The future is in the stars.

You might have heard the songs "My Demons" or "Monster." But what you might not know is that these songs are just very small cogs in a larger machine, a multimedia sci-fi narrative story created by cinematic rock band Starset. For the band, music is just one part of their overarching goal. As part of a fictional organization called "The Starset Society," their hopes are to inform humanity on the rapidly advancing fields of science and technology, and the influence that those can have on the future of mankind, from a personal, societal and political standpoint.

RELATED: Starset Singer Teams With Marvel, Peter David For Graphic Novel

At the heart of The Starset Society is a story -- a science-fiction adventure that stretches from the days of Nikola Tesla, to the present and the future of mankind, as a society now living far away from Earth on the planet Prox. Through their engaging music, their fascinating, movie-like videos, their one-of-a-kind "demonstrations" and their highly detailed websites, Starset has begun its worldwide public outreach.

But that's only the beginning. The next phase of their plans is a partnership with Marvel, who have released the graphic novel The Prox Transmissions, co-written by legendary comic book writer Peter David (known for storied runs on series like The Incredible Hulk, and currently of Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider) and illustrated by artists including Mirko Colak, Andrea Broccardo, Manuel Garcia, Marco Lorenzana and Tom Grummett. It's adapted from a novel written by Starset founder and front man Dustin Bates, which tells the story of Dr. Stephen Browning, who picks up a radio transmission that comes from the future. Unwittingly immersed in a vast conspiracy and a race against time, Browning has in his hands the capacity to change the course of human history.

Himself a PhD candidate in electrical engineering, Bates, who was once a teacher at the International Space University in France and who also did research for the United States Air Force, is no stranger to the fields of science and technology. The singer, writer and leader of this unprecedented movement talked to CBR about the release of his upcoming graphic novel, the full scope of the Starset narrative, and the very real potential dangers in the advancement of technology.

CBR: So Dustin, the release of your graphic novel, The Prox Transmissions, is fast-approaching. Are you excited for it to be released?

Dustin Bates: Yeah, I absolutely am. We're getting to do things I've never done before. We're hitting comic book stores in every city that we play in, and even along the way. I'm really excited to see all the comic book stores around the US. I think it's going to be an awesome vibe.

How is it to see your vision come to life, illustrated by these great artists like Mirko Colan, Skan and others?

It's amazing. As the pages were rolling in, right off the bat I was blown away at the quality. It's inescapably Marvel. And that's so cool.

Your music video for “Halo” also tells a little bit of the story of this graphic novel.

Yeah, “Halo” and “My Demons,” they all touch on it. But this is the inception story of The Starset Society.

Legendary comics writer Peter David co-wrote the adaptation. How was it working with him?

Yeah. He adapted a lot of the text and dialogue. You, know it's a funny story. When I first decided that I was going to write comics, I bought books, and that main one on writing a comic was written by Peter David. And then to find out I would be working with him, it was crazy.

Is it safe to say that the graphic novel is a literal adaptation of your novel, or is there more to find in the actual book itself?

Yeah, it's very closely adapted from the novel, but the novel incorporates much, much more details, so I think it's cool the start with the graphic novel. But the novel really is the full experience.

But anyone can walk into their local comic shop, know nothing of Starset or The Starset Society, read the graphic novel and get a full story out of it, yes?

Yeah absolutely, it has a full story arc. It isn't the entire story, however. There's at least a trilogy. The second one is already structured and it's pretty amazing. But yeah, [this first one] tells the entirety of the inception story of The Starset Society. And, then, there will be websites that will be up within three weeks that take it even further, for a further immersion, explaining our scientific goals, science and technological outreach goals, and also furthering the sci-fi narrative experience.

Diving into the story of The Prox Transmissions a little, I was curious as to the choice of having it start on New Year's Eve. Is this a metaphor of mankind being on the verge of the start of something new, the eve of a new start, or could it also be seen as the start of a new cosmic calendar?

Oh that's an interesting question. I think, when I first set out and started writing it, it worked into the narrative of the voyager, which is explored a lot more in the actual novel. But I think inherently I really liked it, when I started writing it, because it does have that sort of, there's a certain vibe that happens on New Year's Eve, and then New Year's Day. And, yeah, it might be a little metaphoric.

The graphic novel moves at a fast pace, like any great thriller would, but much sooner than you'd expect, the story takes quite the unexpected sci-fi turn. The Startset Society was founded to help mankind see the potential in science, both the good, and the dangerous. Would it be fair to say that The Prox Transmissions is a cautionary tale in both regards?

Yes, absolutely. As you touched on, Starset Society is looking at science tech and how it's changing the present and near future, positively and negatively, in many different ways. And The Prox Transmissions looks at a few of those technologies and takes them to their hyperbolic extent. I think the goal is to help us see the changes that we're experiencing in our own times. The Everything Machine, from the graphic novel [a sort of high-tech 3D machine than can print anything], represents the singularity of production -- everything can be produced with zero labor and so there's a two-sided coin to that. It's like a utopia of endless production, but people lose their purpose and lose their jobs, since there's no laborers required. So how do we approach that?

It's not to say that that will ever come to be, a sort of 3D printer which can print anything, but we are approaching that singularity every day as things become more and more automated and people are losing their jobs and entire sectors of the labor force is changing. So, one thing to another, eventually even the service jobs could become under threat. You know Uber, for instance, has brought on a million jobs probably -- I have no idea what the figure is, really -- and those jobs are going to go away once Uber's cars are self-driving, which they're working tirelessly on. And our community leaders and politicians, I don't see them addressing this to the extent that they should. Instead, we're looking at boogeymen. Both sides of the political spectrum are blaming others when this is one of the greatest drivers. And we need to just ask those questions, and be aware of it.

Is the Everything Machine the same glimpsed at in the video for your song "Telepathic"?

Yes actually, or rather, a version of it. I don't want to give away the ending of The Prox Transmissions but yeah, there is something hinted at for how the Everything Machine can be used in a novel way for very rapid space travel or space colonization. An offshoot of that version of the Everything Machine is certainly the inspiration for the “Telepathic” video.

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While avoiding the ending of The Prox Transmissions, I wanted to ask you, do you believe that the soul exists on an atomic level?

Well there's a thought experiment for that. If you were to scan a human being down to the atom, and then print them, atom by atom, and then they are an atomic mirror image -- an atomic replication, literally down to the atom -- would the consciousness be shared? And I'd like to say yes, because writing that way it gets a lot more Stephen King-ish. But scientifically, you would think that no, the original would have consciousness, and the printed one would have an essentially exact consciousness, because they would be the same structure, but separated.

From that instantaneous point they would share experiences and memories, and they would be unique. They would start to diverge from that point. But in the short term they would be so identical in their thinking until they had different outside input, that it would look like telepathy. And this is really one of the reasons that the “Telepathic” video exists in the way it did. There's a lot of interesting things that can be garnered from that, but no my thinking is that there are probably a few cells that really are the center of consciousness and even if we can learn to emulate brains and then upload them into computers, the consciousness won't reside there -- the exact consciousness. If you want to live forever, you couldn't just emulate your brain and upload it into a computer. Those magical cells would have to somehow be incorporated into the system.

There's also a fascinating sequence in the graphic novel, one which likens the state of politics and society to a game of Monopoly. It's a fascinating yet very simple way to illustrate the current state of our world. With everything that is going on in our current geopolitical climate, it would appear that this graphic novel comes, one would hope, at exactly the right time. Was this one of your goals, to have it speak to society as a whole?

Oh, absolutely. I remember the moment I came up with that metaphor and I shot out of bed -- it was maybe 4 a.m.

I'm glad that you like it. I think some people will think of it as an attack on capitalism or a pro-socialist thing, and it's certainly not that. It is a look at capitalism and an understanding that it has faults at either of its ends, at its beginnings and at its ends. And it does not work when it reaches those ends. It works amazingly in the middle. It truly is the best system that we've ever designed, but only in that middle of its operation. Once it gets to the fringe, it tends to spiral out of control and really when you play the game all the way to the end, it's hard to see it as any different than feudalism.

Starset-band

In this narrative that you've constructed, when you go look back at your videos, or listen to your albums Transmissions and Vessels, and now with The Prox Transmissions, it feels like we get more pieces of a puzzle with every new thing you release.

Yes.

For example, the video for your song “Halo” takes place in 2044, which is three years before the signal is sent. Same for “Carnivore,” which takes place in 2035; a little earlier. Is there potential for stories set in those time periods?

Yes. Those are representation of pieces of those eras in the Thomas Bell timeline, the very initial timeline of the man who sent the warning back. And the amazing part is that that warning was received, and it changed the future. And now we're on a new timeline. So what does the future hold for us in this new timeline? That's what's to be explored going further.

So we're definitely in a Back to the Future situation, where a new timeline is created, a new reality, instead of “everything that happened, happened.”

Yes, absolutely, and it's pretty drastic. Even “Monster,” although the “Monster” video doesn't have any specified era, and it gets a little praise-y in its sci-fi aspects, it does play into the new timeline.

Yeah, I felt like the “Monster” video definitely had that basic idea of the addiction to technology and the world it creates, but also the individuality that you get from emerging out of that.

Absolutely.

With that in mind, is there any chance that we could go further back in time, and find out the origins of the Order of Teslonia?

Absolutely. I think... It's so fun for me to think about. You know, Nikola Tesla truly believed that he picked up an extraterrestrial signal in the year 1899, I believe, and he wrote about it. In The Prox Transmissions and the Starset Society narrative, he became obsessed with that and eventually picked up the Prox transmission in the year 1911 -- and it really picked up from there. They received it and saved it in the year 1945, when it came back around, and they were ready. That's one year after World War II, and it's such an interesting era. It could be really fun to explore that.

Starset-Transmissions-album

For the people who just walking into a comic or book store, get The Prox Transmissions, read it and fall in love with it, this is their way to jump into this broad universe and the multi-layered world of the Starset Society. Where would you direct those fans if they are looking to learn more about all of this? Would your albums Transmissions and Vessels be the first go-to pieces?

Yeah, the albums are a companion piece, especially Transmissions for this first graphic novel. It's actually the soundtrack to The Prox Transmissions. There's also starsetonline.com, the Starset website, and a very good source for what the Starset Society is in general is thestarsetsociety.org, which will be much more active in the coming weeks.

Obviously, your albums are more metaphorical pieces, but there's also a piece of the story to them. Like you said Transmissions is the soundtrack to the graphic novel, but I also feel like its follow-up, Vessels, would precede Transmissions, timeline-wise. Would that be a fair assessment?

Oh, in a way, certainly. Transmissions lived in the year 2047, essentially in the original timeline, and Vessels is moving forward towards that era, but under a changed universe, essentially. So yeah, if you get that perception that's definitely understandable.

It's also because Vessels feels more introspective and it feels more human.

Yeah, there's certainly a human element to it. It's a specific journey in a more intimate way, I believe.

Starset and The Starset Society were partially founded on the idea that “Ignorance leads to slavery and knowledge leads to freedom.” Based on this principle, are you hoping that this graphic novel could inspire readers to find out more about the subjects of science, technology and society?

Yeah. Look we understand that we try to entertain first, and we understand that the likely majority is going to take it on a surface level. But we hope. We've designed an infrastructure so that people who want to take it further can take it further in an entertaining way, but that they can also take it further in an educational way. And that's what all the things we have built are building towards. We really hope that, even if it's a small percentage of people, we really hope that we can inspire them, for sure.

And finally, what's next for Starset, and you personally?

Well, we just embarked on another tour. I'm working on a side-project, something I've been working on for a while, and we're always improving our live shows. We're making new content to put out there, promoting this Marvel comic, working with the Starset Society on its scientific outreach. Tons of things!

The Prox Transmissions is available now from Marvel.