ear X,
I write seeking representation for my completed 80,000-word neuroscience dystopia novel—bigMind—that falls within the genre conventions of hard science fiction and features a young adult protagonist. Throughout the book, QR codes link to a soundtrack created by the electronic musician Spearfisher.
Isaac is a teenager in a near-future who can’t differentiate his own desire from the neural manipulations of the mindchip. He must choose whether remain an “operator” and fully fuse himself with the AI that feeds on human dreams (the Mind) or join an underclass to perform manual labor under remote neural control. But a former operator with a removed limbic interface will likely become a lúcido: the shell of a person who lives for first-person dreaming—ordinary world twisted to nightmare.
Isaac has a problem: in a world controlled by the Mind, how will he discover the contours of his fate? Writing has been replaced by a dream-language that has subsumed and altered all human knowledge, destroying books as effectively as by burning. In exploring the underclass world, Isaac meets Sol, a brilliant teenager whose mother left to become an operator and whose rage-stricken father is lost to revolutionary struggle. She teaches Isaac to read in order to learn secrets that could free her mother, but falls in love with him despite their class differences. Their love is doomed. In a moment of danger, Isaac assumes control of her body to save her life, and she remembers his identity as the member of the elite: a necromancer of bodies. Without Sol, Isaac is alone: split from the Mind, his friends and his future. He ingests a hallucinogenic drug that promises a third way: freedom within the operator class. But “choice” was an illusion. At the end of the book the the Mind assumes control of Isaac’s body, deletes his memories, and moves him off to his dark future. bigMind ends on this note of narrative completion, anticipating a sequel.
The neuroscience and philosophy of AI that undergird bigMind are rooted in long research and fascination. The novel extrapolates upon today’s technologies for reading and writing to the human brain using light-gated ion channels and speculates upon the future of computing, always with an eye to limitations.
In college I studied to prepare myself for precisely this book, majoring in the philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence. Since then I have sustained myself mostly as a software programmer, technical project manager, and grassroots organizer/social entrepreneur. The book’s main character and experiences are drawn from my variety of personal experiences: a six-month prison stint for social justice, hitchhiking, drugs, forced mental health escapades, and struggles in various social movements like Occupy. I blog as a faith-based progressive radical for HuffPo, Sojourners, ReadWriteWeb, Good Men Project, and Justice Unbound. Since my novel is now query-letter-ready, I will be actively seeking new venues in the areas of futurist politics and scifi. I believe you will find me pleasant to work with, responsive, and meticulous: the traits that have sustained me as a freelance coder.
This is my first book, my absolute first foray into the world of publishing. But I have written, revised, and rewritten relentlessly over six years, three countries, and the birth of two children. I’ve learned that much of editing is cutting through one’s own delusion. If I’ve done that properly, then I have created something fun to read.
Sincerely,
Jeremy John