Machine State

Description

A redemption and revenge thriller set in the urban wastelands of the broken, brutal new world after the apocalypse, Machine State follows the trail of a hardboiled eco-cop, his prototype AI drone, and a band of misfit reclaimers risking everything for an uncertain future. After the world ended, Malcolm Adams signed on to save what was left of it. A choice he regrets. Ravaged by nuclear fire and revolution, the America of 2064 walks a long road out of hell. So does Malcolm. The horrors and hard choices imposed by the apocalypse robbed him of chances at an ordinary life. Now, he helps salvage the shattered cities, though the dissidents thriving in their darkness make it bloody work. Despising the butcher’s bill, Malcolm’s service to a rising police state is sustained by a singular he serves on the side of the angels. But the Devil once believed that too. The blinders come off when he’s assigned to an incursion into Los Angeles, his childhood home. There, he learns the truth behind the he wasn’t sent to save lives, but to enslave them. And the regime he serves, hellbent on acquiring power, doesn’t balk at collateral damage. Confronted by escalating coverups and a global conspiracy, Malcolm must step outside the law to seek reckoning. But justice is a stranger to such a twisted world, and to get it, he’ll have to make choices that weigh life versus liberty and redemption against revenge. Machine State is a first-in-series scifi thriller set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic America. Heavy on action and intrigue, and driven by the dark, noiresque voice of its protagonist, it should appeal to fans of action thrillers, political conspiracies, and hardboiled fiction. Lovers of hard science fiction and Clancyesque technothrillers should be character and theme drive this story. Advanced technology abounds – powered hard suits, coil and rail weaponry, cybernetics, autonomous drones, nanotech – but it’s not the focus. With one AI. The Machine State series confronts the juxtaposition between man’s slowly evolving nature and the far more rapid evolution of our technological creations. Will transhumanistic advances like nanotech and cybernetics serve to degrade or uplift our moral and spiritual natures? And how will artificial general intelligence change the world and humanity’s place in it? If our civilization experiences a major catastrophe, to what extremes would AI and other advanced technologies be utilized to prevent the reoccurrence of another such event? And at what cost?