Welcome to the future. Genetic
engineering has been perfected, manmade dragons fly the skies and
devils are bred as weapons of war. A powerful stem-cell drug called
Eternavix promises eternal youth, but ONLY if you are loyal to
The Universal Imperium—the empire of empires that dominates the
planet.
Eternavix can only be produced
by using the DNA of women with rare, genetic traits. Mara is a
Eurasian with vivid blue eyes, making her a perfect candidate for DNA
extraction. She travels to war-torn Chicago with the hopes of
beginning a new life, completely unaware that her body is worth a
fortune to the greed mongers willing to sell her to The Imperium.
Her only chance at freedom from a secret, desert prison known as “The
Nursery” is an unorthodox alliance with a bio-designed devil who
unexpectedly falls in love with her. Is her life worth making a deal
with the devil?
INTERVIEW with the AUTHOR
Q:
Your photo makes you look a little bit demonic. Are you?
Alex
Kaine: Well, my family has been known to call me the 'Prince of
Darkness' but that just refers to my
attitude
about the world. I have a cynical streak that surfaces on occasion.
No, I'm certainly not demonic.
I'm
not even evil. I mean, all of us have the potential for evil to one
degree or another. But I try not to be.
I'm
a good guy. I would never want to hurt anybody – unless of course
somebody really pisses me off.
Q:
You're smiling. But evil is a major theme in ETERNAVIX. What do you
think is the nature of evil? How
do
you define it?
Alex
Kaine: There was a time when I didn't believe in good and evil. There
were just behaviors and
consequences,
actions and outcomes. And I still tend to see things that way. But
over the years I've also
come
to see that there really is human evil.
Q:
Which is?
Alex
Kaine: Evil is, at its core, insensitivity to the pain of others in
the course of one's decisions and
actions.
Total evil is total insensitivity. We all understand this when evil
is overt. Some creep with a gun
shooting
school children. Political tyrants. But there are smaller evils, of
course. Manipulative mothers.
Oppressive
fathers. Or vice versa. Those who take no responsibility for the pain
and harm they inflict. The
exploitive
types, the con men, the Ponzi schemers, who often act the opposite of
what they really are.
Q:
How do you define 'good'?
Alex
Kaine: Good is harder to define, I think. It's not the polar opposite
of evil; it's not just sensitivity to
the
pain of others, and the more sensitive you are the better person you
are. That's not what good is. It's
more
like connectedness to others. Good is concern for the whole,
thoughtfulness and care that goes
beyond
one's self, and actions that support all of that. But it's not
martyrdom. It's not self-sacrifice or
selflessness,
because your pain, your wellbeing also matters.
Q:
There are a lot of evil people in ETERNAVIX.
Alex
Kaine: Yes, there are. People whose actions are evil, that's the
better way to put it. Harzak is evil, as is
his
girlfriend, Bev, though to a lesser extent. The bounty hunters
certainly are evil. The entire political and
social
construct of the Universal Imperium is evil, from the top on down.
Q:
And the devil in the story, Be-elzebub?
Alex
Kaine: Or 'Bee' as he comes to be called.
Q:
Bee? Like buzz, buzz?
Alex
Kaine: Like sting, sting.
Q:
Oh. In any case, you'd have to call him evil, wouldn't you?
Alex
Kaine: Bee is a manmade devil who has done very evil things in the
past. He inflicted extreme pain
and
death and felt little or no sympathy for those he harmed. He's been
part of an oppressive, exploitive
system
and he loathes it, but he has not made a stand. He's the classic Nazi
who is just following orders.
During
the Baby Wars, some of this was excusable, because indeed he was
obeying orders. Every soldier in
combat
has to be evil for a time in order to achieve what we hope is the
greater good. And Be-elzebub is an
excellent
soldier. Trouble is, the Imperium never released him from his duties,
and over many decades
Bee
has slowly developed the rudiments of a conscience.
Q:
Let's talk about Eternavix, the miracle stem-cell drug that arrests
the aging process and allows people
to
stay physically young for decades or even centuries. Do you think a
drug like Eternavix is possible?
Alex
Kaine: Yes, I do. Either a drug or some kind of treatment or therapy.
Google is already going down
that
path with research to significantly extend human life. Other
corporations probably will follow. You
can
see the enormous commercial possibilities, can't you? How much would
you pay for something that
keeps
you young and healthy for hundreds of years, or maybe forever? Will
billionaires be the only ones
who
can afford the price? Every widely adopted technology has social and
political consequences, and it's
not
hard to see a drug like Eternavix becoming a power base. Especially
if it's not handled ethically. And
frankly
I don't know how you would structure the ethics. I mean, who gets it?
Who doesn't? By the very
fact
that some get the drug and some don't, you're creating a social elite
right there.
Q:
Why not everyone? Why couldn't everyone take it?
Alex
Kaine: You would have to eliminate children. You can't have everyone
living forever and women
continuing
to have babies. That would not be 'sustainable,' to use an over-used
word. A powerful part of
human
nature is about having kids, about reproduction, and I don't see that
going away just because
people
start living very long lives. Anyway, I can't imagine a world without
kids. An all-adult world? That
would
be awful. So I can foresee an elite that arranges things so they have
it all - immortality and children
-
while the vast majority of humankind lives and dies in the
traditional manner.
Q:
In the novel, there's more going on than just extended or eternal
human life. There is also the genetic
engineering
of new species, some of them quite horrible.
Alex
Kaine: Right. The mastery of genetics, which I'm saying in the story
occurs three or four decades
from
the present, leads to the development of Eternavix, the stem-cell
drug. But every technology has
branches
and offshoots, and one of those for genetic engineering is the
ability to create humanoids. So, in
the
absence of ethics or in service to the needs of warfare, you might
have manmade dragons and devils,
super-warriors,
and so on. And many or all of these humanoids might be equivalent of
livestock to those
who
create them. Slaves for lack of a better word.
Q:
A lot of unpleasant possibilities. We haven't talked yet about Mara,
the main character in the story.
How
did you come up with her?
Alex
Kaine: When I began writing ETERNAVIX, the story started with what is
now Episode Two, with Beelzebub
narrating.
Mara originally was just an innocent teenager, likeable but not all
that bright. She was
kind
of feral, having grown up in what became a wilderness during the wars
that established the
Imperium.
After I finished that piece of the novel, I had a change of heart. I
got to thinking and decided I
needed
to tell more of Mara's story early on and that led to me making her
the main character – well, she
and
Bee are sort of co-lead characters. And for Mara to carry the story,
she had to be interesting and
different.
She still has a small trace of that feral quality, but she's smart,
she has guts, she's very brave,
and
she has a good sense of humor. Bad things befall her and at times
there is nothing she can do about it,
but
Mara is not a victim, she's a hero.
Q:
Last question: will there be a sequel to ETERNAVIX?
Alex
Kaine: I hope so and I hope readers demand a sequel. The world of
ETERNAVIX has many as-yet
unexplored
dimensions to it.
Alex
L. Kaine
Author
of Eternavix
Alex
Kaine is the pen name of a writer and author whose
books
in a different category have sold in the tens of millions
worldwide.
He is an eclectic reader and a lover of all writing
well
written no matter the genre. He has been an independent,
self-supporting,
paying-the-bills, full-time author for … well,
let's
just say for many years. ETERNAVIX is his first sci-fi
thriller.
Alex
has a unique perspective on the issue of “selective
wellness”
that affects the world as a whole. He enjoys
discussions
on genetic engineering as well as other high tech
sci-fi
realities in life today.
No comments:
Post a Comment