Almost everything horrible in the world is justified in that fashion. To follow the idea of the greater good for the greater number.
It’s a meditation on what it means to be human, and what it doesn’t mean to be human.
What do you think this relationship between AI and humans says about the nature of being human? It’s a political book, and politics is largely made by people trying to do the right thing and failing horribly, so I wanted something of that. It’s about people who are in tight spots. Everything he does, and everything almost everyone does in the story, is for the greater good. I’m not sure where his personality came from. My beta readers started asking me questions, like “How do you get the nations of the world to cooperate?,” and the answer was Talis. Talis is like the talking cat with orbital weapons. How did he spring into being?Įverybody loves Talis! In my first book, Plain Kate has a talking cat. Talis combines the ruthlessness of an AI with the humor and casualness of a human. So this started as Aztec, but ended up in the ruins of Saskatchewan. It’s the scene where they’re sitting in the classroom and watching the plume of dust signifying that a Swan Rider was coming to execute one of them. That was in the back of my mind when I sat down and wrote the first scene in The Scorpion Rules. Someone who is both royal and divine, chosen and doomed. I lost that book, but the theme from it that really interested me was that of the sacrificial victim. I got about 30,000 words into that book, and I really did like it, but then my computer, external backup, and notebook were stolen out of my hand luggage while I was traveling. It started as an Aztec book, about the fall of their capitol in 1521. This actually started as something completely different. What was your inspiration for this story? PW caught up with Bow before she could vanish into the wilds of Mongolia, and overcame technical difficulties to ask her a few questions. When a newcomer joins Greta and her companions, it threatens to change everything. In The Scorpion Rules, Erin Bow envisions a world four centuries from now, in which civilization has fractured into many smaller territories, where peace is maintained by Talis, a ruthless AI with orbital weapons and a policy of “keep it personal.” Every ruler has to send a child to one of Talis’s Preceptures as a hostage, including 16-year-old Greta, Crown Princess of the Pan Polar Confederacy.
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