(We sat down with Stephen Walker to discuss his soon to be published historical techno-thriller trilogy, Rubicon, and to get his thoughts on the book, his experiences as a first-time novelist, his influences and the challenges he faced undertaking such a complex project. Stephen has contributed blog articles and white papers on a wide range of subject to this blog in the past.)
So we have with us
today the new author of the soon to be released techno-thriller Rubicon,
Stephen Walker. Stephen, set the stage for us and give potential readers a
broad overview of what they can expect in Rubicon.
The finishing chapter
and scenes have not been finished, but the bulk of the writing is complete. The
word you used, techno-thriller, is probably a fair one, but it also encompasses
a lot more than your standard gee-whiz descriptions of gadgetry and technology.
The book is actually three books, a trilogy.
I’ve always been
fascinated by the pace of technological change and the good and bad that comes
with it. Most people have heard of the Nobel Prizes awarded in Sweden for
various positive academic achievements and research and also the Nobel Peace
Prize. Most people don’t realize that Alfred Nobel was a chemist and engineer
who ran one of the largest and most successful armaments manufacturing
companies in the world, Bofors. He was responsible for inventing the blasting
cap, dynamite and the substance that is the forerunner of what we today call
cordite.
He was keenly aware
that his inventions would be used to make war. Although he saw positive uses
for his explosive inventions such as blasting railroad tunnels, taking down
dangerous rock overhangs and stabilizing avalanche zones, he understood that
his work would mostly be used to make war. As a way to counter-balance these
things, he used his sizable estate to fund the Nobel Prizes.
The book leans on
this for part of its premise. Technology in and of itself is benign. It is
neither good nor bad. The uses that imperfect men and ambitious nations put the
technology to make the application either bad or good.
So would you then also say that Rubicon as a novel,
is a statement about the dangers of runaway technology?
STEPHEN
It is. We hear a
great deal these days about the singularity from a purely technological
perspective. Raymond Kurzweil wrote a brilliant book about ten years ago called
The Singularity is Near. Although he never claims to have come up with
the base idea that the pace of technological change is outstripping society’s
ability to comprehend it, he was the first to try and formulate what an
unrestrained future might look like.
I’ve used a term in
the book called the sW, the
Singularity of Warfare. Although the term is a creation of my imagination, the
evidence that it is indeed occurring is all around us. Military forces all
around the world are having difficulty getting design and testing for the
fighter planes and battle tanks of the next generation because technology is
changing so quickly that they aren’t certain that a project that gets
green-lighted in 2014 will still be a relevant weapon system by the times its
fielded in perhaps 2019.
Rubicon speaks directly to the very real possibility
that a very small country or even a very small company or group could become a
force to be reckoned with on the world stage because of the wild pace of
technological change. They could wield the power that in the past was reserved
only for industrialized nations; the ability to project power overseas and
carry out one nations will against another on that nations soil with relative
impunity. When you can bring that kind of power to bear, you’re a superpower.
THE ERUDITE AARDVARK
Without being a
spoiler, can you tell our readers a little more about Rubicon and what
they can expect in terms of its’ playout scenario?
Certainly. In a rare
moment of candor, the President of the United States and his advisory team
comes to the realization that America is too hamstrung politically to win the
so-called War on Terror. His belief is that no matter which political party
is in power in Washington, the party in
the minority will do anything, no matter
the cost, to regain power. That includes seeing the country cede territory that
was seized in battle, leave areas where US troops were previously engaged and
release those captured during fighting. Although many in his own party, and
many in the opposition party believe that America can’t collapse no matter how
badly the war is mis-managed, he sees a different picture. He sees that for
every fire he puts out, five to ten new ones take its place. He comes to
understand that he will be the man sitting in the Oval Office when America’s
reign as the sole world superpower comes crashing down.
This President is a
pragmatist. He knows that he has a House and Senate that is aligned against him
that will counter any move that he takes. He begins to meet secretly with
Senator Myron Canfield, a longtime opponent and powerful member of the Senate
Armed Forces Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee. Canfield is a
dinosaur from the days of the Cold War and has many friends in both the House
and the Senate. He’s owed many favors by the intelligence community and is in
the twilight of his career.
Although Canfield and
the President are polar opposites, they do agree on this point; America will
soon lose the War on Terror. Together, they jointly cobble together a very
small team of like-minded people from both parties. They make the decision that
the only way to win is to completely bypass the giant US intelligence machine
and outsource the dirtiest and most controversial aspects of the war to a group
that has no trace to the United States.
So this is a group
that operates in the shadows of The Shadow War?
(Laughing) I suppose that’s a good way to think of it. I
hadn’t thought of that.
THE ERUDITE AARDVARK
You call these men “francs-tireur”, correct? Basically
meaning that they are high-tech pirates?
Many countries have
employed francs-tireur over the years. In the broadest of terms, yes they are
pirates. The distinction with francs-tireur is that they have been sanctioned
to perform certain duties on behalf of a government. At times they were paid a
commission and at other times they were simply allowed to plunder whatever they
came across and keep it with the promise of no reprisals against them. If this
sounds a lot like Blackbeard and Black Bart stuff, that’s because that’s what
it usually was.
So although a country
may secretly hire francs-tireur to complete a mission, they don’t direct them
on how to accomplish that mission. It was this plausible deniability that made
dealing with these people so appealing.
The parts of the book you provided to us had a great deal of
historical content and accuracy. The story actually goes back into the 1940’s
and spends a good deal of time there. Why did you feel it was so important to
include that in order to tell the story?
STEPHEN
Like millions of
others, I’m a fan of espionage thrillers, techno-thrillers and Black Operations
stories. I know for myself, I always find myself asking questions, like, “how
did they manage to get those safe houses set up?” or “how did the bad guys come
into possession of this technology in the first place” or “how do they get the
money to operate and where do their weapons come from?” Some authors explain
it, but most just leave it to your imagination to get the answers to those
questions.
The story behind the
Tesla technology, the mysterious death of Tesla, the seizure and then
disappearance of his research and writings, that is all true. The fact that he
approached the War Department with an idea for a peace ray is real. The fact
that his friend was a registered agent for Nazi Germany is also real.
The truth is that
there were dozens of projects being undertaken in 1942-1944 that now sound
outlandish; pigeon-guided missiles, bombs that were steered by cats, small
packages of explosives affixed to millions of bats so that they would be
released over Tokyo and fly into dark corners of wood and paper homes before
exploding and catching the entire city on fire. Some regarded Tesla as a
crackpot but many others thought that he might have the solution to the end of
the war. In either case, he was watched by the FBI until his unexplained death
in his hotel room.
The United States
knew that they were working on the atomic bomb and at some point, saw that it
was going to be the answer for the super-weapon they were looking for. However,
they were afraid that the Germans, as well as the Soviets, were making
overtures to Nikola Tesla. He had made it very clear that he felt that every
country should be given his technology because it would mean that no country
could successfully wage war against another. It was the original Mutual Assured
Destruction. He’d offered it first to the US because he was a naturalized
American. The War Department didn’t want it, but they didn’t want anyone else
to have it either. Tesla was a close associate and friend of George S. Viereck.
He often gave Tesla money and befriended him, often hosting him at their home
in New York. Viereck was jailed on charges of being an agent of Germany. He was
released temporarily under odd circumstances and the re-incarcerated. Although
charged with a federal crime, he was held in the Washington, DC city jail.
Tesla’s family were
ethnic Serbs, but he was born in Croatia. The United States feared that Tesla’s
allegiances, ethnicity or love for the country of his birth could also move him
to provide his peace ray to the Soviet Union, who were funding and assisting
the Chetniks in fighting the Nazi’s at various points in the war.
So you’ve woven the fictional story piece into the fabric of
the historical account? The manuscript you provided to us does that with
several different story lines throughout the book, correct?
Yes. It’s a favorite technique of mine. I
always enjoy looking at actual events that transpired and then trying to weave
in what I think the back story might be. Call it the conspiracy theorist
within.
So, again, not to give away the entire story, but this
technology continues to be pursued throughout the Cold War and into the present
day?
STEPHEN
Yes. The Tesla
technology becomes something of a black market “White Whale”. I trace the
parties that were pursuing it from the end of World War Two up through the
present day. There are three proxy parties that are involved, just as there
were three parties involved in the war years. As we know, the United States
lost interest in particle beam weaponry. But a group picked up that torch. Tesla’s research was obtained through a
partial sampling of his stolen papers by the Nazi’s and that line is also traceable
to a group trying to obtain these weapons. A third group managed to obtain old
research done just after the war by the Soviets and replicate a measure of
success by trying to update the work.
The three lines can
all directly be traced back to Nikola Tesla’s original works and the failure of
the War Department at that time to see the use case for particle beam weapons.
The myopia was caused by the pressure to bring the war to a close and defeat
the Germans and Japanese. The focus was on super-weapons, what we now refer to
as weapons of mass destruction. The thinking then was that an invasion of the
Japanese home islands would cost one million American lives. The Allies knew
that Germany was close to perfecting more accurate V2 rockets, jet propulsion
aircraft, helicopters and even a nuclear bomb of their own. The story goes that
were it not for the actions of a handful of Norweigian resistance fighters, the
Nazi’s would have taken enough deuterium away from Norway to create an atomic
bomb before the Americans did.
As a result of these
things, no one saw the need to develop a weapon who’s power dissipated over
very short distances. Only in the decades around the 1980’s and 1990’s did
governments begin to see the benefit that pinpoint strikes from these
short-range weapons could have. With the development of UAV technology,
miniaturized versions of these weapons could be flown anywhere in the world and
used for covert assassinations, hostage rescues and support for special forces
operating in hostile areas.
The UAV and particle
beam technologies become chicken and egg complements to one another. As both
become smaller, quieter and more powerful, their desirability starts to come
alive again. But most nation-states have ignored them for so long that they’re
hopelessly behind these small but well funded groups that have been working
through trial and error with these technologies for decades.
And, as one might
expect, the technology must be used by one group to destroy the ability of the
other groups to employ it?
Yes, its not giving too much of the storyline away to say
that the powers that have developed or are trying to develop the Tesla
technology are pitted against one another. The risk here being not that World
War Three will break out as a result, but that a thousand small, black, covert
wars will break out if those who are seeking to employ this technology succeed
and that the world will implode into a tangled mess of plausibly deniable
assassinations and covert attacks.
This is your first full length novel. You’ve written other
short stories and smaller fare prior to this. Why take on a complex, 1300 page
monster like this on your first attempt?
I agree that it’s a huge challenge. But I think I’m up to
the task. In truth, it probably would’ve been easier to start with a less
complex story line and fewer characters to develop. But this is the story I’ve
wanted to write for some time. I didn’t see trying to break it down into three
separate books. It just doesn’t play or flow naturally to that direction. In a
general sense, the novel flows chronologically, but in order to allow the
reader to stay abreast of the background and to fully grasp why things happened
as they did or mist happen as they eventually will, I have to flashback
throughout the book.
Although it’s my
first novel, I’ve done writing for others and written short stories and essays,
so it’s not my first attempt at writing.
THE ERUDITE AARDVARK
You’ve said that you’re a huge fan of the novels of the late
great Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn as well as the Scott Harvath series that Brad
Thor authors. Two questions come up here from reading your manuscript; first,
who else besides those three do you feel has been an influence on the way you
write? And second, what accounts for the lack of coarse language in the book
and what seems to be eschewing graphic descriptions of violence?
STEPHEN
As for other
influences on what makes me want to write, those three are big. I have a
tremendous amount of respect for Brad Thor. He must do tons of research for his
books. His back story designs are just wonderful. Not only do I think he’s an
excellent writer technically, he’s great at weaving in a fictional story to a
historical account. And he does it without trying to come off as trying to
alter someone’s perspective or engage in revisionist history. It’s a fine balance
and I don’t think he gets enough credit for how good he is at it. As for other
writers, I’m like every other guy I guess. I like George Orwell, I like
adventure stories like Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe. I like Jack London,
James Michener and Sherwood Anderson. That’s quite a crew, huh?
To answer your
question about the coarse language and the violence, yes, it was done
intentionally. I’ve served in the military, I’ve been around these types of
operators and operations, and I’ve heard every four letter word you can imagine
used in some very creative and often humorous ways. But when you grow up and
get a few years on you and have kids, you begin to realize that vulgar language
and cursing in general really just contribute to the coarsening of society.
I’ve never alleged that any of the characters in my book are choir boys or even
that that they should be emulated and admired. In some cases, they engage in
some very shocking behavior that most people would consider barbaric. I’m not
saying that these tough black operators don’t curse or ever use foul language.
That’s up to the reader to decide. Just because you didn’t see him or her say
anything vulgar in the scene you looked in on doesn’t mean that it didn’t
happen in some other place when they’re out of view of the readers eye.
I didn’t want to use
the language in my writing because I don’t use that language around my friends
or family or think its an appropriate way to express myself. It’s probably not
realistic to expect that a group or men like this wouldn’t use profanity.
That’s fine. They just didn’t happen to say it when we were looking in on them.
I don’t think I need
to painfully describe graphic scenes of violence. If someone feels that they
are reading something purely for the long, drawn out descriptions of someone in
the throes of dying, you probably just need to not read my book and go rent Saw
VI or something to satisfy that need.
It’s the nature of
espionage, war and games of state that people lose their lives in the pursuit of
their nation’s or group’s interests. It wouldn’t re realistic to write about
otherwise. When you do that you get Adam West in Batman where people get beat
up and fall off of buildings but are back the following week to terrorize the
people of Gotham City.
People die in this
book. Many of them die violent deaths, as would be the case in real life. I
feel like I tell the story enough to give you a feel for what’s happened
without being over the top about it. I have no desire to morbid or grotesque.
My aim is to deliver to the reader the essence of what happens when a team of
door kickers takes down a warehouse with criminals inside. That doesn’t, in my
humble opinion, require descriptions of bullets ripping through tissue and body
parts flying everywhere.
You can show someone
a pig and then point them to a slaughterhouse and then show them a sausage
patty and they get the idea. They understand what went on in that
slaughterhouse without having to be walked into it and forced to turn the handle
of the sausage grinder themselves. I just don’t see that it’s necessary to do
as a literary device. Others may disagree.
Thank you for your time today. We appreciate you talking
with us about your observations and about the book.
You’re more than welcome. I should be thanking you.
Hopefully people will read the interview and make a point to look for the book.
If they like Clancy, Thor and Flynn novels and enjoy a little conspiracy theory
and history lesson on the side, hopefully they’ll like this book and buy it and
recommend it to their friends.
