Origins: Hardwired
So. Thirty-odd years on. From a sleepless, nightmare-shaded night in Texas, through a frenzied burst of creativity, to the creation of a book that still seems relevant in the present, I found myself treading a wholly unexpected path.
Hardwired exists because back in 1983 I was freeloading with my friends Howard Waldrop and Leigh Kennedy, who were living in Austin. We had attended Aggiecon, a science fiction convention in College Station, and I was staying with Howard and Leigh for a few nights before driving home.
It was a small apartment. Because another writer (probably Edward Bryant) was sleeping in the living area, I crashed in a sleeping bag in the dining space. We were on the second floor, and the dining area was directly above the apartments' laundry room, where the dryers ran hot day and night. Vast sweltering clouds of smothering heat rose through the floor, and I spent an uncomfortable night, sweltering in the terrible heat.
At some point I fell asleep, sort of. During this deeply uncomfortable interval I dreamed a horrific scene that was the kernel for Hardwired, the scene in which Sarah employs her Weasel. I woke immediately, and thought about the scene as I lay sweating and unable to sleep. (The scene still dwells in my mind's eye, and I can call it up at will.) I thought about the brief nightmare for the rest of the night, and then on the twelve- or fourteen-hour drive home, I kept trying to think of a world in which a scene that horrific could occur. By the end of the journey, I had Hardwired plotted.
I had just signed a contract for another book, unfortunately, and it was the better part of a year before I could seriously set to work on the new novel. But I could not contain Hardwired completely, and I broke off the other novel to write the ghastly scene inspired by my dream, “Sarah Runs the Weasel,” which in the latter part of the year I sold to Omni, then SF's top short fiction market, edited by Ellen Datlow. Due to the complex publishing situation at Omni, the story wasn't published for over two years, and even then— because advertising had sold at the last minute— it was serialized in two issues, becoming the world's only serialized novelette.
I was reminded of Bruce Sterling's remark that selling to Omni was like having your story buried in the nicest coffin available at the undertaker.
Still, eight or nine month after I conceived it, I was finally free and clear to make a run at the novel.
Due to complications at the publisher, the book was delayed by another year or so, but eventually Hardwired was released to the public. Reaction was evenly split between those who loved the book and those who absolutely loathed it.
Science fiction isn’t about predicting the future, it’s about showing the reader a range of possibilities. Yet I have to say that a lot of Hardwired seems to have found its way from its pages into the real world.
The things the reader was supposed to find shocking, back when I wrote the book in 1983/84, are now so commonplace as to be part of the background hum. Unending multiplatform assaults encouraging people to heedless consumerism? Check. Drugs widely advertised, including TV? Check. Governments in thrall to multinational corporations? Check. Balkanization of the former Soviet bloc? Check. Worldwide climate change? Check. Rising ocean levels? Check. Widening gap between rich and poor? Check. Entire populations slavishly devoted to celebrity and fashion? Check. Vast unregulated manipulation of securities market by unscrupulous insiders? Check. State-controlled military being replaced by mercenary forces? Check. Pharmaceutical companies making vast fortunes off human misery? Check.
And as I write this in 2020, I find another element of the book has worked its way into the present. Unstoppable pandemic? Check.
People sometimes ask me if I'll write something like Hardwired ever again. I tell them I can't, because too much of that future came true. Too much of it is the world we're living in now.
Hardwired was my best-selling novel then, and it's still my best-selling science fiction novel decades later. It's the novel with which I'm most identified, and the title may well be carved on my tombstone.
Not that I'd mind, particularly. I wrote the hell out of this book, and now I hope that you sit down and read the hell out of it.
Come share the nightmare that came to me all those years ago. If there’s one thing this book has taught me, it’s that not all nightmares are bad for you.