Bernard Beckett

08/06/2010

Sci-fi debut examines the meaning of life

By Laura Kelly

New Zealand author Bernard Beckett was already a successful author of teen fiction in his own country when the idea for the refreshingly original Genesis came to him. His previous work had been predominantly traditional coming of age stories, but inspired by new theories about the science of consciousness he went on to create a remarkably intelligent science fiction tale that gets at issues around artificial intelligence, the nature of humanity and whether there is any such thing as a soul.

“I thought it’d be great to get teenagers thinking about that stuff, so that’s where it started,” explains Beckett from his home in Wellington where he’s looking after his baby twin boys. “But I wasn’t trying to simplify it down for teenagers, because I think that smart teenagers are pretty smart.”

Genesis takes the form of a Socratic dialogue, following history student Anaximander as she is examined for entry into the exclusive academy, which accepts less than one per cent of applicants. Through her oral test, we learn that the 21^st century has seen cataclysmic battles and plague sweep across Earth. The islands of Aotearoa (what we’d call New Zealand) were saved by their leader Plato, who built a fence around the entire country to keep out the desperate refugees.

The Republic reaches crisis point when a young border guard named Adam Forde saves a young female refugee rather than shooting her as his orders dictate. He is sentenced to be confined with an advanced android with an orang-utan face, called Art. From there, the narrative examines whether there is any real difference between Adam’s humanity and Art’s mechanical approximation, building to a twist that’s worthy of the Twilight Zone.

The experiment in form and genre has paid off, securing publishing deals across the world and a record-breaking six-figure advance but Beckett says he stumbled into sci-fi by accident. Though his creation sits happily in the tradition of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and Richard Matheson, Beckett hadn’t read much by any of these authors.

“I didn’t really know a lot about science fiction,” he says. “I just blundered into this form by accident. But what appeals to me is that it’s a lovely way to extend thought experiments – to do those ‘what if?’ things.”

Having worked through the thought experiment, where does he now stand on whether an android could ever have a human-like consciousness? “I don’t think I know where I stand, which is why I think I’m fascinated by it,” he answers. “My instinct is that if we ever do get to that stage with machines it will be a long, long way away. I don’t think we’re anywhere near it; I think it’ll be hundreds of years. Although computers are advancing incredibly quickly I don’t think we’re anywhere near being able to say that we even know what a machine that operates like a mind would look like.

“But, instinctively, I don’t have a really strong feeling that there’s more to the human mind than just this remarkably complicated machine.”

Genesis by Bernard Beckett is out now in paperback (Quercus, £6.99)