Guardian of Night (47 page)

Technology is the knife edge of culture. When we are hard-pressed as a species, it progresses more quickly. Nothing presses us so hard as war.

So, do I think it unlikely that we will see such advances as depicted in the book in a relative blink of the galactic eye?

No way. It’ll be even weirder. I think I’ve erred on the conservative side as far as the extent of change to come is concerned. Whether I’ve guessed the right direction is another matter entirely, however. Therein lies the danger and fun of writing science fiction.

Anyway, I’ve never bought the “humanity disappears into its own navel” idea that we are destined (or
doomed
) for a virtual existence in a virtual world. On the contrary, virtual reality as we currently experience it is
real
reality that augments our current senses, experiences, and thinking processes. Will a futuristic virtual reality alter us? Absolutely. Will it make us somehow less than human? Hardly likely.

The chroma and salt in the book are my idea for such a virtual reality. Life is
not
an app. We are always going to remain in this beautiful, dangerous material universe. But, like the weather guy on the evening news, our virtual overlays will give us current readings and, more importantly, the
extended forecast.

Why not take the analogy literally and extend our senses with the special effects of the television weather forcaster or the filmmaker? If you could make a portion of observed reality as it falls on your corneas (say, a less used bandwidth of light) into something like the green screen the weatherman is physically standing in front of in his studio, you might then be able to filter in (using those same excluded wavelengths) helpful new material before those images landed on your retina. Now apply the same principle to your other senses. . . .
 

That’s the idea behind the chroma. Not particularly mind-shattering as a concept. The fun part was positing it in mid-development. Like the original television with antennas you sometimes had to bend into heiroglyphics in order to get good reception, it seemed like it would be fun to extrapolate an idea of true virtual reality, but VR in a clunky, earlier stage of development where all the kinks haven’t been worked out.

And those are some of the ideas that animated me while writing
Guardian of Night
. I hope you liked the book.

—Tony Daniel

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Lucas Johnson, Lauren Dixon, Sean Sutherlin, Olivia White, Matthew Bynum, Abigail Manuel, David Afsharirad, John Gonzales, Justin Boyd and V.J. Boyd make up Junto, my writing group (we’re named after Ben Franklin’s group and you say it with a
j
and not an
h
sound). They put hours into reading the book in draft and gave me notes, notes, notes. My best friend Michael Taylor, scriptwriter of many a
Star Trek
and
Battlestar Galactica
episode, has pitched ideas back and forth with me for years and was a great help. Finally, my wife Rika read the book aloud and gave me suggestions—and my kids, Cokie and Hans, kept getting hungry again with each sunrise and drove dad onward to THE END.