Judy Backhouse writes optimistic science fiction to explore better futures for humankind and planet Earth.
Before we can bring about better futures they have to be imagined, to enter the domain of the possible. Stories are a way to adjust the possibility horizon, expand our minds.
Judy is retired from a long career in which she designed and built information systems and researched electronic governance at the United Nations University.
Having earnestly pursued truth and explored the limits of evidence-based knowledge, she now (in the words of the immortal Le Guin) makes stuff up.
Shira, researcher and weaver, enjoys a life of unfettered creativity in the hyper-dense city of Jozi in Eurafrica; a life made possible by innovations that removed the burden of birth and child-raising. Shira is conducting an unorthodox experiment. On the other side of the planet, Lucot is trying to modernise birthing practices in the unevolved Americas.
A depressed creative, a concerned brother, a contrite creature. Is it possible to communicate across species, time-scales and ways of being to forgive past mistakes and get back to making a better world?