On January 21 Terra Nova Books hosted a Zoom book launch event for The Embudo Virus, which was recorded and can now be viewed on Youtube. During the event I talked about how the book developed, read its opening pages, and answered questions about it. If you didn’t attend, or would like to access the video, you can click below to watch it.
About The Embudo Virus
To begin with, the virus in the book is not the sort of virus we have all been forced to deal with this past year; it is a biologically engineered contraceptive virus. As the back cover says, “For computer scientist Rob Clarke, the days are becoming increasingly uneasy at the Embudo Population Institute as its recently hired director pushes forward on a new contraceptive virus designed to limit human reproduction.” Our book distributor, SCB, calls the story “a scientific thriller of dark magic and deceit.” It is not, however, entirely a science-oriented story. Half of the chapters are told from the viewpoint of Rob’s wife Lena, whose experiences and perspectives are quite different from his.
The book is labeled as speculative fiction because of its scientific theme, and because it doesn’t stay within the bounds of ordinary reality. However, it also explores the psychologies of fidelity and fertility, as well as their opposites, and how little control scientists have over the powers created by their discoveries. It is set in New Mexico, mostly in and around Albuquerque. The opening pages are posted on Terra Nova’s website, at https://www.terranovabooks.com/the-embudo-virus.html.
The Embudo Population Institute
“Through the institute’s glass doors, you enter a small vestibule with solid walls to each side. A second set of doors, which are locked, separates you from a receptionist at a circular desk, and she buzzes you into the lobby.
Four leather chairs surround a dark wood table on which brochures are fanned in display.
You pick one up. The text under a picture of the institute’s five-story building says:
The Embudo Population Institute stands in Embudo Canyon, among the foothills of the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The name “Embudo” – “funnel” in Spanish – reflects not only the institute’s location but also its mission: to address the intractable problem of uncontrolled human population growth, and use state-of-the-art science to form strategies for reducing it to a sustainable level.”
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So, why would there be a research institute devoted to the study of human population?
In modern societies child mortality has decreased greatly and life expectancy has doubled. In 1803, human population first reached 1 billion. In 1927, 124 years later, it had doubled to 2
billion, and by 1975 it had doubled again, to 4 billion. Since then, every 12 years or so, we have been adding an additional billion people. In 2024 there will be 8 billion humans alive. The growth rate has declined since its peak in the early 1960’s, but because of the increase in our absolute numbers we continue to add about 82 million to our population each year. Even if birth rates decline as predicted, there will be 10 billion of us shortly after the middle of this century, and 11 billion by its end.
Public discussion often focuses on reducing human impact through technology, with shifting energy generation from fossil fuels to renewable resources receiving much of the attention. Discussion of our ever-growing population is less common, and when it does occur it rarely includes a plan to manage it. Yet all of our current environmental crises, from greenhouse gases and climate change, to destruction of rain forests and other habitats, to plastics in the oceans – the list goes on and on – are caused not just by the things we humans are doing, but also by the sheer number of us doing them.
What is a contraceptive virus?
“For computer scientist Rob Clarke, the days are becoming increasingly uneasy at the Embudo Population Institute as its recently hired director pushes forward on a new contraceptive virus.”
Contraceptive viruses are a human creation made possible by the engineering techniques of modern biology, and were developed with the goal of controlling so-called pest species. Scientists add a modified gene to an existing virus so that it possesses an altered form of a protein that is also present in the egg coating or sperm of a targeted mammal. When the virus infects a member of that species its body mounts an immune response to fight it. At the same time, however, it also activates that same response against its own eggs or sperm and prevents fertilization.
The idea of creating a contraceptive virus to control human population is, to say the least, controversial. In a way it is similar to another controversial idea, that of blasting aerosols into our upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight back into space in an attempt to slow global warming. In both cases we have created huge problems through our uncontrolled use of powers given to us by science. Rather than change the ways we are accustomed to using those powers, however, we now hope that science can radically change complex systems and free us from the consequences of our behaviors. What, one might ask, could possibly go wrong?
The Embudo Trail
If you travel beyond the Embudo Population Institute on Indian School Road, up into Embudo Canyon, the road will soon dead end at a paved parking lot. This is the trail head for the Embudo Trail. Start walking, and you will pass a large circular water tank. Beyond it the trail climbs a hill, and the landscape opens up before you. From here you can hike or run for miles if you wish. Soon you will see a less traveled footpath that branches off into a smaller side canyon, but if you choose to explore it, be careful. Strange things happen up in there.