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.
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 living for first-person dreaming, ordinary world twisted to nightmare.
But in a world controlled by the Mind, how will Isaac 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 Writing has been replaced by a dream-language that has subsumed and altered all human knowledge, destroying books as effectively as by burning.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 elite 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. But 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 AI, his friends and his future. He ingests a hallucinogenic drug that promises a third way: freedom within the operator class. But choice was always an illusion and at the end of the book the AI 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-gate ion channels.
In college, I majored in the philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence (specifically, Cognitive Science: Logic). I am a tenacious software programmer, technical project manager, and social entrepreneur, happily married with two children. 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. I have my own platform at glassdimly.com with roughly 200 reads per day. Since my novel is now complete, I will be actively seeking new publications in the areas of futurist politics and scifi. I believe you will find me pleasant to work with, responsive, and meticulous.
This is my first book. But I have revised and rewritten relentlessly over six years, three countries, and the birth of two children. If, in that process, I have successfully cut through my own delusion, I have created something fun to read. And it will all be worth it.
Sincerely,
Jeremy John