The Brilliant Boy Billionaire - 85. Author’s Note

Thank you for reading the Brilliant Boy Billionaire and sticking with a posting schedule of nearly a year. This is the longest novel I’ve written by far, clocking in at just under a half-million words. J.J. and Henry aren’t the first boy geniuses I’ve portrayed in my stories, nor are they the smartest. My interest in the balance between the development of intellectual and social skills in exceptional youth is very personal, not that I’m anywhere close to being in J.J.’s league. I grew up in a very progressive, public-school system in an otherwise conservative Midwestern state. I distinctly remember having an organized class debate on the ethics of hunting in the 3^rd grade. My teacher that year was outstanding, as was my 5^th grade teacher, but it was my 4^th grade teacher who, in assigning a report every week, taught me how to write. I must also thank my mother for teaching me how to look up information and to organize my thoughts, and that was long before the internet. I must also thank her for teaching me how to type in an era when touch typing was considered a secretarial skill.

Unfortunately, my 1^st grade teacher mistook my poor eye/hand coordination for a lack of intelligence and assigned me to the slow reading group. When my parents found out, they called her on it, and I was moved to a more appropriate reading group. My 6^th grade teacher should have never gone into the profession. My parents would only put up with so much and they bypassed her, had me tested independently and then talked my way into all advanced classes in junior high.

Thanks to a Saturday physics program, not unlike the one described in my story, Conversations With Myself, I was studying advanced, college-level math and physics by my sophomore year in high school. Sadly, one of the kids with whom I studied ended up killing himself over a girl. I’d already experienced the loss of my father and that was actually my second experience with teen suicide, and it made me realize how lucky I’d been. I certainly had issues with fitting in, particularly when it came to the ritual of teasing, but I was fortunate to find my own balance along the way. In J.J.’s case, his abuse as a young child forced him to seek out knowledge in a setting not known for producing exceptional scholars; yet his exposure to handiwork and painting gave him the lifeline he needed to build a bridge to ordinary society, and those skills helped him survive after he escaped.

I grew up in a family where political issues were discussed at the dinner table, and so many of my stories touch on political themes. I’ve tried to present a balanced perspective, but the rise of anti-science has made that increasingly difficult. When science comes up against conspiracy theories, I can find no middle ground. As I recently pointed out to one of my editors, who noted that Ptolemy’s earth-centered view of the universe was once considered scientific fact, although scientists may disagree on their conclusions, science itself is a method for evaluating evidence. The science didn’t change when our view of the universe changed from one centered on the earth to one centered on the sun, then to one where the sun was just another star. It was only as we gathered more evidence that didn’t fit with existing models of the universe that new models were proposed. Likewise, Newton’s Laws seemed to explain everything, until we developed better tools with which to gather the evidence that revealed discrepancies. The radical concept of relativity came to be accepted as fact as more and more experiments verified its veracity, but it wasn’t compatible with the quantum effects observed at the atomic and subatomic levels. We’re still searching for a theory that explains everything.

Sadly, most people seem unaware that science and religion are two completely different things that are not mutually exclusive. Although there is no religion that can be fully reconciled with the physical evidence, there is nothing in science to preclude what it cannot test. That the concept of a human soul that survives death is universal to nearly all religions is remarkable. Many people claim to have experienced so-called paranormal phenomena, as for example when twins apart have experienced empathic feelings of physical harm. That science is unable to explain the unexplainable shouldn’t imply that the unexplainable couldn’t possibly exist.

The theory of evolution is based on evidence that’s as solid as for any theory, yet at present, science can give us little more than conjecture when it comes to the very origin of life. Setting aside the people who believe in a flat earth – people for whom there’s no hope of a logical discourse – I have found myself debating evolution with seemingly intelligent people who see it as a rejection of God. I doubt that I’ve changed many minds, but I can provide numerous examples to illustrate that there’s nothing intelligent about the design of the human body. Truly, the human brain is a kludge, with structures inherited from lower vertebrates whose only function in humans is to cause disease. As I like to say, the notion that we were created in God’s image is an insult to God.

Similarly, I’ve found myself shut out of discussions on the origins of life, simply for stating the opinion that atheism is a form of fundamentalism. To be an atheist, one must have absolute ‘faith’ that there are scientific explanations for everything and that the universe originated purely by chance. However, science cannot explain what it cannot test, and there will never be a way to test the Big Bang theory, simply because we can never see past the origin of the universe any more than we can see beyond the event horizon of a black hole. Indeed, in theory, time itself ceases to exist within a black hole, nor did it exist at the moment of the Big Bang. Although introducing a creator raises far more questions than answers, I prefer to simply admit that we cannot know. That is the very definition of agnosticism.

I’ve also found myself combatting conspiracy theories with otherwise-educated people who believe that the moon landings were a hoax. There are certainly enough doctored videos on YouTube that ‘prove’ their case. I can argue ’til I’m blue in the face that the technology for a deep fake of walking on the moon just didn’t exist in 1969. As some have joked, NASA hired Stanley Kubrick to fake the moon landings, but he insisted on filming on location. Simply put, it was easier to send men to the moon than to fake it, but there are still those who find it easier to believe in conspiracy theories than to evaluate the evidence, as science dictates we must.

How well I remember Neil Armstrong walking on the moon when I was thirteen years old. I stayed up practically all night watching the grainy video on a 16” black-and-white TV. I have friends and colleagues who are ex-NASA engineers, and including the contractors, more than a million people worked on the Apollo program. That’s a lot of folks to remain quiet about a government conspiracy for all this time. I personally know two astronauts, one of whom I’ve known since the 1^st grade, and they knew men who walked on the moon. It’s hard to argue with only two degrees of separation.

Scientists don’t write books about conspiracies, and the vast majority of them don’t cherry-pick their data. As with cheaters who give themselves away by entering only right answers, frauds reveal only what they want people to see. Scientists publish contradictory data, right along with the data that support their theories. They publish their results in peer-reviewed scientific journals that have rigorous standards and not in the lay press or on social media. Real scientific data are messy and full of statistical variations. Data that seem too good to be true almost certainly are.

The current anti-science, conspiracy-theory-laden disinformation being spouted by so many with regard to Covid-19 and climate change, however, defies logic. I’m not exactly a layperson when it comes to either issue. The evidence behind pandemics and climate change is in flux, but easily navigated by following the science. By way of an analogy, one might be tempted to run into a burning building to rescue their precious belongings, but many people have perished doing just that. It’s always best to trust people who have the training and know what they’re doing.

I used to work at the NIH and knew Tony Fauci personally. The man is selfless and helped stop the spread of HIV, SARS, MERS and Ebola, and even at the age of 80, he’s still working tirelessly to save lives despite multiple threats to his own. If he sometimes seems to contradict himself, it’s because scientists can only draw conclusions based on the available evidence at the time. Someday, there will be entire textbooks written on the novel coronavirus, but that will be well in the future. In the meantime, the mRNA vaccines are a true miracle of modern science. Not only are they remarkably safe and effective, but they make it possible to develop engineered vaccines in a fraction of the time it takes for other vaccines.

Covid-19 may well be here to stay, particularly now that evidence has been found of infection in house pets, wild deer populations and rats. Even so, we have all the tools we need to stop the spread of the pandemic in its tracks. Unfortunately, there are always opportunists who are all too willing to spread disinformation for personal gain. These modern-day, snake-oil salesmen have their own agendas that have little if anything to do with saving lives. Doctors have long patched up drunk drivers and their victims alike, but when the unvaccinated fill up ICU beds and people die of heart attacks while waiting to be seen in Emergency, it’s hard to imagine the medical field emerging unscathed.

When it comes to climate change, I’ve been reading the literature since I was twelve and took multiple courses on thermodynamics in college and graduate school. I’m not suggesting that the climate doesn’t change in nature. Volcanic eruptions and sunspots have long been known to have a cooling effect and I can remember when some scientists believed we were heading for another ice age. The argument has never been about natural fluctuations in earth’s climate. The fact is that human activity is unquestionably heating the planet. Heat from the sun and heat generated by radioactive decay radiates back into space, but greenhouse gases absorb and trap that heat, resulting in a slow, steady increase in global temperature above what it would be otherwise. A sudden decline in solar activity could throw us into a new ice age, as could the eruption of a super-volcano, but neither of those is likely to happen anytime soon. It makes far more sense to deal with the problems we can solve than to be lured into inaction by the hypothetical.

Even without J.J.’s discoveries, renewable-energy solutions exist and are cost-competitive with the burning of fossil fuels. The capacity, reliability and cost of battery storage has improved steadily, making electricity nearly as portable as gasoline. Naturally, the oil industry is spreading disinformation in a blatant attempt to block efforts to deploy renewable technologies. The problem is that we don’t have much time. Thirty years ago, I could have predicted the very effects on climate that we are seeing now; I just didn’t picture them happening so quickly. I don’t use the phrase ‘global-ecosystem collapse’ lightly and although much of it is from causes other than global warming, nevertheless, it is directly related to human activity. Habitat loss, overfishing, overgrazing and deforestation resulted in unprecedented species loss, even before the planet started to warm significantly.

It’s human nature to believe that we’re the epitome of evolution and that our civilization will last forever. From the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde to the sentinels of Easter Island, the planet is littered with the remnants of civilizations that simply vanished without a trace. Buried in the layers of sedentary rock all over the world, there is evidence of past mass extinctions. Most religions profess that God gave humankind stewardship ever the earth. As J.J. might say, let us not show our appreciation by screwing it up.

In closing, I want to thank my longtime editor, David of Hope, for providing his critical eye and his always-helpful suggestions. I’m grateful to rec/vwl for volunteering to take on my megaproject. His critical eye saved me a lot of embarrassment, and he taught me quite a few things about grammar and spelling. His background in economics and his philosophy forced me to question some long-held beliefs, and even though my ideology emerged unscathed, I have a greater appreciation of alternative viewpoints. Many of our arguments made it into the story, making for a much more diverse discourse. It made my characters seem much more human and, in spite of their young ages, more believable.

I want to thank AwesomeDude and Gay Authors for hosting my stories for close to two decades. The internet was a very different place in early 21^st and posting gay literature was much more risqué back then. My desire to write gay fiction forced me to come to terms with my own sexuality and I came out to my wife, who has been surprisingly supportive ever since. Much has improved since I started writing, and yet much of what we take for granted is increasingly at risk. The ongoing struggle for LGBTQ rights must never be seen as one that has been won.

I got my start posting my stories on Nifty and was quickly offered a spot by Riley James on the Rainbow Community Writing Project – a site that no longer exists. In the meantime, I discovered GayAuthors and began posting my stories there as well. GA was a much more modest site at the time, and I quickly was made a Promising Author and then the equivalent of what is now called a Signature Author. I designed some really nice webpages for my stories, but then the site adopted the current turnkey software that has allowed so many more budding writers a chance to publish their work. Since then I've also posted my stories on AwesomeDude, where I have the freedom to put my skills in web design to use in the presentation of my stories. I am grateful to Mike 'The Dude' for founding AD and for making it the premier ad-free, all-volunteer, donation-supported gay fiction site on the internet. I enjoy reading and publishing stories on both sites, as they serve different purposes and different audiences.

Will there be another story or stories involving these characters? If so, it will be some time down the road and perhaps from the standpoint of one of J.J. and Henry’s adopted kids. There are plenty of opportunities for stories based on their lives. In the meantime, I need to take a break and then maybe get started on my next project.