Robopocalypse Author Daniel H. Wilson Visits Maryville University

Maryville University and Left Bank Books brought author Daniel H. Wilson to Town and Country as part of the ongoing Maryville Talks Books guest author series. Wilson’s new book, Robopocalypse, was the centerfold for The New York Times Sunday books supplement two weeks after launching. Steven Spielberg will be directing a movie based on Robopocalypse slated to appear in 2013.

Daniel H. Wilson’s rise as an author reads like a Hollywood script. In high school, he loved science fiction so much he wrote and submitted short stories to popular magazines like Asimov’s and Fantasy and Science Fiction. When his teen manuscripts were all rejected, he decided the next best thing to being a science fiction writer was to become a scientist. He graduated from Carnegie Melon University with a doctorate in robotics.

Graduate school involvds constantly writing papers and grant proposals. Wilson said since he kept getting grants, he decided he must be a good writer. So, he turned his nonfiction skills toward writing a short, humorous book about robots called How to Survive a Robot Uprising. Seven books later, he decided it was time to fulfill his teenage dreams of writing science fiction.  

His agent saw so much potential in his first self described “big-boy novel” novel that she started pitching it to Hollywood with nothing more than 100 pages and an outline for the rest. Wilson said he was shocked by how quickly the movie rights to Robopocalypse were purchased. Since he was still writing the book, he was able to interact with the producers during his creative process and see the fruits of his imagination come to life during preproduction of the movie. He has now given up his work as a scientist and fulfilled his high school dream of becoming a writer.

“I’m incredibly lucky,” said Wilson.

Danielle Borsch, special events coordinator for Left Bank Books, said people who attended the Maryville talks event were in for a special treat.

“Robopocalypse is one of Doubleday’s biggest books this season. Daniel Wilson is just getting really popular. In a year, people who were here tonight will be really glad they got to hear him speak and had him sign their books. When the movie comes out, they’ll get to say they met him in person,” she said.

Borsch said bringing science fiction writers to Maryville Talks was a gamble. “We wanted to do a lot more than fiction. Science fiction is a way to bridge the gap between nonfiction and the fiction readers who already attend the series.” Previously, Maryville Talks brought in Justin Cronin, author of New York Times Bestseller, The Passage, a science fiction novel with a great deal of mainstream crossover appeal.

Chris Hollenbeck, coordinator of special events and donor relations at Maryville University said the gamble of bringing in science fiction writers paid off. Existing Maryville Talks attendees embraced the science fiction authors while people in the community who had never heard of the program before were drawn to the campus.

“Maryville Talks is the brainchild of Tom Eschen, our vice president of institutional advancement,” Hollenbeck said. “He wants to bring in great authors, get people on campus, and make Maryville the arts and cultural capital of West County. Every author Left Bank Books recommends has been a great draw.”

Byron Kerman attended his first Maryville Talks event specifically because he read and loved Robopocalypse. “The book is like a horror movie full of terrifying scenes of machines taking over and killing masses of people. You can see why Spielberg is making this a movie. It’s going to be a blockbuster.”

Wilson said it was incredibly surreal and satisfying to see Robopocalypse scenes inspired by his own high school years as Dreamworks illustrations for the upcoming movie.

“At the very beginning of the third chapter, there’s a teenager working at yogurt shop in Utica Square in Tulsa (OK). A robot walks into the shop and tries to murder him. The book is called Robopocalypse. You shouldn’t be  surprised. They’ve re-created that scene in illustrations. I remember looking at them and thinking that’s exactly what it would look like if I was murdered by a robot when I was in high school. It’s really amazing.”

While most people have been supportive, Wilson said he can’t escape the constant comparison to Terminator. “The first movie came out 27 years ago. There’s room for more robots,” he said. He pointed to the popularity of zombie movies in recent years and nuclear holocaust fiction in earlier decades as part of people’s unending appetite for destruction.

“We like staying alive. It’s a natural thought process that we want to study the things that might kill us. Why do you think we love Shark Week,” Wilson said.

Wilson scoffed at the idea that humanity was genuinely in danger of being exterminated by robots. “It assumes this monumental leap, but science isn’t like that. It’s iterative. You solve one small problem, then you solve the next problem.” He said there are a lot of steps between self-driving cars and sentient cars that drive their owners off a cliff. “But it’s fun to think about,” he said.

People who missed the event can see both an interview with Daniel H. Wilson and a recording of his Maryville Talks Speech on HEC-TV July 15.