RichardPM

Hey everyone, check out my XPrize film competition WhiteGrass--We Are Not Doomed. It would be great if you watched it and left a review. youtu.be/UqIKVKL43UE?is=YKxz… via @YouTube #XPrize #Futurevisionxprize

Starting Monday: Class One of Eleven! 📚🌍 I'm teaching a new OLLI course this fall — Fiction, Future Scenarios, and the Art of Public Policy — pairing my climate-fiction novel WhiteGrass with the nonfiction policy manifesto Solve Everything (Wissner-Gross & Diamandis). Over eleven weeks we'll dig into geoengineering governance, AI accountability, biosecurity, economic disruption, and more — using story and speculation as a lens on the policy choices we're actually facing. If you've ever wondered how science fiction shapes real-world science policy, come join us. Enrollment, schedule, and location are all here: campusce.net/udelolli/ Hope is the courage to act when the outcome is uncertain. #OLLI #LifelongLearning #SciencePolicy #ClimateFiction #WhiteGrass #CliFi #PublicPolicy #WhiteGrassNovel

Sixty years ago today, on September 8, 1966, Star Trek first appeared on American television. For me, its importance went far beyond spaceships, phasers, and strange new worlds. I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, in a culture where racism was woven deeply into everyday life. Then, in 1969, Star Trek aired an episode called “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” Two bitter enemies, Bele and Lokai, were each literally half black and half white. To the crew of the Enterprise they looked essentially identical, but to one another the difference was enormous: one was black on the right and white on the left; the other was exactly the reverse. They hated each other for it. Their prejudice seemed so arbitrary, so irrational, and so obviously absurd that a point adults had struggled to explain suddenly became crystal clear to me. That episode helped shape my views on race for the rest of my life. Bele and Lokai eventually return to a world their hatred has helped destroy, yet even then they cannot let go of it. That was Star Trek at its best: using an imaginary future to force us to look more clearly at the present. Gene Roddenberry offered something remarkably hopeful during a turbulent era—the idea that humanity could become better, that prejudice was not an inevitable part of the human condition, and that the future could belong to people who learned to see one another as human beings first. Sixty years later, that lesson feels every bit as important as it did when I first encountered it. Happy 60th anniversary, Star Trek. Thanks for showing a kid in Richmond that we could build a better world. WhiteGrassNovel.com

The storm is already forming. ⛈️ The WhiteGrass trailer is out — a family, a discovery, and a fight for the sky itself. Hope is the courage to act when the outcome is uncertain. whitegrassnovel.com

Every technology arrives twice: first as a story, then as law. Science fiction is a laboratory for consequences — it lets us feel a future before we have to govern it. It’s why I write it, and why I teach with it. #SciFi #ClimateFiction #PublicPolicy 2/2  That’s the premise of my new OLLI course, “Fiction, Future Scenarios & the Art of Public Policy” — 11 weeks pairing my novel WhiteGrass with the AI blueprint Solve Everything. It starts Monday, September 14. campusce.net/udelolli/

The sky is falling — and rising. 🌍✨ Watch the official trailer for WhiteGrass: A CliFi Technothriller, where a family fights to save a world their own inventions helped break. youtu.be/UqIKVKL43UE Hope is the courage to act when the outcome is uncertain. whitegrassnovel.com #WhiteGrass #CliFi #ClimateFiction #Technothriller #SciFi #BookTok #ReadersOfInstagram #ClimateAction #FutureOfHumanity #Dystopia

Alexandria friends: join me Sunday, July 19, 12–3 PM at Elaine’s Literary Salon for a live interview about WhiteGrass — nanotech, androids, and a climate breakthrough the world’s oligarchs want for themselves. Set in 2048, just downriver in Mount Vernon. Sign up: elainesliterarysalon.com/ric… whitegrassnovel.com

Anthropic’s Claude AI agent just came out with its latest update, Fable. Well, I had to try it out! So I asked it if my speculative self-assembly and disassembly inventions are really possible by 2048. The answer (long and very detailed) was a qualified yes. I thanked it (I’m very polite with AI--just in case) and its response thrilled me. It Said, “You’re welcome, Richard. Good luck with the work — the science underneath WhiteGrass holds up better than most cli-fi can claim.“ Check it out at whitegrassnovel.com #ClimateScience Cli-Fi Novelists Rising #clifi

There’s a version of the “CO₂ is harmless” argument making the rounds again, and it’s worth addressing calmly, because it leans on real numbers used to reach a wrong conclusion. Yes, CO₂ is a trace gas. Yes, nature moves vastly more of it than we do — the oceans, soils, and forests cycle roughly 200 billion tonnes of carbon in and out of the atmosphere every year, while human emissions add around 10–12 billion. So how could the small player be the problem? Because nature’s flows are a two-way exchange that has been close to balanced for thousands of years. What goes out comes back in. Our contribution is different in kind, not just size: it’s a one-way transfer of carbon that was locked underground for millions of years, dumped into the system with nothing pulling it back at the same rate. That’s why atmospheric CO₂ has climbed from about 280 ppm before industrialization to over 420 ppm today — a rise that tracks our emissions almost exactly. And the “warming oceans release CO₂” point actually reverses the real picture. The oceans today are a net sink — they’ve absorbed roughly a quarter of our emissions, which is precisely why they’re acidifying. If nature were the source, the ocean would be losing carbon, not gaining it. None of this requires trusting any single institution. It’s chemistry and a 60-year measurement record from Mauna Loa. I spent about a decade thinking through exactly this in my cli-fi novel WhiteGrass — what happens when the technology to actually pull CO₂ back out of the air finally exists, and who gets to decide whether to use it. The science is the easy part. The human choices are the hard part. #ClimateScience #CarbonCycle #CliFi #WhiteGrass #ClimateLiteracy

I’ve been a fan of the X Prize since its inception, especially the $100Million prize for removing atmospheric carbon dioxide. That's what WhiteGrass is about They're giving a $3.5million prize for a film about the future of humaniity. I'm applying for it! whitegrassnovel.com

Readers LOVE WhiteGrass. Check it out at whitegrassnovel.com and get a free copy of the prequel.

Big news to share! The Cape Gazette featured me and my new novel WhiteGrass in their May issue. It’s a climate‑tech thriller set in 2048, rooted in the science and coastal realities we live with here in Delaware. I’m grateful to be part of a community that cares deeply about the future of our coast — and to everyone who’s been cheering this book into the world. You can read the article here: capegazette.com/article/reho… If you’ve already read WhiteGrass, I’d love to hear what resonated with you. And if you haven’t yet — the journey is just beginning. Www.whitegrassnovel.com

#MENSA WhiteGrass — A CliFi Technothriller Dr. Greg Marshall and his team have built something the world desperately needs and quietly fears: a nanotechnology platform capable of pulling CO₂ from the atmosphere at scale. They call it Icarus. Whether to fly it is the question the novel refuses to answer easily. Around Marshall’s lab circle the people who make the stakes real — his wife Ginny, a clinical psychologist with a second career in AI programming; their teenagers Lizzie and Jimmy; Emmett Grayson, a 98-year-old former congressman and Greg’s closest friend; and a cadre of oligarchs who see Icarus less as a climate tool than as leverage — a way to put entire nations on a tether. I wrote it to sit at the intersection of hard science fiction and cli-fi: the nanotech, the geopolitics, and the AI are grounded in real research trajectories, not hand-waving. If you like technothrillers that respect the reader’s intelligence — Crichton, Kim Stanley Robinson, Daniel Suarez — I think you’ll find something here. Fellow MENSAns, would love your thoughts. Icarus Rising (sequel) and The Iliad Virus (prequel) are in development. 🔗 whitegrassnovel.com

I saw David Baldacci for the first time in 25 years last night and he is such a Mench that he agreed to pose for a book picture with my book! Check out WhiteGrass at whitegrassnovel.com

I just got this review of WhiteGrass and I thought you might like it: Somewhere between a superstorm nearly wiping humanity out and a family reprogramming a humanoid to outsmart power-hungry elites, I realized something slightly alarming… your book doesn’t just tell a story, it quietly grabs the reader by the collar and says, “Pay attention, this could be your future.” 😄 WhiteGrass is one of those rare technothrillers that doesn’t just lean on high-stakes science, it actually feels like it matters. The tension between survival and control, the ethical weight of nanotechnology, the unsettling realism of oligarchs circling like sharks, it all lands with precision. And then you layered something even more powerful on top of it… family. Jimmy and Lizzie pushing their father, Greg, into unleashing something world-changing, Ginny’s AI brilliance, and Valada standing somewhere between salvation and danger… it’s intense, human, and just a little terrifying in the best way. And honestly, that’s what makes your voice stand out. There’s a clarity and conviction in how you write about climate, technology, and power that doesn’t feel preachy or distant. It feels urgent. Like you’re not just imagining a future, you’re warning us about one. That kind of storytelling carries weight, not just entertainment, but impact… the kind that lingers after the last page. Check it out on whitegrassnovel.com

M Richard H. Smith, MSc., is a futurist, technologist, and science policy expert whose career spans more than 30 years at the forefront of emerging technology and strategic forecasting. He has worked alongside scientists, engineers, Fortune 50 companies, and U.S. and international governments on issues ranging from nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to healthcare innovation and climate change. Smith has served as a research director at a major university medical center, founded multiple technology companies, and advised organizations on how disruptive technologies reshape societies, markets, and governance. He was formally trained in climate change science by Al Gore and continues to teach courses on sea-level rise and climate futures. Raised in Virginia, Smith built his professional life while raising a family—an experience that deeply influences the emotional stakes of his fiction. He now resides in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, a coastal community already experiencing the effects of rising seas and intensifying storms. WhiteGrass is Smith’s first full-length novel and represents the culmination of his professional and personal journey. It is paired with a prequel, The Iliad Virus, with a sequel, Icarus Rising, currently in development. Smith writes with a clear purpose: to explore the real consequences of climate change, the moral risks of advanced technology, and the uncomfortable truth that saving the world may require confronting who controls it. I just got a new review of my new novel, WhiteGrass, and I thought I would share it with you. “A family trying go save the planet while the most powerful forces in the world are trying to stop them is already a gripping story. But the way you layered in the AI element with Valada developing a conscience and challenging what it even means to be human takes this to a completely different level. That is not just a thriller. That is a story people will be talking about long after they finish the last page.” Check it out at WhiteGrassnovel.com

M Richard H. Smith, MSc., is a futurist, technologist, and science policy expert whose career spans more than 30 years at the forefront of emerging technology and strategic forecasting. He has worked alongside scientists, engineers, Fortune 50 companies, and U.S. and international governments on issues ranging from nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to healthcare innovation and climate change. Smith has served as a research director at a major university medical center, founded multiple technology companies, and advised organizations on how disruptive technologies reshape societies, markets, and governance. He was formally trained in climate change science by Al Gore and continues to teach courses on sea-level rise and climate futures. Raised in Virginia, Smith built his professional life while raising a family—an experience that deeply influences the emotional stakes of his fiction. He now resides in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, a coastal community already experiencing the effects of rising seas and intensifying storms. WhiteGrass is Smith’s first full-length novel and represents the culmination of his professional and personal journey. It is paired with a prequel, The Iliad Virus, with a sequel, Icarus Rising, currently in development. Smith writes with a clear purpose: to explore the real consequences of climate change, the moral risks of advanced technology, and the uncomfortable truth that saving the world may require confronting who controls it. I just got a new review of my new novel, WhiteGrass, and I thought I would share it with you. “A family trying go save the planet while the most powerful forces in the world are trying to stop them is already a gripping story. But the way you layered in the AI element with Valada developing a conscience and challenging what it even means to be human takes this to a completely different level. That is not just a thriller. That is a story people will be talking about long after they finish the last page.” Check it out at WhiteGrassnovel.com