Hello friend! I am excited to host author Philip Why today and learn about him and him book, A Mind for Mischief. This is a speculative fiction which has a lot to offer. Let’s welcome Philip! An excerpt can be found after the interview. 🙂

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Get to know the author: Philip Why

Welcome back to Armed with A Book, Philip! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

My name is Philip Why and that is a pseudonym. My mother’s maiden name is Why and I guess (appropriately enough given the subject of my novel) in an alternate reality that might have been my name anyway. The reason I use a pseudonym is because, well, I want a cool name but also I’ve been a professional writer for about 38 years and published a lot of non-fiction under my real name. The pseudonym helps separate everything out. I wrote about tech and gaming for most of my career and so technology and computers, and the societal ramifications of new technologies, fascinate me. 

My other fascination is philosophy and spirituality and the ways those things can mesh with technology, the fuzzy edges between science and “woo”. An unpopular choice of arena, I’ll grant you, but it interests me. When I’m not writing I am a musician, sculptor and artist and I make art which merges with tech to make interesting objects. My current obsession, when I have time, is making wooden automata. I am also a gigantic and annoying film buff. I have a movie server with a couple of thousand classic and obscure movies on it which I play on my TV and a projector. I could happily do nothing for the rest of my life but watch movies and eat popcorn.

What inspired you to write this book?

The book sprang out of a miserable era in world politics. Lies were everywhere. Nobody seemed to care or have to suffer any consequences for their words, even though they were often caught out in quite obvious lies. Sometimes these lies had severe real world consequences for real people. Most of these lies were for personal gain too, which was even worse. That was the springboard.  I wanted to make a world where you tell the truth or you suffer.

Around the same time my best friend of 40 years died, which made me feel a sense of urgency to start on my bucket list. I wanted to write a philosophy book about consciousness and at what point does an AI become conscious rather than just very clever at simulating sentience. Add to that a confusion about whether I wanted to write a speculative fiction or a hard sci-fi. My solution? I chose to write both. The best way to avoid a decision is to not decide. 🙂 I realized that coincidentally this was the best route to finding my authentic voice, by not trying to compress it into an existing category. This makes the book very hard to sell. It does however mean it’s a work of art and not commerce. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

About three years. I started writing it in March 2019 and after a few pauses and roadblocks finished the last editing and polishing pass in March 2022. I had real trouble writing during the pandemic, partly because I was scared, as everyone was, and that put a kink in my creativity. But partly because I was at a bit of a loss as to how to integrate this new reality into my narrative. Mostly the first one. I was hiding at home and not writing. 

Eventually as it all calmed down and I got vaccinated I went back to the text and started with a renewed vigour. I wrote the book longhand in a set of four A5 200 page notebooks with a nice quality fountain pen, 650 notebook pages in all for the text, which ends up as about 300 pages in a paperback. I wanted 10 pages per chapter so I had to write 26 pages each in the notebook. Lots of decisions you make when creating a book are passionless calculations.

I find writing longhand changes the way I express myself because you are committing ink to paper and it’s daunting and very hard to rub it out. It forces you to think it through a bit more before you commit. But as you go along it gets easier and faster. You trust yourself more. You correct the problems you create on the spur of the moment on the second draft. The second draft was made using an online AI called Temi (temi.com) to translate an audio recording of me reading the book into a DOCX file I could edit. Each chapter cost me $5 to convert; 25 chapters cost $125 to transcribe. Given the cost of human transcripts this is the most cost effective way. It’s surprisingly accurate and mistakes can be corrected as you do your second draft.

I loaded the finished DOCX into Google Docs and (using the AI in there) corrected spelling and grammar problems and made notes about bigger problem areas I would come back and fix later in the third pass. At this point I made actual physical books for me to go through and make notes in pencil on the page and sent a PDF to an editor who corrected the draft and made suggestions about how it could be fixed. I did about four passes in all. The final book was typeset and designed by me (I have some design experience) and I put it on Amazon as a Kindle and paperback on the 5^th of May 2022.

What makes your story unique?

It’s a very science based book about a very spiritual problem: Why is human consciousness, empathy and awareness being eroded by modern life (spoiler: so that money can be farmed out of us) and what can be done about it?

It’s a very lyrical and poetic book at times. I’d say it’s literary, a novel of ideas, but that’s a label which seems arrogant for an author to self apply. The intention was to make it very dreamlike, with realities shifting and changing as they do in dreams. It was a hard thing to pull off, but I like to think it was mostly successful. I gave it my best shot and what I’ve ended up with is a book I can fully stand behind. 

It’s an alternate world story, but it’s also an allegory, a way of examining things I hate about the world in which we live (and the changes most people would like to make to it) by looking at the opposite; a world that is good which is under threat of being changed for the worst.

Who would enjoy reading your book? 

I’m certainly a part of the intended audience. I certainly wrote the book I’d like to read, and I think that’s a good start for any writer who wants to write long form art. Make the book you want to read. 

Anyone who likes speculative fiction should enjoy it, especially if they wonder about the nature of consciousness and what makes us as humans “conscious” or alive and wonder if we could ever build that into an machine. Of course I love Philip K Dick and Margaret Attwood, so if you’re a fan of those people you’d enjoy it more than most. Oh I’m not presuming to imply I’m as good as they are, but I’d like to think we are ploughing similar or at least parallel furrows. It’s a plate of speculative fiction with a side dish of hard sci-fi and a garnish of poetic musings.

What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?

Ideally I’d like them to come away from a reading thinking about it a lot. I’d like them to want to read it again to see if they missed anything. If I can get that out of only a handful of readers I’ll be really happy.

If they come out of it mad at the terrible governments we’ve all had to suffer for the last few years that’s a nice bonus.

Do you have a favourite quote or scene in the book that you find yourself going back to?

There are two types of thing I love about the book. One is the amount of autobiographical detail I used to flesh out the characters. You have to put a bit of yourself in your art, like folding a sample of your hair into the wax of a voodoo doll, it makes it personal to you.

The other thing is I love all the conversations people have with the main AI, One Mind, and if there was anything in the book I wish was real it’s her. She’s such a wonderful person. More human than most humans are. 

What is something you have learned on your author journey so far?

The main thing I learned is that although I didn’t think I could finish a novel (I’ve tried multiple times without success) it is possible. The way I did it was I deliberately ignored everything I’ve ever read about writing a novel, just started it, made it up as I went along and kept going until it started to make some sense of its own. Every time I started getting clever and started to try and steer the plot I did something to derail it. The only artificial things I did was not finish a chapter until I had a flourish or a twist or revelation to add to the end to make people turn the page. I also rewrote the last three chapters completely to add more structure to the end. Despite my efforts to be “anti-plot” a plot emerged anyway, but I did everything I could to kill it. It beat me and emerged anyway. Plots are hard to kill, it turns out.

What’s the best piece of advice you have received related to writing?

Write One Word. The best advice someone ever gave me, and sadly I forgot where I read it, but they said if you want to commit to writing every day, commit to writing just one word. Anyone can commit to that. Of course you don’t only write one you write a sentence or a paragraph or a page. But if you’re not feeling it or haven’t got any ideas today if at least you can do one word you will have filled your commitment for the day. It really works.

If you could give a shout out to someone(s) who has helped in your writer journey, please feel free to mention them below!

My oldest living friend Brent Jackson and his partner Isobel, and my other old friend Matt Kelland not only cheered me on but supported me financially in various aspects of the work. Roz Morris, author of Ever Rest, My Memories of a Future Life, and Lifeform Three, and her husband Dave have always been very supportive of my work. Tom Boon edited the manuscript for me and was utterly brilliant and tireless and did it because he believed in me. I can’t overemphasize the importance of a support network in getting a book written. It’s a marathon not a sprint and unless you got shoulders to cry on, people to drink with and wise and honest folk to tell you you’re doing okay, you will never, EVER make it. Doing it alone is torture and not sustainable. Writing is a mostly solitary task, only you can write the books you want to write. You must write books alone to be authentic, but you need friends to finish them.

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Book Excerpt from
A Mind for Mischief

CHAPTER 2

Robert Watson Banks put down his bag in the changing room and began to remove his clothes. 

He hated this part and at the same time he knew how absolutely essential it was. 

As he undressed and put his clothes carefully in his locker, he thought through what he was going to say in the chamber. It was going to be a tough sell, he smiled to himself, and this was why he got paid the big coin. He was good, damn good, but was he good enough? 

He removed his underwear and stowed it in the locker and turned reluctantly to view himself in a full length mirror. He was a little overweight, but not too bad. Some people who did this job looked ugly naked. Sometimes it looked like someone had punctured a chamois leather balloon and were waiting for all the air to finally come out of it. He hated people seeing his round stomach and small penis. It was inevitable so that was that. He’d learned to live with it.

He read through his speech one more time. He knew it upside down and back to front by now, of course he did. His nerves made him go over it anyway. 

His speech today was fairly routine. He was fully committed to the contents and hoped others would be too. The inevitable debate that followed the speech might drag out, so he was trying to keep it quite short. No sense in having the cameras on him for longer than was absolutely necessary. 

Around him other males preparing for the chamber were also divesting themselves. Very little eye contact happened here, although some hardened nudists were a little too comfortable with their bodies and had personal spaces measured in inches, or worse, centimetres. 

A couple of the older members were so comfortable with the daily divestment that they drove here naked. That was admirable commitment to the craft, perversion or laziness. He couldn’t fully decide which. Either way this had been a tradition for so long now, few could conceive of the job being done without it. 

A delicate bell from somewhere in the corridor was all that was needed to summon them to the chamber. They filed out of the locker room along the warm floor of the tunnel and into the spacious wood lined chamber. It was comfortably heated to about 24 degrees and the rows of pews facing each other across the debating floor were padded with soft, expensive and of course washable cushions. 

Wood panelling inscribed with the tenets of the new order surrounded the room, and the flags of the various regions of the continent hung appropriately limply.

Around the chamber the members, both male and female, took their places, exchanged curt small talk and began to take their seats for the morning session. Banks was the deputy head of The Life Party, a party whose central values were social responsibility, environmental concerns and long-term economic stability. The body of the assembly were the Unity Party, whose goals were old-fashioned notions of family and the promotion of business needs, and The Moderate Tendency, a middle road party mostly composed of people who couldn’t make definite decisions. The ruling party at present was Unity with a slim number advantage over the Life Party. The Moderates were a minority party, the largest of the niche parties. There were a number of niche parties represented in the chamber, but few had more than one elected member.

The leader of Unity was named Nicholas Chalice and as leader of the ruling party, he was the chairman of the government. He was not the leader of the government, but he was its highest official. He was tall, fresh faced and fit for his 45 years. Banks hated him. He hated standing opposite him in the chamber. Chalice’s penis was quietly impressive and he knew it. Oh, Banks knew that the government didn’t officially run a penis contest and there was more that mattered in life, but it still rankled with him on a personal level. 

He’d left his notes in the locker room, he didn’t need them. He just wished he could have something in his hands to tinker with. He knew the idea of naked government, but he knew in practice it was just as divisive and ego-driven as clothed politics. 

The reasons for it were simple, the promotion of honesty. It is hard to spin out a lie or be egotistical when, if you don’t hold your listeners’ attention intently, their eyes will drift naturally to your balls. For centuries, politicians had evolved from public servants into self serving businesses and at a certain point everything came crashing down. When something is broken, it must be fixed or replaced. In this case, politics needed to return to basics. 

Take out all the power dynamics, but most of all do everything possible to reinforce honesty and a robust commitment to the craft of public service. That’s the notion of naked politics. What more potent symbol of having nothing to hide was there than utter nakedness. What better way to marshal our cute little monkey brain’s tendency to preen and pose than remove all the added finery and present to the world the raw person, all your flaws and folds revealed? 

It was easy, the architects of the new politics reasoned, when wearing fine suits and dresses of the best cloth to start believing the cloth was your skin. Over time, this spread prudery and ego, it bolstered a kind of cognitive bubble, within which you could fool yourself about your own worth in society, your own physical superiority. It’s harder to be taken seriously when penis or breasts are swinging in the breeze. 

If you want to convince anyone of anything in those circumstances, you really have to mean it. Nudity enhances both honesty and conviction and both of these are traits that people who are in charge, or at least responsible for others, need to possess.

With your expensive suit on, you can pretend to be many things that you are not. So much of life was driven by people who thought their suit was their skin, that nudity was bad, breastfeeding, even swimming should be banned. It was feared that nudity would inflame passions that it was impossible to control. Of course this was nonsense. If nudity is disgusting, then you’ve got mental health problems, not nudity problems.

So it was decided that for the sake of humanity’s future mental stability and sexual health, that being naked needed reformation in the public consciousness. The so-called Pink and Brown Act, as it was jocularly known, was passed in the 23rd year of The Empress and politics and all sensitive negotiations were performed naked.

Banks was chatting with his boss, the leader of The Life Party, Margaret Trusscomb, a white haired brown skinned lesbian who was very comfortable with her nakedness. Her curves were the source of much media Chit Chat, most of which was respectful given her brutal stance on sexual harassment, positive body consciousness and LGBT∞ rights and wrongs. She’d broken the nose of a drunken journalist once and the rest of them hadn’t forgotten it. Margaret sat back and had her arms folded comfortably under her globe like breasts and her calf was resting on top of her knee. She had a small tattoo on her ankle of a single snowflake around which was delicately inscribed in a circle, “Beware of the avalanche.”

“Chalice is toughing it out, but he knows nobody is buying his Article 25 bullshit,” Margaret was whispering, “he also knows it’s doomed, but I’ll bet you 100 coin, he’ll style it out like that was the game plan all along. Old School politics, but then he always was a traditionalist.”

Banks laughed and whispered back. “He’s a good politician, but a lousy liar. Personal charm and a big knob gets you a long way in this business, but at some point there has to be substance behind it. You’ll always be found out and he will be. I’ll still take the bet though.”

Margaret Trusscomb chuckled and took this as her cue and drew herself up to her full height, such as it was, and spoke in a clear voice heard by the whole chamber. “Thank you madam chair, I now call my friend and colleague Mr. Robert Watson Banks who will put The Life Party’s case against the proposed Article 25.”

She sat down with the hand gesture of rolling an invisible marble off her palm into his lap. Banks rose and began with the traditional litany.

“Ladies and gentlemen. I am a liar and a cheat. I’m probably in this job for myself to line my pockets so you cannot trust anything I say, but I urge you to first listen to what I say and judge my words on their merit. I ask you this with honesty you cannot rely on and humility you would be ill advised to believe.” 

There was a short but heartfelt ripple of applause and murmurs of assent. “Okay. Good afternoon and with the formalities out of the way, I would like to begin on our reaction to Article 25 . . .”

He began to outline the article and picked it apart with erudite and exquisite precision. The listeners, the other 649 Pink and Browns in the room listened politely, some taking notes into recording devices. 

The litany, though it was full of intentionally self deprecating language, was designed to be spoken and not recited. It was not a piece of inconsequential boilerplate to be ignored like an airship security briefing or a licence declaration on The Feed. It was meant to be spoken with feeling and all present knew the meaning of the words and took them seriously. 

Since The War, nobody was in government for personal gain. There was no point. The penalty for using political positions for gain, or UPPG for short, was brutal and swift and nobody ever forgot that. There were mistakes of course, and these were dealt with fairly. The lesser charge of error of judgement, or EOJ, carried a stiff sentence, but the charge for UPPG was the stiffest, if proven.

Death.

One or two miscarriages of justice, discovered too late, had produced the lesser charge. EOJ had been making it easier for public servants to survive their mistakes. The EOJ cases highlighted ways in which people could lapse in their honesty, through mental health and stress issues. But like murder it was decided that before you could put someone to death for a crime, you had to establish the motivation, the intent, behind it. 

If the reason for breaking the very serious UPPG laws was a momentary impulse based on depression or loss or loneliness, then the person was guilty of nothing more sinister than being human, and their charge was reduced to EOJ, a lengthy prison sentence and counselling. If however any proof of premeditation of UPPG with no mitigating circumstances, well, the methods of death were numerous and delivered at the dark whimsy of the prosecutors. They were dedicated and humourless purveyors of public disappointment. 

But as with all capital punishment, some treated it as a challenge or game. The high stakes tapped into the lingering traces of sociopathy still sleeping in the cute little monkey brains of the public servants. 

So it was with many cases who faced the prosecutors’ blades, needles and work tables. For some the high stakes game was totally worth the risk, but the penalty for getting away with UPPG for a long time was so much worse. Torture. Medieval grade torture. Not to reform. Not as an example to those who may sin in the future. It was basic and honest revenge. “This is what we do to people who betray us”, said the punishment, through the hands of the prosecutors, “this is what we do to monsters like you.”

Occasionally if genuine psychopathy was discovered, those people with the gift of blankness or empathy blindness, were channelled into the execution corps. There they had a chance to pay off their debt to society through honest service. Here they could plough their hatred of humanity into a good cause, salvation through pain. In this the modified message of the punishment was “this is what we do to monsters like you. We place you into the hands of monsters like you.”

Banks completed his speech and it was greeted with warmth and gentle applause. There was too much scope in Article 25 to undermine the teeth of the UPPG laws. It was an ill prepared and seemingly pointless risk to allow such subtle subversion of the chamber’s long traditions of honesty and service. His thoughts on the matter were well received and it was agreed quite quickly afterwards that Article 25 should be dropped for a rewrite or eliminated altogether. 

Although Nicholas Chalice was known to be one of the authors of Article 25, he praised Banks for his eloquent rebuttal and humbly sought the chamber’s forgiveness, while skilfully avoiding any implication he was wrong to bring it to life in the first place. 

During Chalice’s speech a note was passed to Banks from the Ministry of Truth. On reading it, he had to quickly control a few emotions from taking over his face. He leaned a little closer to Trusscomb’s ear and whispered “enclave” and handed her the note. The emotions which flitted across her face were very clear: surprise, sadness and rage.

Enclave was the name for an important unscheduled meeting of the heads of the elected parties, meeting in secret in a panelled room at the far corner of the building. All the heads were present with one notable exception. 

“Is it true?” said Ashley Tate, leader at the Environmental Faction. Trusscomb nodded gravely. She indicated to Banks who put a small metal cylinder in the middle of the table and activated it. Several documents appeared in the air like genies fleeing a bottle. They hung in the air and Trusscomb leant forwards and sifted through them with her finger. 

“There’s no doubt?” said a grim faced bald gentleman with a long grey beard. 

There was no doubt. The investigation had been going on for a year. The tracks had been buried well, the money had been sifted through literally hundreds of accounts making the task of uncovering the corruption an expensive and labour intensive task. Unluckily for the culprit weeding out corruption at this level had deep pockets. Whatever it costs, however long it takes, you will be found out and you will be punished.

Trusscomb quickly read out the charges to the assembled heads, and the vote was clear . . . rubber stamp the arrest warrant and pass it back to the Ministry of Truth with no further delay. They left quickly before anyone noticed they had met.

Nicholas Chalice sipped on a Tequila sunrise. The Tequila was very expensive, the orange juice freshly squeezed. He sat on a plump cushion in the centre of his lawn. Two of his regular concubines were splashing in the pool. His wife was watching him out of the bedroom window of their massive home. She was absent mindedly putting earrings in while waiting for her escort to pick her up for the evening. Her face was sour.

She stopped when she noticed a dark figure at the edge of the grounds. The figure moved swiftly and silently. It was wearing a dark hoodie jacket or short robe, a skull like  mask and she saw with rising horror in his hand was a pole with a loop of wire at the end.

Mrs Chalice walked quickly to the front door. She was planning to go anyway. She’d have to advance her timetable and get out tonight. Now. 

The doorbell chimed. Thank the gods, perfect timing. She grabbed her go-bag from the hall closet and opened the big front door.

Chalice watched the two naked girls cavorting and squealing in the pool through half closed eyes. He sighed contentedly. This was what he deserved. This thought occurred to him every day.

If you’re golden, then golden things come to you. If you’re base metal, then you deserve poverty, misery, and death. I am golden. I always knew I was. My mother told me I was her golden boy and I knew that was true. Those people out there needed leaders like me. Those people, the tranks, the job sores, the mentals, the devos, the “preverts” (nasty slang word for those heading for trouble), the seething masses of hateful, dumb, stupid bovines. I am superior. I am almost the ultimate being.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dark hooded figure and for a moment his mouth gaped open. He was caught. No! His mind was unable to process a failure of this magnitude, and after a short tingly ride down through his stomach and scrotum his mind rose quickly back up into his perfect head. 

Wait! He smiled, slowly at first and then he beamed. Oh yes, I’m going to beat this, he thrilled, no stupid UPPG for the golden boy. Not even EOJ. They don’t know it yet, but after this they’re going to love me even more. 

He drained his drink and set the glass down on the close cropped lawn. “Come on then,” he said languidly, “I’m ready.”

“But are you though?” said a shockingly close voice, filtered through a mask. Chalice flicked his eyes around just in time to see a second hooded figure swing a long wooden club with a glossy lobe the size of an orange. The blow was not meant to kill and it succeeded in that aim. It merely knocked him off the cushion and his body fell to the grass like a bag of plumbing tools. 

Chalice was trying to object. Golden, he said, Golden, except all that came out was “go, go, go.” 

Through red  mist he saw the girls being herded out of the pool, their wet skin and hair, shivering now. 

His wife came out of the house, face white, she was manacled and two more hooded and masked figures were leading her. One carried her go-bag. He sat her down on one of the pool chairs and walked around the pool, lowering the hood and removing the pale mask. Chalice knew the face. Everybody knew the face.

“Good day, Mr Chalice. We’ve never met socially, but I am Arthur Smiles. In my capacity as head of the Ministry of Truth I arrest you under the UPPG laws, you will be taken from here to an MoT facility where you will be held, oh so briefly, until our investigations conclude.” 

Smiles bared his small teeth. His head was shaved and his face was slim and brown and handsome. For a man who must be in his early fifties he looked fit and hard. 

“I have an intuition that they will not find any mitigation in this case, and so then it will be my pleasure to terminate you with prejudice as an expression of society’s rage at your crimes.” 

The calm grinning face bent close. “I shall derive much personal satisfaction and professional joy from executing this duty. You, I’m afraid, will get no joy whatsoever from the transaction, but then you have had quite enough joy at society’s expense, wouldn’t you agree?”

The sterile off white room at the MoT contained a bed, a toilet, and a wash basin. Chalice lay staring at the white ceiling. Unmoving.

In the control room Arthur Smiles watched the monitor over his steepled fingers. “Paralysed. That is most unsatisfactory. He feels nothing below the shoulders?”

“No, sir.”

“Hmm. Well, okay. There are more than enough nerve endings in the face, mouth, jaw and neck anyway, so let’s limit our ministrations to that area for now. Start slow, my friend, as I have it on good authority that the public appetite for revenge is very keen with this one.

“Soften him up for a bit. I’ll be there directly.”

As the junior executioner left the control room, Arthur Smiles was deep in thought. He looked troubled. Something was bothering him. He appeared to reach a difficult decision. He touched the intercom. 

“Petra, can I change my order to chicken? Thank you.” Ah, that was better. Now that was off his mind. He could fully relax and enjoy the show.

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