David Spicer

I’m Dave Spicer, author of the new novel DEADLY FREEDOM.

Imagine a world that has severed its dependence on fossil fuels, reducing the value of imported oil to nearly zero. Then imagine the geopolitical ramifications of that event. How would the oil companies react? How would the OPEC countries react at the loss of trillions of dollars? How would every industrialized nation behave given this new-found freedom? This is the world that Doc Davidson and his team of USF researchers have triggered and now they have to deal with the consequences.

As a novel, DEADLY FREEDOM is a fictional story, but the science it describes is not. The story traces our fall into oil addiction back to 1946 and the demise of our clean and efficient electric trains/trolleys in favor of gasoline-powered buses when these routes were purchased by General Motors and Standard Oil.

I trace my interest in writing this story to September 11, 2001 when, like many families, my wife, daughters, and some of their friends gathered at our house to watch the hour-after-hour televised destruction of our financial and military infrastructure. Dads are always looked to for answers in times like those, but this dad didn’t have a clue. Who was Al Qaeda? What had happened to provoke this attack? After watching events in the Middle East unfold for years, the specter of terrorism had finally struck on our shores. How could we possibly defeat such an amorphous threat?

Thus began my research into terrorism, wars purported to defeat it, and an ever-increasing set of issue that confront us every day, including: our weakening dollar and economy, choking environment, diminished primary and secondary education systems, and our rapidly increasing cost of energy. Of these issues, one stood out—energy. By solving the energy problem, which is our addiction to oil for its energy content, we will have addressed the root cause of the other issues. Clearly we needed to find an alternative to fossil fuels but there are about 100 various combinations and permutations of energy sources, distribution, and utilization that would eliminate our dependence on oil—most of which crumble under objective analysis.

My fictional team of Doc Davidson and his researchers at the University of South Florida finally cracked the code of this Rubik’s cube-like problem. Their answer: an Electric Economy.

I’ve created a DEADLY FREEDOM companion blog site to discuss the book and what the book is about. I welcome your questions. I also welcome your answers if they differ from Doc’s research.

I’ve had some readers tell me the book is prophetic. Others have said it’s a sign…