By David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca
Mark Dowson calls himself an aspiring author and entrepreneur. As a young man he wanted to be “a brand manager for Nike,” but that all changed when he attended Cranfield University.
“I went to an agricultural environmental university and it opened my eyes,” says Dowson. “I used to want to do something quite environmental and I was very interested in biomass and wind energy and solar.”
Eventually, Dowson became a quantity surveyor after doing another master’s degree where he looked at “applying a wind turbine array to a stadium roof.”
He actually believed his idea had legs, but then the “recession hit in 2009” hit, and “Instead of trying to materialize my idea to come to fruition in the real world, I thought why not try and write about it.”
Besides he says as a quantity surveyor “you are a storyteller of a construction project.”
So he set out to write fiction, not so much about actual climate solutions but based on a design philosophy for building a sustainable world.
ReCognition: Oxygen Debt, Part 1
In ReCognition: Oxygen Debt, the story is set in 2112 and the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. In the nuclear wasteland of this dystopian world, people begin wondering how things might have turned out if they had chosen a different path.
“Back in 2017, a wind scientist got assassinated” and the new world government, the United Nations Authority (UNA) wonders what might have happened if the inventor had lived.
“The protagonist’s guardian angel…the good company in the future is sending an enhanced humanoid, a cyborg back to the present in 2017 to prevent the assassination,” says Dowson.
The villains, an evil tech giant company in the future have also sent “Shape-shifting androids from the future back to the present too.”
I’m not going to give too much away – you have to work out whether they want to continue the assassination of the protagonist or whether they want to kidnap him and infiltrate his information.”
Dowson says he’s incorporated the use of an ancient relic called the Saito square that is connected to the ability to time travel, a mysterious concept “covered up by the church.”
He acknowledges elements may have been inspired by the DaVinci Code, but he also cites the Terminator, Blade Runner Michael Crichton as influences.
“I think if I had to sum it up, it’s definitely dystopian, definitely a mystery, a SciFi thriller and it’s got some elements of subtle romance in there, so it’s got something for everyone.”
By day Dowson is working on solar projects in the United Kingdom, but in his spare time he’s just finished the second book in is planned trilogy and has set his sights on finding a literary agent, a publisher and he sees his stories as a movie or television series.
So if you are looking for a little climate change dystopian escapism, check out Mark’s first book ReCognition – Oxygen Debt, part one and if that tickles your fancy the second book ReCognition – Co-anda 19 Vaccine, part 2.