Goodreads asked Mark McClelland:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Mark McClelland When I read Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines", I wanted to write about uploading a human consciousness to a computer. The singularity will be the biggest thing to hit this planet since DNA, and it may well happen in my lifetime. When I started writing "Upload", back in 1999, I felt like a lot of people were unaware of the very real potential for computer-based life to supplant biological humans at the top of the "food chain", and I wanted to write about it. The opportunity for compelling science fiction here is immense.

However, as a genre, science fiction frustrated me. Many of the stories and books I'd read lacked depth of character, and relied on world-building and unexpected plot twists to draw the reader in. I wanted to write a story that was heavily character driven, and would get me -- and the reader, hopefully -- really thinking about the psychological and philosophical impact of a future where our virtual lives have become more important to us than reality prime. I wanted a main character whose dream was to escape completely into a virtual existence, and saw uploading as a way to achieve that. From there, I sketched out lots of different possibilities, and eventually landed on a story I thought could be a good mix of fun-to-read and thought-provoking.

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