Retired Engineer Richard Cutler Turns Sci-Fi Debut into Four-Book Series

By Daniel Okafor

Richard Cutler began writing his science fiction novel Course Correction in 2000, the year he retired from engineering. Twenty years later, its pandemic plotline reads like prophecy. It wasn't.

The premise: by 2085, overpopulation pushes Earth to launch a fleet of starships toward a new habitable planet, just as a recurrence of the Spanish Flu decimates the population back home. The starship passengers become humanity's last hope. Guiding them — quietly, and for generations — are aliens in jet packs that resemble angel wings.

Cutler, a Rochester resident and former town selectman, is blunt about the timing. "I asked what would happen if the Spanish Flu happened today," he said. "What kind of pandemic would that be? I'm also cynical on politics. If the population is going extinct or overpopulated, what would the politicians do?"

His answer, in the novel: nothing useful. Politicians send people out in starships on what he calls "a grand plan for someone else to implement." Half-baked, in other words.

Why write a fourth book?

Readers demanded it. Cutler published two sequels, Carbon Neutral and Altered Horizon, because people who liked the first one kept asking, "When's the next one?" A fourth book, Guided Destiny, is nearing completion, making it a four-book series. The sequels follow Earth's survivors through space exploration adventures with little support from their deteriorating home planet.

The angel-winged aliens carry the series' central question. "They are here to correct the course of mankind," Cutler said. "Mankind has a tendency to go off course. Could an outside influence be affecting mankind?"

From requisitions to speculation

Cutler spent his career as an engineer writing reports with no room for imagination. "I was writing reports and requisitions where I was not allowed freedom of thought," he said. "So, I wanted to write something where I could write a speculative story."

His influences are the classics — H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. His method is less classical: no outlines. He starts with a premise and lets it drift where it wants, rather like his aliens steering mankind. "All my stories are 'What Ifs,'" he said. "They are there to make people think."

He takes that argument on the road, giving talks at local libraries — not about his books, but about the misconception that science fiction is more speculation than fact. "Jules Verne has us go to the moon in the 1800s," he said. "Fiction can become fact."

Who is Richard Cutler?

The novelist's day job, so to speak, was civic service. Cutler has served Rochester for decades on the select board, the Zoning Board of Appeals, the Memorial School Building Committee, the Town Master Plan Committee, the Open Space Committee and the COA Certification Committee — twice. "And probably some other stuff I don't remember," he said.

As for why he writes it at all: "It's fun to write and take these obscure ideas and just put them together," he said. "My mind can go off on its own different direction. That's my primary reason. But it's also to have fun. Make people think."

The books are published by Briley & Baxter Publications and available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Booksamillion. With Guided Destiny close to done, the retired engineer's second career shows no signs of winding down — no outline required.