Ep67: Futurist Richard Smith brings us the new Clifi Technothriller, WhiteGrass: “We call it ‘Climate Change,’ because it’s not just the heat.”

Meet the Author: Richard H. Smith, MSc., is a futurist, technologist, and science policy expert whose career spans more than 30 years at the forefront of emerging technology and strategic forecasting. He has worked alongside scientists, engineers, Fortune 50 companies, and U.S. and international governments on issues ranging from nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to healthcare innovation and climate change.

Richard has served as a research director at a major university medical center, founded multiple technology companies, and advised organizations on how disruptive technologies reshape societies, markets, and governance. He was formally trained in climate change science by Al Gore and continues to teach courses on sea-level rise and climate futures.

Raised in Virginia, he built his professional life while raising a family—an experience that deeply influences the emotional stakes of his fiction. He now resides in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, a coastal community already experiencing the effects of rising seas and intensifying storms.

“WhiteGrass,” by Richard Smith

WhiteGrass is his first full-length novel and represents the culmination of his professional and personal journey. It is paired with a prequel, The Iliad Virus, with a sequel, Icarus Rising, currently in development.

He writes with a clear purpose: To explore the real consequences of climate change, the moral risks of advanced technology, and the uncomfortable truth that saving the world may require confronting who controls it.

About the Book: 2048. The climate is collapsing. Power is consolidating. Humanity is running out of time. After a devastating superstorm nearly kills their family, teenagers Jimmy and Lizzie Marshall push their father, nanoscientist Greg Marshall, to release WhiteGrass—a revolutionary nanotechnology capable of removing carbon from the atmosphere at a planetary scale.

WhiteGrass could reverse climate change. It could also grant absolute power to whoever controls it.

With his wife Ginny, a leading AI expert, Greg reprograms the world’s most advanced humanoid android, Valada, to help safeguard the technology. Designed as property, Valada begins to evolve—developing emotional awareness, moral reasoning, and a conscience that challenges the very definition of humanity.

As global systems fracture, a shadowy alliance of political leaders, corporations, and oligarchs moves to seize WhiteGrass by any means necessary. Surveillance closes in. Violence escalates. A rival android is deployed.

Now the Marshalls must fight not only to protect the technology—but to save each other. “We call it ‘Climate Change,’ because it’s not just the heat.” Click here to buy WhiteGrass.

Bestselling thriller novelist Jeffrey James Higgins, host, Elaine’s Literary Salon