New Book Coming: DOOMSDAY GAME

I've tweeted, Facebooked and emailed the mailing list, and now, at last, the blog: I have a new book coming out. It's called DOOMSDAY GAME and it's the third - and final - volume of the series that began in 2014 or thereabouts with EXTINCTION GAME and continued with SURVIVAL GAME.

I think it makes for a pretty neat conclusion for the saga, and it took me most of 2018 to write and edit. The cover art, by the way, is from Ben Baldwin, who also did the artwork for last year's GHOST FREQUENCIES - and for which he's up for a BSFA award. Here's the blurb:

It's the end of the world...again.
Over the years, the Pathfinders - each the sole survivor of a humanity-destroying apocalypse, but on different alternate Earths - have become a tight-knit team as they search for an alternate they, along with the Authority, might one day call home.
Now, at last, one has been found: an Edenic alternate Earth on which humanity never evolved.
But just when their work seems over, new threats emerge. One comes from within the Authority itself, but the other is so completely unexpected that the Pathfinders are quickly overwhelmed.
The race is on to deal with the final - and greatest - threat this rag-tag band of survivors have yet encountered as they journey through alternate Earths rendered lifeless by rogue singularities or littered with ancient and perilous ruins. Faced with their own extinction, can they pull together one last time…as well as save the Authority from itself? 

I think that sums it up nicely. It's released on May 1st, and is currently available as a Kindle pre-order - it'll soon also be on sale through Kobo, iTunes, and other online stores, and will also be available as a paperback and a simultaneously released hardback. More details as they come!

Stephen Palmer's new novel The Autist

As part of my continuing and admittedly slightly sporadic quest to present you with new and old British and UK-resident authors with whom you may or may not be aware, I'd like this time around to present you with the new novel by Stephen Palmer.

Since his first novel, Memory Seed, came out from Orbit in 1996, Stephen has produced a dozen novels of what might be loosely termed 'post-cyberpunk', insofar as they are most often concerned with collapsing ecologies, the evolution of AI and also of humanity in response to its own technological innovations.

His new novel The Autist moves between the England of the late 21st Century, Nigeria, and Thailand, and shows his work remains as thoughtful and engaging as ever.

Here's the synopsis:

Data detective Mary Vine is visiting relatives when she uncovers a Chinese programme of AI development active within her own family.

Ulu Okere has only one goal: to help her profoundly disabled brother, whose unique feats of memory inspire her yet perturb the community they live in.

And in a transumted Thailand, Somchai Chokdee is fleeing his Buddhist temple as an AI-inspired political revolution makes living there too dangerous.

In 2100 life is dominated by vast, unknowable AIs that run most of the world and transform every society they touch. When suspicions of a Chinese conspiracy seem substantiated, Mary, Ulu and Somchai decide they must oppose it. Yet in doing so they find themselves facing something the world has never seen before...

This is what Stephen has to say about the origins of the story:

The Autist was inspired by algorithms and AI…

I’d written a couple of near-future AI novels before – Beautiful Intelligence and No Grave For A Fox – which dealt with the theme of the possibility of conscious machines. Much of my own reading is non-fiction, with technology a particular interest if it deals with the more human side of things – for instance Mary Aiken’s fantastic The Cyber Effect.

It seemed to me that I should write a novel in which AI development does not end up so well, and with my background in consciousness and the evolution of the mind I was able to bring together a few relevant themes: Savant Syndrome, the impossibility of a single conscious machine appearing, and algorithms and their effects on society – effects which I think will be profound, and mostly negative.

My influences were all non-fiction too, especially the author and researcher Nicholas Humphrey, who has done more for the field of consciousness studies than most. I’ve long been a fan of his work. He was the originator of the social intelligence theory of consciousness, and has written four masterpieces, of which one, A History Of The Mind, mentions his work on blindsight, which I used in this new novel.

Hopefully people will enjoy the story and be intrigued by the theme.

You can get the novel here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Autist-Stephen-Palmer-ebook/dp/B07PBX8R3B/