Hi I’m Stephen B. Pearl author of, among other novels, Cloning Freedom.

The idea of slavery rearing its ugly head in the future is not an uncommon one in science fiction, but I feel it has been poorly done in general. Why use a human slave when a machine can do the work more cheaply and efficiently? The only reason a human slave would be viable is if the human had something to give the machines couldn’t supply. Thus I came up with the idea of E- entertainments, full VR plus emotion entertainments. Now humans had the emotional content that other humans could relate to. This supplied a rational justification for slavery.

The next question was where to get the slaves. With all the kafuffle about cloning in the last few years that seemed rather obvious. Now I had a format to ask the big questions about what makes us human. What is it that makes us more than a biological robot? Also, the question of ‘why wouldn’t a clone have these same qualities,’ which, of course, they do.

Next I needed a conflict. Humans have only a few strong motivations and I feel that love is the strongest of them. I could have gone with any number of the manifestations of love. I chose romantic love because, in part, I had a killer crush on an actress at the time I was writing Cloning Freedom. If you are ever too old to have a crush you have lost something precious. I’ve also been married for thirty years; fantasies must be viewed as what they are and not allowed to mess up your life.

In any case, these factors decided I had to give my characters the skills they would need and follow the logical consequences of the tech level and society to fill in the universe around them.

I made Earth and its colonies a rather unimportant member of the interstellar republic because odds are we would be considering that the indoctrination came just after our first successful FTL system was developed. Other species have thousands of years of advancement on us.

If folks see a tweak they’d like please let me know. I’m open to constructive criticism, though while I listen to advice I reserve the right not to take it. Often I will drop things in on page ten that may not become manifest until late in the book. I hope you enjoy the excerpt and please vote by ordering your copy of Cloning Freedom today.