About the Book
The death of a promising anti-AI activist connects three separate stories that take place fifty years apart. One is about four talented people launching a startup company to build and sell an innovative high-tech entertainment experience. One follows a unique police detective who is tasked with resolving an odd case of an unnatural death of a human. And one is about a writer/producer who hopes to create a documentary show around important US Senate hearings. The mysterious case, ruled to be murder, is traced from its original causes, through the actual incident, and on to its ultimate results by the loosely related protagonists.
The complete truth is revealed through the perspectives of a scientist/philosopher in 2025, an investigator/Renaissance woman in 2075, and a storyteller/historian in 2125. Their experiences also offer separate glimpses into humanity’s evolving perception of artificial intelligence. First, AI is a promising technology, much as it is perceived today. Then AI is a transformative force that reshapes everyday life, as it may in the next few decades. Finally, AI is the de facto manager of society, as may be the case a century from now. Part mystery, part drama, and part speculative fiction, this novel explores what might happen when people are offered a synthetic reality where all their urges, be they emotional, sexual or intellectual, are fulfilled. Beware what you wish for, and the Unintended Consequences of wishes granted!
Background
Normally, I write my stories around some techie theme or a geopolitical event that I want to explore and share, like Russian access to high tech (Gold-Digger’s Daughter) or the on-shoring of semiconductor fabs (FA Confidential). This story evolved through a more tortuous path.
It started with my daughter suggesting that if I wanted to sell books, I should include much more sex in my stories. Probably because at the time, she and her friends were enjoying the My Dad Wrote a Porno podcast series. Given how everything nowadays seems to be about artificial intelligence, I thought a cool theme would be something about using AI to create “perfect porn.” People do that.
It did not take a lot of research to realize that (a) porn is often the lead user of new technologies, and (b) given its capabilities, AI would be — possibly already is — able to generate pornography customized to appeal to any taste. Porn stars made to look, sound and act exactly as per users’ fantasies. Throw in some technology that could synthesize a sense of touch — not that far-fetched — and it could be “perfect porn.” Irresistible.
Which made me wonder what the world would be like if technology were used to satisfy all our sexual desires. Given that sex is a basic hardwired instinct that occupies much of our psyche, especially among the younger adult males of our species, this seemed like a good setup for a sci-fi-ish story.
Then, as always, I dug into the technical theme, something I do to ensure a correct and factual background for my stories. Especially since AI is not close to my personal technical experience. I am a silicon chip hardware kind of guy, and AI seemed to me to be mostly a software thing. Perhaps inevitably, this research surfaced a slew of questions in my mind: the many possible positive and negative interactions between AI and our society, fears of AI putting us all out of work, concerns about AI-generated deepfakes, AI and synthesized biological weapons, and everything else that is talked about so earnestly these days. So the story morphed from AI-and-porn to AI-and-society.
Now, in general, I am an optimist who tends to see the best that any technology can offer. I believe that dystopian stories about a technology bringing an end to human society are as old as technology itself, and that they are typically rooted in our fear of things new and unknown, usually fueled by ignorance rather than fact. So I thought I would give my story a positive twist and assume that people and societies would act with the best of intentions, and that all the right things would happen in time to contain the worst of AI’s possible negative side effects. Realistically, we usually seem to. We have not blown up the world with our nuclear technology, we have not all been impoverished by machines, we have not all been victims of cybercrime, and so on. At least not yet.
On the other hand, given the enormous opportunities this technology offers, I also thought that AI-powered applications will necessarily wreak all kinds of collateral damage, phenomena we cannot even imagine today. The proverbial “unintended consequences” that always seem to surprise us. Like cars and pollution, antibiotics and drug-resistant strains, social media and peer pressure, the internet and cybercrime, airplanes and overtourism, nuclear power plants and tsunamis.
So this novel ended up with a theme that explores some of the possible surprises that could come from a technology like AI. And, as always, wrapped around the technical theme is a story full of “ordinary” human dramas, because life always does go on. Murder, sex, work, making money, and so on.
I had a lot of fun writing this one.
Details
- Formats: Paperback and eBook
- Date of Publication: 2026 (TBD)
- Publisher: Archway Publishing
- Reviews: Coming Soon
- Where to Buy: Coming soon (no retailer links yet)
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