The High Frontier
I recently spoke at the Conference on World Affairs and it was surprisingly fun to participate in an event that, unusually, has no thematic focus, but instead is predicated on bringing together interesting people. I met astrophysicists, jazz musicians, war correspondents, investors, biotechnologists, policymakers, and Cirque du Soleil acrobats—not many conferences source speakers from such a variety of fields, and the resulting conversations often connected dots in unexpected ways.
It was a powerful reminder that so many intersecting worlds exist on our little blue dot of a planet, and how few activities are higher leverage than making your world more legible to others—they can't share your passions or solve your problems without understanding what they are and why they matter.
So, tell your story! Explain yourself! Show fellow travelers why your quest is worth pursuing. (Yes, this is one of my ulterior motives for writing this newsletter.)
And now, a book I love that you might too:
The High Frontier by Gerard K. O’Neill presents a deeply-researched thought-experiment mapping out how humans could build an economy in space. O'Neill was a physicist at Princeton and spent years vetting his ideas with experts at NASA, MIT, and the big aerospace firms. But instead of reading like a technical proposal, The High Frontier paints an accessible, high-context picture of what's possible, and there are sections that are quite whimsical (e.g. how fun it would be to take your kids to microgravity swimming pools). The book has influenced many artists and writers and has become part of the canon for engineers working on space projects at NASA, SpaceX, and the new crop of space startups. I think The High Frontier is an example of an as-yet-unnamed genre: speculative nonfiction that crafts specific, detailed visions of things worth building at the leading edge of new frontiers, inspiring people to work on related problems and giving them something to rally around.
Things worth sharing:
When, like now, I’m in the early stages of working on a new novel, one of the most important things I’m trying to figure out is how the protagonist sees the world, what they notice that others don’t.
In the same vein, Deb Chachra beautifully describes imagining your way into other peoples lives in How Infrastructure Works: “If you go on a walk in the woods, what you see depends on the season and the particular path you take through it. More than anything, though, what you see in the woods depends on the eyes that you are seeing it through. A birder, a hunter, an entomologist, a soil ecologist, a real estate developer, and an artist will all see different things.”
My favorite fictional futures are genuinely complex and avoid of the monotony of u/dystopias. Malka Older’s Infomocracy, Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning, and Robin Sloan’s forthcoming Moonbound are good examples. This theme was front-of-mind for me while I was writing Victory Condition.
Fun fact: There’s a plot twist in Neon Fever Dream that reframes the entire story, and that I had no idea was going to happen until I wrote the pivotal scene.
If you want to achieve something ambitious, this is good advice.
Thomas Fink, director of the London Institute: “Physics is a process of getting stuck. Blackboards are the best tool for getting unstuck. You do most of your calculations on paper. Then, when you reach a dead end, you go to the blackboard and share the problem with a colleague. But here's the funny thing. You often solve the problem yourself in the process of writing it out.”
These are the kind of weird, important feedback loops that I became obsessed with while writing Veil.
When people ask me what software I use to write novels, I tell them “you surf the wave, not the board”—but Seth Godin’s example is better.
ICYMI, I went on the Amplifying Cognition podcast to talk about writing science fiction that riffs on reality, the surprising power of deciding to care more, and building habits that unlock creativity.
Great to see Brandon Sanderson leverage his platform to negotiate a better deal with Audible for independent authors.
A few years back, I teamed up with some friends to design a game where 40 players control factions maneuvering to clinch the U.S. presidential election—we ran sessions with the Long Now Foundation and Cards Against Humanity. Live role-playing games that riff on deeply researched scenarios are (1) super fun and (2) force players to grapple with the nuances and tradeoffs of complex problems that often remain unsolved because everyone blames each other instead of inventing new ways to work together. Danny Crichton, a subscriber to this humble newsletter, created just such a game and published a kit so you can run a session with your friends. I can’t wait to play.
The best books are compendiums of idiosyncratic curiosity. They contain nothing but what the author finds fascinating, that the reader may find such enthusiasm contagious.
One of my favorite hobbies is saying nice things about people behind their backs.
Thanks for reading. We all find our next favorite book because someone we trust recommends it. So when you fall in love with a story, tell your friends. Culture is a collective project in which we all have a stake and a voice.
Best, Eliot
Eliot Peper is the author of Foundry, Reap3r, Veil, Breach, Borderless, Bandwidth, Neon Fever Dream, Cumulus, Exit Strategy, Power Play, and Version 1.0. He also consults on special projects.
“The most important resource isn’t gold, oil, or rice. Semiconductors control the world, and Peper’s new thriller explores the implications.”
-Chris Yeh, coauthor of Blitzscaling, on Foundry