibrant Gotham set to rival London.
Anyway, I hope you like it. Personally I think it's the best one so far. As a rookie novelist, I'd figured out a bit more what I was doing this time! Do click on the above links for further info.
Here's my cover story from yesterday's Sunday Times Culture. I've had a fascination with Donald Crowhurst's utterly sad and tragic tale for years and was a big fan of Deep Water, the 2006 documentary, which I thoroughly recommend. It's a fantastic piece of work, even if you've little interest in nautical matters. It's a human story above all. Funny, I haven't done much for Culture in a while. On the strength of my 2006 book, Dead Reckoning, I seem to be the go-to person for matters maritime, an expert on which I am most definitely not! I even ended up presenting The Times' An Evening With Jonathan Dimbleby in 2016 to do with his book, The Battle of the Atlantic. I think I just about pulled it off. There's a little bit of nautical stuff – only a bit – in my novel No Ordinary Killing and some, too, in its follow-up, currently being written, so I guess it's seeped in somewhere!
