Sometime in the early 1980s, my friend Adam Klopf introduced me to a band called DEVO. They were weird. Really weird.
But somewhere between the strange music, yellow suits, jerky robotic movements, and those ridiculous red hats, I discovered that there was actually an idea behind all of it. DEVO wasn’t just the name of a band. It came from de-evolution, the idea that humanity wasn’t necessarily progressing toward some better, more enlightened version of itself. We might actually be going the other way.
That idea got my attention.
I’d encountered something similar before. I was already a fan of H. G. Wells, and The Time Machine had shown me a future in which humanity hadn’t continued its steady climb upward. Instead, human beings had evolved, or devolved, into the Eloi and the Morlocks. But I don’t think I’d ever really connected the dots.
DEVO did that for me.
They introduced me to a simple but unsettling idea: technological advancement and human advancement are not necessarily the same thing.
Are We Not Men?
For anyone whose entire knowledge of DEVO begins and ends with Whip It, explaining the band isn’t particularly easy. They were intentionally bizarre.
DEVO emerged from Akron, Ohio, in the 1970s with a carefully constructed image involving matching outfits, yellow radiation suits, robotic choreography, surreal music videos, and eventually the red plastic “Energy Dome” hats that became one of the most recognizable images of the early 1980s.
It was funny.
It was supposed to be.
But the joke had a point.
Behind the absurdity was the idea that modern society wasn’t necessarily becoming smarter simply because our technology was becoming more sophisticated. We could build better machines, communicate faster and surround ourselves with information while simultaneously becoming less capable of understanding the world we’d created. The machines could evolve even if we didn’t.
As a teenager, that blew my mind.
Apparently, it stuck with me too.
DEVO on Mars
When I wrote Mars Beginning, I wasn’t thinking about DEVO.
At least, I didn’t think I was.
The novel takes place in a future filled with extraordinary technology. Humanity has accomplished things that would seem almost impossible to us today. Artificial intelligence, advanced spacecraft, permanent settlements beyond Earth and technologies capable of analyzing phenomena on a scale we can barely comprehend have become part of the human experience. And yet humanity itself hasn’t necessarily kept pace.
There is a growing separation between the people who understand the technology shaping their world and the general population living within that world.
Looking back at it now, I can see the Eloi and the Morlocks again. Not literally, of course. Nobody in Mars Beginning is living underground and eating the people on the surface. But the underlying question is remarkably similar.
What happens when civilization advances faster than the people living in it?
That question becomes especially important in Mars Beginning when humanity discovers UT-S1. The scientists can see what is happening. They can measure it. They can model it. They can watch the numbers change and understand the horrifying implications.
But understanding the science doesn’t mean everyone will accept it.
People argue. They dismiss the warnings. They create memes. They embrace explanations that make them feel better. And eventually some become incapable of comprehending their own approaching demise.
When I wrote those scenes, they felt plausible to me.
Today they feel disturbingly familiar.
Spend enough time on social media and you’ll eventually encounter someone presenting an altered video as absolute proof of something that didn’t happen. I’ve recently watched people argue that the September 11 attacks were faked by the government and offer manipulated video as “proof” that a Tomahawk cruise missile struck the Pentagon rather than American Airlines Flight 77.
The remarkable part isn’t simply that misinformation exists. Misinformation has always existed.
What’s changed is the technology.
We now carry devices in our pockets that provide nearly instantaneous access to more accumulated human knowledge than any previous generation could have imagined. Those same devices can deliver manipulated images, altered video, fabricated stories and conspiracy theories just as quickly.
And increasingly, the technology used to create those falsehoods is becoming extraordinarily sophisticated.
Our ability to create information has evolved.
Our ability to determine whether that information is true may not have evolved with it.
There it is again.
De-evolution.
Dreams of Future Past
The strange thing is that I didn’t recognize any of this while I was writing Mars Beginning.
It wasn’t until years later, while working with McKay and Greg on our podcast, Dreams of Future Past, that I started thinking seriously about the books, movies, television, music and other pieces of popular culture that shaped the way I imagine the future.
Eventually my thoughts wandered back to DEVO.
And suddenly the connection was obvious.
H. G. Wells planted the idea.
DEVO gave it a name.
And somewhere along the way, without consciously intending to do it, I carried that idea into Mars Beginning.
That’s the wonderful thing about influences. They don’t always announce themselves. Sometimes something you read, hear or see when you’re young simply becomes part of the way you understand the world. Decades later, it comes back out in something you create, and only then do you recognize where part of it came from.
So, Adam, if you’re reading this, apparently introducing me to that strange band from Akron had consequences neither of us could have predicted.
Forty-some years later, I’m still thinking about de-evolution.
And looking at the world around us now, I’m beginning to wonder if maybe more people should have taken DEVO seriously.
Mars Beginning is the first book in the Marsborn trilogy. Explore the complete series here.
And check out our podcast! Dreams of Future Past
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