A Coffee With… Greg Mosse, author

It seems like climate change has fallen further down the political agenda recently, despite the fact that many nations are experiencing increasingly extreme weather.

But the arts continue to tackle the subject, with contemporary novelists from Margaret Atwood to Amitav Ghosh coining a new type of science-fiction, “climate fiction” – or “cli-fi.

Greg Mosse’s climate change debut The Coming Darkness was a Sunday Times Thriller of 2022, a Waterstones Thriller of the Month 2022, and lauded by authors including Anthony Horowitz and Lee Child. The third book in Greg’s cli-fi series, The Coming Fire, was published on 17^th July.

Mosse sat down with TI over a coffee to discuss AI, climate change, and the role tech can play in addressing it.

Let’s go back for a moment – how did you end up becoming a novelist?

Well, I was a playwright first. But during the COVID lockdowns, performing and theatre became illegal overnight. So I sat down in the corner of my office – same chair, same process – and just wrote longer stories. A play’s about 20,000 words; a thriller is closer to 100,000. So it’s five times longer, but I had zero distractions. It balanced out.

Where do you sit on AI? Especially as a writer.

I’m cautious. A friend of ours, [thriller writer] Val McDermid, found someone selling an AI-generated book “in the style of Val McDermid” on Kindle. It was ridiculous, but more importantly, it was theft. There’s a vast archive of public domain material you can train language models on. You don’t need to steal living authors’ work.

You’ve mentioned “theft” and “creativity” – do you feel tech can threaten storytelling too?

Absolutely. We need safeguards. I was recently talking to someone who couldn’t turn on their heating because the smart system wouldn’t talk to their phone – and there was no physical thermostat as backup. That’s madness.

That same overreliance on systems is a theme in my latest book. In The Coming Fire, there’s a subplot about an AI-powered ship control system responding logically to unforeseen circumstances – with catastrophic results. It’s not evil, it’s just… unprepared. And that’s the point: AI doesn’t understand context or morality. It can fail, sometimes badly.

There’s this assumption that AI-generated content is somehow “discovered” or “invented.” But as the neuroscientist Anil Seth once told me, what AI really does is calculate statistical averages. It’s not intelligent – it’s arithmetic.

Do you use AI in your own writing at all?

No, not in the actual creative writing. But I’m curious about the intersection between narrative and visual storytelling. I’m wondering if a short story I’ve written could become the prompt for a visual diorama – a sequence of AI-generated scenes that complement an audiobook experience. For someone on a train or in transit, that could be a new way to experience a story. So I’m watching that space closely.

Let’s talk about the Alexandre Lamarque trilogy – it touches on climate, hyperconnectivity, and tech infrastructure. Was that always the plan?

Initially, I set the story in 2048 as a homage to 1984, but that felt too far away. I wanted it to feel urgent. So I brought it back to 2037 – close enough that readers could recognize our world, far enough that I could extrapolate real climate and tech forecasts.

The books are very much a pushback against complacency. Some people now acknowledge climate change but dismiss its urgency: “Let the future sort itself out.” My novels challenge that.

I wanted to explore the idea that hyperconnectivity could actually help – if we connect renewable resources from around the globe, coordinated by a benign intelligence, maybe we could eliminate the need for fossil fuels. But that same system could be oppressive, too. That tension sits at the heart of the trilogy.

Your protagonist, Alex Lamarque, is in the French intelligence services. How did your own background influence that character?

Alex is a man caught between duty and doubt. He doesn’t know if his orders are malign or benign, but he acts anyway – and that tension defines him. I relate to that fish-out-of-water feeling. I’ve lived in Paris, the U.S., Australia – places where I was the outsider. That perspective informs how I write characters.

And Alex sees what the systems can’t – he understands when intelligence has been corrupted. He perceives things beyond the algorithm. That’s a central theme: what happens when the AI gets it wrong, and only a human can see why.

What role should technology play in addressing climate change?

Tech has massive potential. Imagine connecting geothermal from Iceland, wave power from Patagonia, pumped hydro from Israel, solar from North Africa – all coordinated in real-time by a central intelligence. That’s the dream. That’s what Alex sees in The Coming Fire.

But here’s the problem: a system powerful enough to coordinate that is also powerful enough to become oppressive. It’s a balance between global cooperation and individual freedom – and we’re nowhere near solving that yet.

You’re clearly comfortable with technology – is that something that’s always been the case?

I think so. Just recently, I was at the University of Portsmouth’s XR Creative Industries Centre. My wife, the novelist Kate Mosse, was captured in a volumetric studio – 32 high-speed HD cameras – so we can insert her 3D holographic self into a mixed-reality experience for one of her short stories. It’s immersive, it’s creative, and it blends analogue and digital storytelling in a way that really excites me.

How do you normally take your coffee?

It’s very simple. I get up at 6:30 a.m., head to the kettle, and make two massive mugs of Nescafé Gold Blend with oat milk – these are about two-thirds of a pint each. I take them upstairs to my study and that’s me set for an hour and a half of writing. Sometimes I end up drinking them cold because I haven’t moved for two hours!

Greg Mosse’s latest novel, The Coming Fire, is out now.