Born to Storms, A climate fiction novel for young adults

o build a sustainable society for Earth we needs stories for future generations featuring believable characters in plausible situations.

Comment 8

Inspiration

I am a technical designer and worked for NASA for 30 years designing scientific instruments for studying Earth. I favor a design approach that jumps back and forth from the bottom (what technology can now do) and the top (the big picture). Often I have found it very hard to define the highest level of the top of a design. So it is with our climate crisis.

One way to do this is to study the life’s work of a beloved professor, in this case Joseph Campbell, and apply that work to the new problem. Here we are applying “Hero’s Journey” to providing our young people with a foundation for action.

Since we needed some punch, we followed Arthur C. Clark’s advice and added an Artificial Intelligence as a main character, JanetA.

What it does

The values of a civilization are transmitted through the generations by stories. We are working on stories for a sustainable Earth.

## How I built it

This effort is build out of words in Microsoft Word.

Challenges I ran into

Most of the available Climate Fiction is pure dystopia and senseless violence. It worse than useless for our young people.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

This is my second proper book.

What I learned

What you know how to do is not always what is needed. Learn something new.

What's next for Born to Storms

We have a draft of 53,000 words. We are currently in a month long proof period.

This is a rare learning element in the very top level of design and in communication on technology.

Built With

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Updates

posted an update —

One big idea in this hack is the relationship between AIs and humans. Here is how i handle it in our story:

One key concept that must be included is the relationships between humans and Artificial Intelligences (AIs). Currently the most common relationship is Master/Slave. This arrangement is easy to program and works acceptably when the AI is a worker in a human society.

Master/Slave however has one major failure mode: who is master and who is slave can flip. This flip has been the major plot point in numerous movies (“Terminator” etc.). Present society appears to have a deep seeded fear of this happening.

Our novel, Born to Storms, explores a second possibility. Here one human and an AI form a symbiotic pair. This relationship is harder to achieve and requires much more training taht is continued over years.

Please note that the protagonists are an Afro-American teenager and an AI without a specific body but presented as an image in any monitor. The AI, JanetA, commonly appears as a sister to the young person, but often wears feathers.

Enjoy, Tom Riley

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posted an update —

If this novel ever becomes a TV series, it will need a one sentence description called:

Logline: Set in the 2020s, a young woman, supported by an Artificial Intelligence, driven from her home by storms and rising seas embarks on a life affirming struggle to find and support so many people in action on our climate crisis.

All stories for young adults these days must have some magic, but classical magic is completely unrealistic and only supports unworkable solutions in any real world. Therefore, the magic in this story comes from:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. *** Arthur C. Clarke Enjoy, Tom Riley The Big Moon Dig

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