Eugenica is probably both the most personal and most difficult book that I have written to date. I think it began life as a simple idea of a group of young people trying to escape from a seemingly impossible prison and the one thing that linked them all was that they were disabled. There was nothing else associated with the idea other than that they would be their own saviours. In hindsight I can see how that idea led to me revisiting the subject of eugenics. In the early part of the 20th century the idea that the human race could be made better through selective breeding was actually proving quite popular. It did not take long, however, for a very negative version of eugenics to arise, one that proposed that a reduction in the number of the undesirable peoples was the quickest way to achieving the eugenic goal. This version became known as dysgenics and it is mostly associated with the Nazi regime in Germany, but its origins can be found in other countries like Great Britain, United States of America, and Canada. The Nazis were the ones who put dysgenics into practice to its fullest extent but that did not mean that the other countries were not interested in doing the same. This was one of the themes that I wanted to explore so as to be able to inform the reader on the subject of eugenics and how good intentions can so easily lead to hell.
As I am disabled myself, I had plenty of personal experiences to use in the book. Sometimes this proved painful, but I felt that it was necessary to achieve a degree of both truth and integrity in the telling of the tale. Each of the young protagonists have a disability and each has a variety of coping strategies that allow them to deal with the problems that they encounter. None of them are pitiful creatures who must rely on others for anything. I really wanted to break the mould of disabled characters in literature.
At its heart, Eugenica is an adventure story, but I realised that I also needed to have a second story that would allow me to explain what eugenics was, its history, development, aims, and its descent into dysgenics. This was the first time where I had to write two different stories in one book. I opted for the idea of having an extraordinary international conference on eugenics aboard an airship. There were two reasons for this, first, such international conferences were actually held on this subject, and second, I thought writing about an airship would be cool! There was a third reason also, it allowed me to bring in several famous people of the time who were genuinely interested in the subject. One of the technical problems this gave me was how to structure the chapters so that they ran in a logical manner and maintained the interest of the reader. To date no one has expressed any difficulty in doing this, so I think that I got it right.
When my wife read the draft, she commented that it had descended into a very dark place and that it needed to rise up to something more positive. She was absolutely right. The book is about the human spirit in adversity. When Grace, Tom, Henry, and Mary find themselves incarcerated in an asylum for those not considered to be fit to mix with the general population outside they realise that they need to escape to survive, which took me neatly back to the original idea for this book. It was only when they did this that the real adventure elements could be introduced, and I very much enjoyed writing them too! Eugenics is a dark subject, but it is still as valid a topic today as it was in the 1930's. My book is written to be provocative and informative, not to mention to give people with disabilities an opportunity to shine in the spotlight, not as pathetic Tiny Tims or twisted King Richards, but as real people who can demonstrate the best of human qualities in the worst of human made situations.
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