J. R. H. Lawless - On Cryptography and Hard Fiction

6 min read

**J.R.H.Lawless is a writer and specialist. It’s a pleasure to have him over on The Creator’s Roulette to talk about cryptography and writing hard scifi.**

Hi everyone! I am really excited for today’s post because we are talking about cryptography today! I have not shared a lot about computing science on this blog in recent years so it is pleasure to host J. R. H. Lawless and learn about his cryptography adventures and relate them to fiction. Last time, Jay was on the series to talk about the rise of Humor & Satire in Scifi. Today is also a special day for Jay’s book, ALWAYS GREENER, with the launch of its audiobook. Let’s get started and see how Jay uses cryptography in writing!

It’s wonderful to have you back, Jay!

Let’s start off with a definition – what is cryptography? How did you get interested in it?

Cryptography is, simply put, ways of writing that hide the meaning from people other than who the message is meant for. You know I’m a huge fan of etymology, and here the word origin is very simple, and literally means “secret writing”. My interest for cryptography goes way back, at least to childhood summer camps and treasure hunts. It turns out, having a treasure chest full of chocolate as a reward is a great way to foster interest in breaking codes. I spent a good part of my adolescence and early adulthood doing volunteer writing and quest design for video games that involved a lot of cryptography-based puzzle-solving, so I soon developed a more practical sense for it. I later got to put that to use both in much more advanced video games like Secret World, NITE Team 4, or any number of awesome Alternate Reality Games (ARG), as well as in my cyberpunk fiction, especially when it comes to hacking and quantum cryptography.

What is it like to learn about a topic which is different from your areas of expertise?

That’s one of the best things about being a writer! You’re always learning new things and doing the research you need to make your worlds as consistent and believable as possible. I’m a lawyer by trade — which is a domain full of special codes of its own — but there’s little I enjoy more than diving into awesome science like Y. K. Bae’s research papers about photonic thrust space travel, or figuring out the precise size and rotation speed I need for my platform at geostationary orbit on a space elevator to achieve an experienced 1G gravity on the outer rim. That obviously applies to cryptography as well, both historically (the history of cryptography is *fascinating*) and in terms of current and future technologies.

What are some resources you used to learn about cryptography?

We live in a world of computers, and, luckily in this case, one of the things computer folks love best is cryptography. There are massive amounts of resources, classes, and online converters available for cryptography online. In terms of recommendations, FutureLearn’s Cryptography course is a solid introduction for beginners. After that, I’d urge people who want to take it a bit deeper to check out some of the awesome cryptography-based videogames I mentioned earlier. Secret World (currently Secret World Legends) is a modern day Lovecraftian MMO that not only involves a ton of fascinating Fantasy and SF themes, but also a ton of quite advanced cryptography as part of quest solving. Morse code by ear, genuine hieroglyphics, music-based codes, modern-day hacking… you name it, and the game will make you do it at some point. And when you’re ready to take the experience to the next level, ARG-style games like NITE Team 4 will give you as close an experience of actual cryptography and intelligence work as you can get independently, at least this side of legality.

What are some fun projects that you have done with cryptography?

Probably the most fun I’ve had with cryptography recently was teaching my children quite a few basic concepts through birthday party treasure hunts! Oh, and I’m also waiting for my SFWA decoder ring to arrive. SFWA has used official decoder rings to send fun little codes to crack for a while now, and that fact alone should show you how deeply linked cryptography and speculative fiction writing are.

I also may or may not have inserted cryptographic Easter Eggs that nobody has yet to discover, as far as I know, in both ALWAYS GREENER and THE RUDE EYE OF REBELLION…

You write science fiction and that is ripe with opportunities to bring in computing science concepts. Have you infused cryptography into your stories?

I write SF Humor, so I had a lot of fun working quantum cryptography into THE RUDE EYE OF REBELLION, my new novel coming out on September 22^nd, the sequel to ALWAYS GREENER. Without spoiling too much, a key plot point in the final stages of the novel revolves around how quantum cryptography is so infallible that it’s only a matter of time before some corporate genius decides you can save a ton of money by not actually implementing it every single time, and just relying on the threat of having it there to dissuade any attempts at breaking the code, or to counterfeit payment cards using quantum encryption traps.

How do you balance writing about a very complex topic and making it approachable to the readers?

Humor is always the best way to make a scene fun, and make sure it flows for the reader — at least in my books (literally, I hope, and not just figuratively. But that’s up to the reader to decide). I find you can convey even the most complex and unintuitive concepts from space travel or AI research as long as you use situations that keep the readers’ interest and, hopefully, give them a chuckle or two. You can cram in a lot of key worldbuilding info as long as your characters are flailing wildly to cope with the realities, or the stakes are high and urgent.

Can you speak to hard and soft science fiction and how concepts like cryptography, Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning are used in fiction and make books fall in these subgenres almost?

Obviously, the sort of research and quest for consistency that I’m talking about places the work rather firmly in the hard science fiction category. That’s what I write, since I feel it’s an extra promise to the reader that I will at least make every effort I can, at my level, to put together stories that could at least conceivably, in the current state of publicly-available knowledge, be true. Cryptography is not only a good example of this, but also an interesting metaphor for the process of writing hard science fiction: the science and research are there behind the scenes. They aren’t what the story is about, but there’s enough there to show that the author has done the research, and to suggest wider worldbuilding choices and structures even if they aren’t explicitly in the text.

What are some fiction books you have read which have used computing science concepts?

One of the more recent books I found dealt particularly well with current computer science and its implications, both technical and socio-political, is INFOMOCRACY, by Malka Older. And of course, independently of the controversies about the author, I will continue to recommend Asimov’s Elijah Bailey novels (THE CAVES OF STEEL, THE NAKED SUN, and THE ROBOTS OF DAWN) to anybody and everybody willing to listen.