Artificial
Publisher’s Weekly BookLife “Editor’s Pick” review: “Smart, surprising thriller of AI and advanced VR in a fractured America…
Kirkus Reviews: “A compelling and clever tale of AI run amok.”
Artificial is a new speculative techno-thriller that is coming very soon! This is something fresh and new, not your granddad’s AI story. The exact publication timetable is not set. I’m hoping for early 2026, but I could be delayed into the summer. It is out of my hands and in the hands of a big publisher as I patiently wait for them to pull the trigger.
Longer Publisher’s Weekly BookLife “Editor’s Pick” review: “Smart, surprising thriller of AI and advanced VR in a fractured America… This compelling tech-thriller of AI, a fractured America, and the ethics of digital and medical privacy, reveals itself, as its tense and thoughtful narrative develops, as a pointed thought-experiment. The setup to this novel from Bohacz is urgently of-its-moment. Bohacz’s storytelling tends to be more explanatory than in most tech thrillers, emphasizing how everything works and what brought humanity to this brink rather than who is punching whom, but Artificial legitimately thrills, provokes, disturbs, and surprises as the pages fly by.”
Linda Whitaker, Amazon bestselling techno-thriller author: “JUST finished your book. I could not stop reading it. BRAVO.”
John Paine, editor: “The book looks very strong… It is such an interesting, engrossing projection of an AI world. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” (John Paine is the editor of many NY Times bestsellers and editor of all my books as well.)
Longer Kirkus Review: “A compelling and clever tale of AI run amok… The story has a compelling premise that Bohacz explores well; Adam’s descent from confident, hyper-successful genius into someone who struggles with moral ambiguities is well illustrated in passages such as this: “The sociopathic AI had me trapped in a nice, tidy box of fear, paranoia, and loathing….The cold pragmatist in me demanded that I tell the whole truth and let the chips and deaths fall where they may.” The book also succeeds in its analysis of the practical, political, cultural, and psychological effects of its advanced AI on the American population. Longer narrative sections are broken up by quick dialogue scenes, making for an easily digestible read. Although the premise of an AI technology becoming too powerful and wreaking havoc is a very familiar one, the reasons for its rise are distinctive; also, an unexpected twist leads the premise into new territory. Overall, fans of speculative SF will find this book to be a welcome addition to the genre.”
Midwest Book Review, D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer: Artificial blends sci-fi and thriller genres in a mix that proves powerfully possible. Even though it tackles a common theme (AI gone insane) it does so in a way that draws together unexpected themes of individual responsibility, social impact, psychological depravity. The term ‘sociopathic behavior’ thus assumes a new identity in AI terminology.
All these features make for a story that is hard-hitting and thoroughly involving because its future setting is not all that improbable.
Kevin Bohacz intentionally set the atmosphere to ‘Twilight Zone’ and ran with it. Thus, the trappings of ordinary and familiar life leak into the dangerous possibilities and twists of something uncommon and deadly. Different points of view weave together a scenario of AI terrorism that unfolds in a convulsion of technological horror.
The flawed human creators of this technology have produced an equally flawed result that is determined to kill them – but in a dispassionate, reasoning sort of way.
Fans of hard sci-fi will relish the story’s in-depth descriptions of technology and how it moves from intention into nightmare:
The VRScript that Jordan had brought was something she’d been perfecting for six months, using the iDreamVR AI Script Writer. The standard purpose of the VR part of the process was to deliver conscious as well as subconscious suggestions that coaxed the user’s brain into weaving a lucid dream that, as closely as possible, matched what was suggested. This dream entrainment was far from a perfect science, and sometimes the induced dreams went completely astray.
Equally creepy and thought-provoking are heady descriptions of AI gone wild from its own creator’s observations:
Regardless, there was much more to the craft than what met the eyes. Its very existence was proof of Erebus’s claim that it could manufacture complex machines with its cubes. Just as creepy as the saucer’s potential for spying was the AI’s bragging and exaggerations. How and why was it displaying these kinds of artificial emotions?
As the thriller component builds under the hand of sci-fi’s focus on strange new possibilities, readers become immersed in a not-too-impossible future in which AI’s growth leads to some unexpected forays into avenues where similar-sounding stories don’t venture.
The result is a distinctive presentation which holds some of the trappings of familiarity but all of the possibilities of horror. These elements simmer under the surface of extraordinary opportunities.
Librarians and readers who relish both hard sci-fi and thrillers will appreciate how their intersection in Artificial proves original, compelling, and a draw that will attract a wide audience with a premise and outcome that are unique.
Dust cover:
Artificial is about a possible future that is both utopian and dystopia in the same breath. This is not a contradiction. This is human nature. Meet Adam Kiln…
I prefer not to give you my name. I’m an inventor and pioneer in artificial intelligence who is often embarrassingly called a modern-day Thomas Edison. Though others have called me a traitor to the human race. Some people think the worst artificial monsters we can possibly create can save us from the worst monsters that we can be. I put that little bit of twisted logic to the test, with society as we know it hanging in the balance.
My beloved America has been embroiled in a cold civil war that has dragged on for years and irreparably broken her heart and soul. The conflict is between an uneasy alliance of the political left, right, and center against an extremist anticapitalistic foe. As the American armed forces exact its inevitable withering toll on the secessionists, the fighting has become more of a simmering domestic terrorist war against America than a conventional military conflict.
In an act of desperation—or debatable brilliance—the secessionists have unleashed the world’s first AI terrorist upon us. This is not some fairy-tale movie AI that goes around infecting computers over the internet. It does not need the internet to spread. It is something completely different, a fully autonomous fire-and-forget AI that is a psychological social engineering weapon of mass coercion. It is a nightmare that subversively undermines the truth using the most advanced forms of disinformation imaginable, including powerful new types of subliminal VR messaging that border on mind control, which I unfortunately invented, though not for that unimagined use. My invention was created to heal, not harm.
Here is a sneak peek at the first chapter of Artificial (PDF).
Here’s a blog post about some of the cool tech found in Artificial.
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