Nautilus with Nick Croyden

Now, Nick, one of the things that was brought to my attention in my research was that in your new thriller, Nautilus, QBD Books bestselling author yourself, you explore one of the defining ethical questions of our time.

What is it

and why are you exploring it? So we're talking about power and the abuse of power.

And I think that can go across any facet, any industry, any politician.

We get put in positions of power.

I'm in a position of power with owning a retail chain.

Politician promises in huge amounts of power with their governance positions.

So in the Turing protocol, what we developed was a machine that was built by Alan Turing, fictionally, of course, which could create a Morse code message going back in time.

eight weeks.

And in the Turing protocol, I messed with history.

D-Day went terribly wrong and Alan Turing had to send a message back to himself to fix it and bring it back to the history that we know.

And that went through 80 years of history following a similar theme.

Now in Nautilus, the machine is now under the guardianship of his granddaughter, again fictitious granddaughter, and she's the guardian and she becomes the Foreign Secretary of the UK.

And her lawyer husband, who in the first book was quite virtuous and supportive, he kind of gets interested in the machine for other reasons.

And probably other reasons that a lot of people would normally have.

How can I use this machine for myself? How can I gain wealth or power by using this machine? And I made him the protagonist in this, where he gets tempted to use machine for, I wouldn't say evil, but for himself.

And then other countries, in this case, Russia, get wind of the machine and they want to use it as a weapon.

I think that is what we're discussing, the power that comes from the machine and the abuse.

And I think it's very relevant today.

Whereas it's got a machine, Putin's got missiles that he can press with a button.

It's all about power and the abuse of.

Now, let's hypothetically, because that's the idea at the heart of Nautilus, if you suddenly actually had the ability, Nick, to send a message eight weeks into the past and change something, what do you think that power would do to the way we think about our

present? So I get asked about whether, what would I fix if I could go backwards eight weeks? And of course, the message changes with time.

It's always a constant eight weeks.

So if I look backwards now from today, what has happened in the world that I could actually make a difference to with some knowledge, I would have to think of maybe things like the forest fires in in France and Spain because I can't go backwards and fix the Ukrainian war because that goes beyond eight weeks.