This is the backstory behind Taming the Perilous Skies, posted to r/scifi just after the 25th year remembrance of 9/11.

I was on a flight that landed in Philadelphia on 9/11, in that window between when the two towers were hit. I had grabbed a Discover Magazine during my layover at O’Hare, and a 120-word article by Tim Folger captivated my attention. It would ultimately change my life.

Folger described the variation of the double-slit experiment in which photons are shot at the two slits one-at-a-time. Just as if the photons had been streamed from a laser all at once, a pattern of light and dark bands materializes, indicative of classic wave interference. But how could that be if the photons were shot one-at-a-time? The prevailing explanation from quantum mechanics is called superposition. As Folger described so well, superposition holds that all particles exist in all possible places at once, and the pattern of interference comes from the particles interfering with themselves. I was baffled, and immediately skeptical. I was in good company. Einstein didn’t buy it either, although he was never able to pose an alternative theory that would unify his general relativity with the bizarro world of quantum mechanics.

The idea that germinated from reading that article would ultimately become my theory of persistence. Anthropomorphizing a bit, might those particles see themselves as timeless threads stretching from their origin to their termination, and might all particles weaving together into a timeless fabric explain that interference pattern? Put more simply, might those particles be interfering with particles from other times?

It took some time – a few months as I recall – for the other shoe to drop. If all particles that have ever or will ever exist are woven into a timeless fabric, might that fabric wrap more densely around the pathways of masses, such as planets and their moons, and less densely between them? Might that create a force differential we experience as gravity? My unified theory was born.

I was trained as a scientist (physician and surgeon) but I would be a complete outsider in the world of theoretical physics. I knew the best way to explore the idea would be to fully understand its implications, then write an interesting story around them.

The next step in my journey was as important as that spark from the double-slit article. I do not know how Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life ended up in my hands (or in my ears via narrator Abby Craden) but Chiang’s explanation of Fermat’s Principle cemented my belief in persistence. The path of a ray of light is always the one that takes the least amount of time.

That would mean that every particle must know it’s entire trajectory in advance. Chiang’s intellectual masterpiece of weaving together Fermat’s Principle with the Heptapod B language, and the alien’s simultaneous notion of existence, changed my life once again. My next step was to do whatever I could to enter a writing workshop with Ted Chiang. The upcoming 2019 Utah-based Futurescapes had Ted Chiang on faculty, and I applied. Not only did I get into the weekend workshop, but into their prestigious week-long manuscript workshop as well. My first attempt at prose was in the presence of Ted Chiang (or, as my friends from that workshop call him, Ted <clinch fist and give one vigorous pump> Fucking! Chiang).

From there, I conjured my near-future world in which the acceptance of persistence as the law of the universe had resulted in several revolutions. The first was the invention of anti-gravity, with all the ramifications you might expect. The next was the social revolution, in which free trade and travel resulted in the breaking down of sociopolitical barriers. The third, and one I feature prominently in the book, is the spiritual revolution, in which organized religions around the world accept the timeless fabric as one and the same as god. Finally, there is the psychological revolution, in which our understanding of the permanence of our actions leads to a dramatic reduction in crime. These provide the utopian backdrop to my world of 2076, and the terrible tragedy at the heart of the story.

Somewhere in the realm of Covid, I realized the biggest implication for my theory. In fact, it is profound, and it is revealed as the culprit of The Fall of 2076. The anti-gravity control grid has failed, and millions are falling to their deaths. My main character Jack must decipher the clues with the help of Brian Medlock – the irascible 95-year-old inventor of anti-gravity – and Olivia Martorana, the quantum encryption genius who oversees the grid. Jack must solve the puzzle in less than 12 hours, or his only son will die.

I was thrilled to share my advance reader copy at Seattle Worldcon last year, with all its bloat and imperfections. It was also there that I shared with Ted Chiang my invocation of his name with Chiang’s Postulate. I won't go further into that, lest I reveal spoilers. Fast forward one short year, after a full professional edit, and I was delighted to share my first official edition at LACon, available on Amazon here. I've been really pleased with the reactions so far.

But it was the audiobook that was nearest and dearest to my heart. I am an inventor, an AI technologist, and an audio-only reader, and after inspirations from the incredible 2023 Taos Toolbox workshop with Nancy Kress, Walter Jon Williams, and George RR Martin, I invented Spoken. I used Spoken to narrate my story with 100 unique voices, one for each speaking character. That audiobook went live on Audible just two days ago, and I could not be prouder of how vividly my characters bring my story to life. If you like multi-cast audio, I hope you’ll find the same. It’s available here. Oh, and I composed the theme music, too.

So that's been my journey, from 9/11, to today. I have free codes available for the audiobook and the ebook if you're interested. Just DM me, or you can find me at drphilmarshall.com.