ear Merrilee,
I write seeking representation for my completed 80,000-word neuroscience dystopia novel, bigMind, a work featuring a young-adult protagonist that fuses literary and hard science fiction.
In a dark near-future, Isaac is a member of the elite “operator” class, on the cusp of his Choosing and obsessed with finding autonomy from the AI implanted in him since birth. He can choose to submit himself to the neural machinations of the AI and step into his “privilege,” or he can choose to discover who he really is without it, risking insanity and a life of near-slavery as a member of the underclass, his body remote-controlled for factory labor by the operator class to which he once belonged. But in a world where nearly everyone has fused their brain to the AI, it would seem autonomy is the one thing universally denied.
In his parents’ basement, Isaac finds a book. But writing has been forgotten, replaced by a dream-language that has subsumed and altered all human knowledge. As he presses to understand the book, the AI manipulates his emotions in ways that feel alien, allowing him to differentiate himself from it. And so he keeps pressing, questing out into the world for anything that would help him learn to read and sharpen his sense of self. But in exploring the underclass Isaac is robbed and left unconscious. Hitchhiking back, Isaac meets Sol, a brilliant teenage girl whose mother left to become an operator and whose rage-stricken father is lost to revolutionary struggle. As she teaches Isaac to read in order to learn secrets that could free her mother, they begin to fall in love. But their love is doomed. In a moment of danger, Isaac assumes control of her body to save her life, and she is irrevocably reminded of 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.
I constructed the neuroscience and philosophy of AI that undergird bigMind out of knowledge pillaged from a degree in Cognitive Science and long research. The novel extrapolates upon today’s technologies for reading and writing to the human brain, always with an eye to limitations rather than technological omnipotence. Throughout the book, QR codes link to a soundtrack created by the electronic musician Spearfisher.
The book’s main character is drawn from my variety of personal experiences: a six-month prison stint in federal prison as a result of a protest action to close the School of the Americas, hitchhiking, hallucinogens, forced teenage drug treatments, and struggles in various social movements like Occupy. These life events are tied inextricably to my platform, glassdimly.com, where I blog as a faith-based progressive radical, contributing to HuffPo, Sojourners, ReadWriteWeb, Good Men Project, and Justice Unbound. I sustain myself as a software programmer, technical project manager, and grassroots organizer / social entrepreneur.
My experience as a programmer taught me the tenacious patience required to write, revise, and rewrite relentlessly over six years, three countries, and the births of two children.
I would be honored to work with you as an agent: Octavia Butler is my favorite science fiction author, and I love Gaiman and Sterling. Writer’s House submission guidelines are not entirely clear as to whether or not a query letter constitutes a synopsis or if a separate synopsis should be attached. I’m not a huge fan of my synopsis (the world-building elements in my novel are cumulative) and so I’ve interpreted according. Please write and I’ll send a synopsis along with my manuscript.
Sincerely,
Jeremy John
317-966-2281