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<\/p>\nThe Deepest Fake
Daniel Kalla
Simon and Schuster<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there is such a thing as a typical day,\u201d Daniel Kalla confesses. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the things about being an ER doctor. No two days are the same for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not the whole story in Kalla\u2019s case. He can scarcely be called your \u201ctypical\u201d emergency room doctor \u2014 not when he\u2019s also found the time to write 16 cunningly crafted thrillers that enjoy a growing international following.<\/p>\n
So how does this Vancouver physician manage two contrasting careers? Kalla explains it this way: he\u2019s accustomed to the \u201cchaotic\u201d circumstances under which an ER doctor must work \u2014 \u201cand to be honest, my writing reflects that,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
At 59, he\u2019s no longer working full time in the ER. But when he does, \u201cI work a lot of time off hours, so it\u2019s often early morning or early afternoon that are the only times I\u2019m free to write. But it\u2019s never predictable. Sometimes I can go from a busy ER shift and start writing immediately if I feel I have the energy and have something to say.\u201d<\/p>\n
He cringes at the thought of ever having to choose between two such personally fulfilling professions.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy novels are all about suspense and driven by pace, and I\u2019ve learned a lot about that from the emergency room. I can write fast if under a self-imposed deadline and am feeling the pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
His latest novel, The Deepest Fake, certainly draws on his medical background, but it has a lot more on its mind as well. There\u2019s an elusive and deadly poison to be dealt with, the central character is coping with a terrifying terminal illness and his wife\u2019s infidelity while struggling to safeguard his pioneering AI company from sabotage \u2014 and the issue of medical assistance in dying will rear its head as well.<\/p>\n
But ultimately, Kalla is delivering a cautionary tale about the dangers of unfettered technology. The book\u2019s beleaguered hero, Liam Hirsch, is not only in near collapse because of his own crises, he\u2019s also being forced to question the integrity of the profession that means so much to him. Are the very technologies that he has helped enable \u2014 digital deception, deepfake imagery \u2014 turning into enemies? And do they signal a wider, even more ominous conspiracy?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m always looking for the right material to build a book on,\u201d Kalla says by phone from his West Coast home. \u201cArtificial intelligence is a subject exploding into the public consciousness, and I immediately realized that this is an incredibly rich topic, especially for a thriller. Incredible opportunities and horizons arise \u2026 but so do pitfalls and dangers.\u201d The Deepest Fake is very much a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Kalla enjoys giving the reader conflicted heroes \u2014 \u201ccharacters who are not black and white\u201d \u2014 and putting them through an arc. \u201cLiam is absolutely meant to be an AI pioneer and somewhat blind to the perils of it until it messes up his life in a deeply personal way. He\u2019s so hyper-focused on products they\u2019re producing that he\u2019s losing all objectivity when it comes to the potential dangers of what he\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
It takes \u201cthis incredible wake-up call of a terminal illness\u201d to bring Liam to his senses \u2014 but will it be too late? \u201cI really feel this is a redemption story having to do with his personal discovery of values and priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Kalla, the practice of medicine is a family business. \u201cI\u2019m a third-generation doctor.\u201d Vancouver\u2019s St. Paul\u2019s Hospital is central to his life story. \u201cMy grandfather, my mom and dad, my brother and I have all worked at St. Paul\u2019s and most of my emergency work has happened there.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for a writing career \u2014 well, in a sense it was always lurking in the background. \u201cWhen I was a youngster, I loved reading and storytelling, and then put it on the back burner to pursue a more sensible career as a doctor,\u201d he laughs. But he still wanted to write and after completing his medical training he enrolled in a night school course in screenwriting. \u201cI had a wonderful teacher who was very inspirational, and once I got the bug, I never stopped writing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the publication of his first novel, Pandemic, in 2005, Kalla has focused on a variety of topics that have engaged his inquiring mind \u2014 including diet pills, the opioid crisis, vaccine hesitancy and patient abuse. He has even ventured into historical fiction with his Far Side of the Sky trilogy, which deals with the little-known story of the 20,000 German Jews who escaped to the Chinese city of Shanghai during the Second World War.<\/p>\n
When COVID-19 came along, he found it unnerving because of the thrillers he had written about global infections: \u201cIt was art meeting life in a way I never wanted it to.\u201d<\/p>\n
These days, he finds it rewarding to find subject matter that allows for a successful fusion of story and character and enables him to \u201cexamine the difficult choices that people must make often under very bad circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
And what are the rewards of the two worlds he occupies?<\/p>\n
\u201cCreating and writing are deeply satisfying to me and my favourite thing is finishing my first draft and finding that the story worked and feeling a sense of completion,\u201d he says. \u201cThe sense of connecting with writers is great. With the ER it\u2019s the sense of doing a decent job often under difficult circumstances. We can\u2019t make a difference in everybody\u2019s life; we can\u2019t help everyone, but fortunately we can help some. To have the sense that you\u2019re contributing in some way is very rewarding. But in both cases there\u2019s satisfaction in completing something and challenging yourself, in being competent and passionate in what you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he also seeks to observe time-honoured mystery convention and keep the reader guessing until the book ends.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes,\u201d he confesses with a quiet laugh, \u201cI\u2019m even guessing myself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Deepest FakeDaniel KallaSimon and Schuster \u201cI don\u2019t think there is such a thing as a typical day,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,55734,88,55736,55735,55737],"class_list":{"0":"post-79044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-daniel-kalla","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-er-doctor","12":"tag-liam-hirsch","13":"tag-simon-and-schuster"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}