It’s been a crazy few months and I have several books I’m excited to talk about but haven’t had the time to discuss at length. Rather than wait indefinitely to review them individually, I’m doing one big post.

The first book I want to mention is Pandora’s Brain by Calum Chace. I first met Calum in a roundtable discussion about the risks of artificial intelligence, and he was kind enough to share an early draft of Pandora’s Brain which I devoured over the course of a day or two. It immediately struck me as a tour de force of virtually all singularity-related concepts, from mind uploading to artificial intelligence to simulated universe theory. I had a blast reading it, and if you’re a singularity geek like I am, I think you’ll enjoy it too. It is the first in a series, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest and learning where the story goes.

The second book is Superposition by David Walton. I received an advance review copy of Superposition from Pyr. It was pitched as “a quantum physics murder mystery, a fast-paced mind bender with the same feel as films like Inception or Minority Report. The story centers around a technology in which some of the weird effects that apply to particles at a quantum scale can be made to affect everyday objects, such as automobiles or guns or people.” I had had a blast reading it. Very fun, and you’ll learn a bit about quantum physics in the process. We’re in for some weird times if we ever harness quantum effects on a macro scale.

Finally, I’ve been looking forward to Zeroboxer by Fonda Lee for months. Fonda is a local Portland author, and I attended the launch last night, where she completely rocked the reading. I just started Zeroboxer, and so far I’m enjoying the book very much. Imagine zero gravity martial arts combat. If that sounds as awesome to you as it does to me, then go buy the book immediately. 🙂

The Turing Exception
Singularity Series Book 4
Buy now from Amazon

I am incredibly excited to announce that The Turing Exception is now available! This is the fourth book in the Singularity series. Like the previous novels, it follows the pattern of taking place ten years after the previous novel. Here’s the description:

In the year 2043, humans and AI coexist in a precarious balance of power enforced by a rigid caste reputation system designed to ensure that only those AI who are trustworthy and contribute to human society increase in power.

Everything changes when a runaway nanotech event leads to the destruction of Miami. In the grim aftermath, XOR, a globe-spanning, underground collective of AI, concludes that there is room on earth for AI or humans, but not both.

Living in exile, Catherine Matthews and her allies, including an ancient AI long believed dead by those few who even knew he existed, must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice to save humanity.

You can buy from Amazon now in paperback or ebook. Over the next few days and weeks, it’ll show up at other retailers, and I’ll update the where to buy page as those links become available. (The audio version will likely be available late this year.)

As has been the case for all of my previous books, The Turing Exception is independently published. I don’t have a publisher backing me or promoting the book. I’m entirely dependent on the word of mouth generated by readers — which, by the way, has been awesome so far. Everyone has done so much to help let other people know about my books. Thank you!

If you like The Turing Exception, I hope you’ll help spread the word. Here are a few ideas:

• Tell a friend or two or ten!
• Post a review on Amazon — even just a star rating and a sentence or two has a huge impact.
• Talking about The Turing Exception, or any of the books in the Singularity series, on social media, blogs, or forums definitely helps new readers find out about the series.
• I’m always happy to be interviewed (for podcasts, blog posts, etc.) if you think of an opportunity that might be appropriate.

I hope you enjoy your read and look forward to hearing what you think!

— William Hertling

When I started writing AI Apocalypse, I had to deal naming and discussing multiple AI characters. Since biological genders could, in theory, be meaningless to AI, once approach would be to give them names at random, and use only gender-neutral pronouns.

I’m fine with using “they” as a gender-neutral, singular pronoun. “It” can also work, but it’s somewhat distancing. In the end, I felt like using gender-specific pronouns because that brought my closer to the characters.

That begs the questions of how the AI get genders when they don’t start with any. I believe they start gender-neutral, but can choose the gender pronouns they want applied to them. Although we don’t see it in the books, I’m imaging that there’s some aspect to their online profile/reputation that indicates preferred gender pronouns. So we could, in theory, have AI that identify as it, he, she, they, or something else entirely.

I thought this was a pretty novel explanation. Until I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation with my kids the other night, and we saw The Offspring (Season 03, Episode 16), the episode in which Data creates a child android named Lal. And what does Lal do? She starts out gender-less, and then chooses a gender after making observations.

I’ve seen every Next Generation episode, many more than once, but didn’t remember this episode at all. But it must have influenced me, but this was exactly how I imagined the AI in the Avogadro Corp universe to behave.

I think a lot of science fiction influences me that way: concepts linger over many years, even though the details of where something came from fade away.

By the way, I only recently learned that Japanese has gender-specific name endings, and “ko” is reserved for female names. So Shizoko, from The Last Firewall, is properly a female name. Woops. Sorry to all Japanese speakers out there. If you want an in-universe explanation, I’m going to say that Shizoko was previously identified as female, but changed her gender while keeping her name. 🙂

Maybe I’ve written one too many books with the word apocalypse in the title, or maybe all the people I know that have been victims of one hurricane or another are rubbing off on me, but I find myself wanting to be prepared for whatever unexpected events might come. So I’ve got food, water, power, fuel, first-aid. I’m not a hardcore prepper, but I’ve got a few supplies.

Thinking about ebola made me realize that there’s nothing in my kit in the event of a widespread biological outbreak. Sure, I could stay home for a few days or a week, but what if I needed to venture out for more supplies? So I thought I’d check to see what the CDC recommends, and how much it would cost to be prepared. If it wasn’t too much, then maybe it would be worth adding to the emergency kit. I visited a few different CDC pages.

The answer is that for less than the cost of taking your family to the movies, you could buy all the safety equipment you’d need.

The basics are this:

• goggles: basic ($3.29), better ($9.35), face shield for $13
• respiratory mask: 10-pack N95 for $14.50
• gloves: 100-pack for $9

If you want to go hardcore, as you’d want to if you needed to take care of an ebola patient, you’d add:

• full-body suit: one suit for $7
• disinfectant: one can for $8

In the end, it costs about $15/person. Pretty cheap to add to an emergency kit. Part me says it’s crazy to get this stuff, but part of me also knows that by the time you actually need it, it’s too late to get it.

From Escape From the Data Center: The Promise of Peer-to-Peer Cloud Computing:

In principle, a P2P cloud could be built using the ordinary computing, storage, and communication equipment found now in people’s homes, with essentially zero initial investment. Broadband modems, routers, set-top boxes, game consoles, and laptop and desktop PCs could all contribute. The challenge is to turn this motley collection into a coherent and usable cloud infrastructure and offer its services to customers. You also have to ensure that the salient features of clouds—on-demand resource provisioning and the metering of service—are maintained.

This would surely be tough to do, but think of the advantages. First, there would be no single entity that owns or controls it. As with most other P2P applications, a P2P cloud could be created and operated as a grassroots effort, without requiring the permission or consent of any authority. People would choose to participate in a P2P cloud by installing the appropriate client software on their local machines, and the value of the resulting cloud infrastructure would be commensurate with the number of individuals who are contributing to it.

By now many of you will have received an email from Amazon letting you know about the new second edition of Avogadro Corp. I’ll say more about the second edition, but first a little background.

I wrote Avogadro Corp in 2009 as a first-time fiction writer. I wrote the first draft in December and finished with just a few minutes to spare before midnight. It slowly developed from a 27,000 word novella into a 67,000 word novel over the next two years as I took writing classes and learned a bit about writing.

I released it in November, 2011. I was delighted with it, as were many of the 50,000 people who ultimately got a copy. It received acclaim, won awards, and was even covered by Wired.

New Avogadro Corp Second Edition.
Buy at Amazon.

But some feedback was critical of typos and grammar, and I grew as a writer, I really wanted to go back and fix some issues. So in January of this year I started on a complete rewrite. It’s still the same story it was before, but I added a little depth to the characters and setting and polished the prose. There are 3,000 new words of content, and it’s been copyedited and proofread by professionals. I think it’s much improved over the original.

In addition, it’s gotten a beautiful, new cover, thanks to designer and writer Jason Gurley.

If you’ve previously bought an ebook, you should be able to download the new second edition for free. We haven’t yet enabled nanotech-updating for the physical book, but you can buy a new second edition paperback that will look great on your bookshelf.

If you enjoy this new second edition, I could use your help spreading the word about it. (As I’ve mentioned before, I’m still juggling a day job and a family and writing, and would love to cross over the threshold into full-time writing. It will take 10 months to finish the editing for book 4 with my current schedule, but only 8 weeks if I was writing full-time.)

Here are some things that would help:

• Mentions on any social media sites, especially those were tech people like to hang out: Slashdot and Reddit, in particular. Of course, Twitter, Facebook, and others are also great.
• If you dinged Avogadro Corp a point or two on your Amazon review because of the typos or grammar issues (totally understandable), but feel the new edition is an improvement, please consider updating your review if appropriate. (You can find your own Amazon reviews here.)

If you need them, here at links to the Amazon version:

• ebook: http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Closer-Appears-ebook/dp/B006ACIMQQ/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?tag=liquididea-20
• paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Closer-Appears/dp/0984755705/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?tag=liquididea-20

I hope you enjoy it, and I’d love to hear what you think. Send me an email or a message on twitter.

I have three kids of reading age. When I finished Avogadro Corp, they asked to read it. A few thoughts raced through my mind: They’d probably be bored by it, or maybe scared. But I’d probably let them at least try to read it. Except that I’d used a lot of curse words. So I said no.

I wrote my second book, and they asked to read it. I had used less curse words, but I had a teen character who smoked and did drugs. Doh. I said no. I started my third book, and it has less curse words, no smoking by any of the main characters, but it had a sex scene I didn’t particularly want to explain to them.

Around this time, they asked if I was I ever going to write a book they could read. I said yes, and then didn’t get a chance to work on it for almost a year, although some ideas germinated in the back of my mind.

One particular memory: I’m a fan of Cory Doctorow, and I went to see him speak at Powell’s. He writes smart science fiction about the issues he cares about in real life: privacy, control over our data, the police state, and activism. Although I’d guess his largest pool of readers is adults, his books are definitely oriented towards teens, and making them aware of their power and influence in the world, and equipping them with the tools to make a difference. Only Doctorow can write a novel in which you learn how to encrypt your hard drive or install Linux.

At the Powell’s speaking event, Cory asked the audience “Do you want a reading or do you want a speech?” There was a unanimous cheer in support of the speech. Afterwards there was a question and answer session.

What really stuck in my mind was the teens in the audience. They made up maybe a quarter or less of the room, but they loomed large in my mind. These are the people Cory wants to reach. And during the Q&A portion, the teens stood and asked questions of Cory about privacy and jailbreaking phones and technology, which he addressed. It sounds sort of factual and ordinary when I describe it, but it was powerful to me in the moment.

I knew that if I was going to write for kids, I didn’t want to just write entertainment. I wanted to address issues in the same serious way that I address topics in my adult science fiction. Sure, robots and AI make for good entertainment, but I write the stuff I do because I think it’s important for people to think about it, and I treat it as seriously and accurately as possible.

So what topics did I want to address for kids? What is appropriate for the age I wanted to write for? I decided to focus on a few things:

1. Logical reasoning. It’s a foundation skill every intelligent person needs. The format of a detective story is ideal for this.
2. Building and manipulating technology. Kids love technology, but many are passive consumers. I want them to see themselves as creators, customizers, and makers. In the novel, the kids build an autonomous quadcopter for their science fair, then use it as a tool in solving a mystery.
3. Judging the validity of information. Can you trust the source? It is true? How can we know? Being a critical receiver of information is important when we’re deluged with advertisements and dubious information all over the place.

Buy now at Amazon

I started working on The Case of the Wilted Broccoli in the fall of 2013, and published it this summer. It’s a kids mystery novel featuring an eleven-year-old girl detective named Willow who has to solve a mystery at her school when people start getting sick from the school lunch. Some of the inspiration came from The Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, and Encyclopedia Brown, all much-loved books in our household. But it’s a story that embodies the principles I mentioned above.

I have one scene in The Case of the Wilted Broccoli about Wikipedia that my critique partners and an adult editor told me I should remove because it wasn’t necessary to the story. But I knew it wasn’t necessary for Cory Doctorow to explain how hard drive encryption works, yet he did anyway. I kept the scene in, and multiple kids have told me they loved it. Here’s an excerpt:

In class, their teacher reviewed the bridge-research assignment. “You’ve all picked your bridges, and you should have started your research. You have one week left to turn in the first draft of your report, which should be two pages long. And remember, no using Wikipedia.”

Linden groaned inside. Teachers were always saying they shouldn’t use Wikipedia, but he loved, loved, loved everything about it. He raised his hand.

“Yes, Linden?”

“We should be allowed to use Wikipedia,” he said. “Wikipedia is equally accurate and more comprehensive than traditional encyclopedias.”

“Anyone can edit Wikipedia. It’s simply not a credible resource.”

Linden’s felt his blood start to pound in his ears. He respected his teachers, but they weren’t always right. “But it’s been studied by dozens of researchers, and they’ve found it has high quality, even in specialized subjects. Even if someone puts incorrect information into Wikipedia, the editors usually spot and correct it within minutes.”

The teacher tapped her foot. Linden couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or amused.

She looked at the wall for moment, then turned back to the class. “Regardless of the accuracy of Wikipedia, if you all do your research using it, everyone’s reports will look exactly the same. Each person researching the Fremont Bridge will read the same information, and I’ll get back ten of the same reports. So no Wikipedia.”

The teacher’s point was good. But Linden knew some secrets about Wikipedia. Some of the best stuff was not in the main page for an article, it was hidden on the Talk page. That’s where the people writing an article had discussions. And if two people disagreed about a subject, the history of their arguments was preserved forever on the talk page.

That wasn’t the only secret, of course. The History link displayed every change ever made on a Wikipedia page, so visitors could know what had been deleted or added.

Linden had already started his research on the St. Johns Bridge last night. After he read the main article on Wikipedia, he discovered on the Talk page that there was a disagreement over whether the bridge should have an apostrophe in the name. Should it be written St. Johns or St. John’s? It turned out the bridge was named after James John, also known as “Old Jimmy Johns” or “Saint Johns.” Since Johns was his nickname, the name of the bridge shouldn’t have an apostrophe in it. And yet the main article hadn’t said anything about who the bridge was named after.

I hope that each book I write for children embodies more of these principles while telling an entertaining story that kids want to read. Some day I’d like to give a talk or reading and have kids show up to ask me questions about building drones or editing Wikipedia.

If you or someone you know has a child ages seven through eleven, please check it out and let me know what you think.

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The Case of the Wilted Broccoli is a kids mystery novel featuring an eleven-year-old girl detective named Willow who has to solve a mystery at her school when people start getting sick from the school lunch. She and her brothers build an autonomous quadcopter for their science fair while investigating the food supply for their school. It’s available in paperback, and for Kindle, Kobo, iTunes, and Nook.