Mike Maden began the critically acclaimed Troy Pearce series with Drone. He took over the Jack Ryan Jr. series in 2017, writing four novels, and relinquished the reigns after Firing Point in 2020. Maden is now writing for the Clive Cussler Oregon Files series, for which he’s written four novels, the latest being Clive Cussler Quantum Tempest, which is available as of today, November 18th.
I found Quantum Tempest to be a unique take on an emergent AI threat. Maden didn’t rehash the standard AI threat we’ve seen countless times before. He really made me stop and think about what the next step in AI evolution might be and how much more dramatic this could be, and crucially how much closer this might actually be than most people realise. Pair that with a crime boss, with almost unlimited money, and the stakes are scary high.
You can read my review Quantum Tempest: An Intelligent, High-Tech Leap for the Oregon Files, and my deep dive article Project Q is Real: Why the Tech in ‘Quantum Tempest’ is No Longer Science Fiction.
I was curious to learn more and put a few questions to Maden about Quantum Tempest and the tech behind it. What followed was incredibly insightful:
Q: Most thrillers use “AI” as a silicon-based, digital-only threat. You chose Organoid Intelligence (OI)—a biological, ‘wetware’ computer. What was it about this specific, living branch of computing that first sparked the idea for Quantum Tempest?
Maden: AI technology seemingly advances exponentially each year but there is still no universally agreed upon definitions of what “intelligence” actually is, let alone consciousness, nor the origins of either. In terms of observation, we have no recorded instance of intelligence in non-biological entities. Why is that?
One explanation is that, to date, no manufactured part can replicate the enormous computing power of a complex of tissues, neurons, folds and cells we call the human brain. It makes perfect sense that developing a “biological” computer might be the fastest and perhaps only path forward to develop a computer sufficiently capable of both operating but even accelerating the development of general artificial intelligence.
On the other hand, OI raises fascinating metaphysical questions. Billions of people, including some scientists and most theologians, believe that human intelligence, consciousness, etc., transcend biological experience. We will continue to think and act and imagine after we shuffle off the mortal coil. Does that mean intelligence is “spiritual” rather than physical? Are our brains animated by something more than electrical impulses? If so, does that mean OI will necessarily fail, or will it give rise to something we have no conception of?
There are so many other questions that arise out of this one technology. Is a disembodied human brain still human? Whose brains cells will we choose to grow to create these entities? And so forth. While Quantum Tempest doesn’t leap into these topics, they are at least implied and the thoughtful reader will naturally consider them.
Finally, I think an organoid-machine hybrid is just plain creepy as all get out and that always appeals to me as a writer. When I first came across the technology, it reminded me of the old Star Trek episode, “The Gamesters of Triskelion.” Hardcore TOS fans know exactly what I’m talking about.
Q: You pair this futuristic OI threat with a very traditional villain: the crime boss Amador Fierro. How did you see these two threats working together? Is the true danger that the “old-world” muscle and greed of a man like Fierro now has a pathway to “new-world” god-like power?
Maden: Mixing old and new is always interesting to me; alloyed steel makes a better fighting sword than pure iron. This “old and new” mix is also a symbol of where we are now and where we’re going. AI tech is changing everything, so why shouldn’t it change crime as well? All of the advantages that accrue to the acquisition of AI for governments for good also apply to criminal enterprises. And since drug cartels have raked in tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars, they could afford to purchase that kind of tech if they had the vision for it. I wanted to create a character in Fierro that was as smart as the law enforcement people chasing after him and with his background laundering his father’s drug money in Silicon Valley as a venture capitalist, he acquired both the vision and easy access to the talent he needed.
Q: You made the crucial choice to keep ‘Project Q’ offline for the entire book, making it a “ticking time bomb” rather than an active, online antagonist. How does that change your approach to the action? Is it more challenging to build Cussler-level suspense around preventing a threat, rather than fighting a “live” one?
Maden: That’s a great question. Sustaining interests and suspense for 100,000 words is always a challenge especially in genre fiction and particularly in the Cussler-verse where readers are not only extremely smart and attentive but also deeply familiar with the world and characters. Once you name the bad guy, then everybody knows the good guy is going after the bad guy and now it’s just a matter of waiting for the inevitable clash which is a reasonable expectation of the genre. The when and how and where of that inevitable conflict sparks the readers’ curiosity. But so does hiding information from them and that’s one of the ways I’m inviting the reader into the story. The reader knows there is a Project Q and they’re intensely interested in finding out what it is (if I’ve done my job properly). But they also know that Project Q exists even though Juan Cabrillo doesn’t. That kind of dramatic irony gives the reader a leg up on their favorite hero and sparks another level of curiosity: When will Juan find out about it? That kind of legerdemain is really hard to pull off but it’s a lot of fun when it works.
Q: With tech this complex, you have to decide what not to explain. As a writer, how do you find the line between giving the reader enough technical detail to make the threat feel real, versus letting it remain “awe-inspiring” (or terrifying) and focusing on what it can do?
Maden: That’s another really smart question. It’s a tough balance. Every writer knows that “exposition” kills—I’m writing a thriller novel, not an encyclopedia entry. But without enough information, the reader doesn’t know what they’re looking at or why they should be genuinely terrified. The way I approach it is to provide minimal amounts of technical information and different levels of that information. First, I need to prove this thing really does exist (because truth is always more terrifying than fiction) and so I lay out the basic specifications. Second, I describe how it could be deployed—what it can actually do. Third, it’s important to describe the sometimes gory but always horrific aftereffects of that deployment. I leave out as much technical detail as I possibly can because less is always more and also because I want the reader’s own vivid imagination to take that technology to the places that thrill and terrify them. Also, because I’m writing “near-future” fiction, I allow the technology to be more easily deployed, more effective and sometimes even more terrifying than it might actually be at the present moment. And though I try to draw on credible sources, my technical stuff will never be published in a peer-reviewed industry journal but hopefully the verisimilitude keeps my readers thinking about my story long after finishing the novel.
Q: What was a specific piece of your own research—an article, a scientific paper, or a documentary—that you found so disturbing it had to be represented in the novel’s tech?
Maden: Where do I start? I think “so disturbing” is probably my most important selection criterion. In truth, no piece of technology is ever dangerous—it’s the people who wield it that make it so. At least, that’s what I told myself until recently.
We really need to be paying attention to the advent of super intelligence, a subset (or is it a superset?) of artificial intelligence. My earlier comments notwithstanding, the advent of a machine (organoid or otherwise) that is exponentially more “intelligent” (or at least capable) than we are poses nightmarish risks. A book was just recently published with a title that sums up the worst-case scenario: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares.
I used to have a cat named Hambone who was, to be generous, plus-sized in his girth. His favorite place to camp out was in my lap right underneath my keyboard when I was doing research on the internet. That cat had no idea about the subject I would be researching at the time let alone an awareness of the internet or the purpose of the clacking keyboard or even the concept of research itself. There was an entire universe of information that Hambone couldn’t even begin to embrace. And if super intelligence ever truly arises, we’ll all be Hambones. And if that intelligence is merely ambivalent in regard to human welfare (let alone malevolent) we’ll have no ability to protect ourselves. It will be able to create things like incurable viruses with unpredictable vectors, or more likely, weapons and instrumentalities and tactics and strategies we can’t even begin to imagine let alone counter. Our current machines already beat us in checkers, chess, Go, poker and now even in aerial combat. A super intelligent machine will have pre-determined every possible attack we could ever muster and will prepare insurmountable defenses against anything we might dream up. Don’t think about what a really smart computer might do. Imagine a god-like intelligence as far beyond us as we are above a paramecium in a Petrie dish.
Okay, I’m getting depressed now. Maybe it will all work out just fine.
Q: Since Organoid Intelligence is biological, it’s fundamentally different from a machine. It’s “grown,” it’s “alive.” Did you find this “living” aspect made it a philosophically scarier antagonist to write than a simple, unfeeling algorithm?
Maden: Absolutely. Humans typically conceive of themselves as thinking machines and our brains are the heart of those machines. By creating organoid intelligence we are creating another version of ourselves; a modern variation of Frankenstein’s monster. Machines made of meat are always more frightening than mere machines. Machines are animated by electricity but an OI is a living thing. Or is it? Once again, basic definitions elude us. There is no scientific consensus on the definition of biological life, nor its origins. We certainly haven’t been able to create it in a lab. (I’ll refer readers to Dr. James Tour for a deeper discussion on this topic.) How does life emerge from non-life? It’s that kind of philosophical underpinning I love to infuse in my stories even if I don’t discuss them explicitly.
Q: Now that you’ve introduced this level of sci-fact into the Cussler-verse, what excites you most about the next generation of threats you can throw at Juan Cabrillo? And will we imminently see the Oregon’s Cray supercomputer replaced with an organoid supercomputer?
Maden: Regarding the first question, the danger I always face when I ramp up anything in my current novel is that I raise expectations for the next one. That applies to action sequences especially but also in terms of the new technologies I introduce.
The Oregon’s tech must evolve over time because that’s the nature of technology. But if her tech becomes too advanced then she overwhelms all of her opponents and then there isn’t any conflict. That’s no bueno. One of the golden rules of writing is this: Devoted genre readers always want more of the same—only different. New tech helps me do that.
However, Cussler readers don’t want to cross over into pure sci-fi, or worse, introduce an utterly unbelievable technology that throws the reader out of the story. On the other hand, new technologies are real and they are very exciting and they are changing combat as we know it. We are absolutely in the midst of what the experts call a “revolution in military affairs.” Actually, I would argue we’re in the midst of several. It’s a very fine line to walk between new technology and too much technology and I struggle with it each and every book.
The second question is somewhat related. If the Oregon were to acquire a true organoid computer with AI intelligence, what villain would ever be able to stand up against her? Also, why would I ever need my two techno-nerds Murph and Stoney to ever do another minute’s worth of research or cough up some obscure factoid about nano-particles or quote a line from Lost in Space? I forget who made the observation but there’s a reason why AI doesn’t appear in The Dune series or other classic sci-fi. The smart writers understood that perfectly realized AI shoves human intellect and capabilities right out the door. I suppose there’s a lesson in that, isn’t there?
Clive Cussler Quantum Tempest is available as of today, November 18th.