Liquid Fear: Bioethics and the healing/killing urge - Scott Nicholson & Giveaway

Author Scott Nicholson is back to talk about his latest release, and the research behind Liquid Fear.


Liquid Fear: Bioethics and the healing/killing urge

By Scott Nicholson

I tend to get my ideas from strange places and lucky accidents, usually when a couple of interests collide. Several years ago when I first got the idea for the mystery thriller that became Liquid Fear (launching at the sale price of 99 cents at Amazon, BN.com, and Smashwords), I was researching the use of new pharmaceutical drugs designed to help people “forget” their trauma.

The theory was that people suffering post-traumatic stress disorder could be cured if the event that caused the stress was erased from their memories. I ordered a government book from the President’s Council on Bioethics where they’d debated the moral implications of the “pursuit of happiness” using artificial methods.

Of course, anyone who has fired up a doobie, knocked back a few Long Island Iced Teas, or guzzled a few shots of espresso knows all about the artificial pursuit of happiness by changing one’s mood or mind. But those are personal choices. What happens when it’s a policy choice, a common protocol of treatment decided upon by psychiatrists or family doctors? What if it became a government policy?

You can see where that is headed: a government deciding what should be forgotten, or which people should be forgetting things.

That research was combined with my on-going fascination with the mechanisms that lead a people, country, or race to genocide. That sort of tribalism is so easily exploited, whether you use patriotism, religion, or “fear of the other” tactics to further a bloody agenda. This is most crystallized to me in the Nazi death camps, where doctors were the ones in charge of slaughtering millions. In Liquid Fear, I had to reduce it to one “mad doctor,” because I didn’t want to go to the sale of widespread conspiracy, but ideology is also a danger to our collective goodwill and individuality.

Maybe that’s all too much for what is essentially an entertaining joy ride, but I hope you take the trip into my novel and face your worst fears for yourself. Don’t worry, I’ll be right there with you!

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Scott Nicholson is author of 20 books, including Disintegration, The Skull Ring, The Red Church, and Speed Dating with the Dead. Visit him at Haunted Computer.

Thank you so much for being here today, Scott. Love that post! 

Giveaway

Scott has graciously provided Lost For Words with a signed copy of Thank You for the Flowers for giveaway. Thank you, Scott!

The signed book is available to those in the US only, however the giveaway is open INTERNATIONALLY. If the winner is overseas they will win an E-copy of the book! 


The giveaway ends April 14, 2011. 

Please fill out this FORM to enter. Comments, while appreciated will not be counted as entries. 

Thank you!