Folds of the Script - a Kindle Ebook by K.B. Nelson


Free Promotional Giveaway will run on Amazon from January 11th to January 15th, 2014

In recent years, science fiction has grown top-heavy with dystopian or post-apocalyptic novels.  Maybe it’s the influence of blockbusters like The Matrix or the cult favorite Blade Runner.  Maybe it even reaches back to the years of the Terminator movies. This darkness and pessimism is particularly true when sentient machines of any kind are added to the mix. 

But I happen to agree with futurist Ray Kurzweil that the children of our creativity—sentient machines—will only follow the biological template of their creators.  Machines will develop to be more and more like us, and we will hardly notice it happening.  There will be no bloody revolution because the line between machine and human being will not exist in the way we imagine it.  This is the basic philosophy that continues to underpin my own science fiction work—a view both positive and wildly dynamic.

Still, we know that evolution of any kind isn’t always a neat and clean thing, but sometimes is the stuff of great stories.

Folds of the Script, my sixth speculative fiction novelexamines what happens when machines, unable by design to process the presence of one another (what can’t work together can’t cause harm together), have a chance to upgrade with a human-like emotional and relational template. Faced with the choice to become more human, would they actually choose to go down that thorny path?  That is only one of the several philosophical questions woven into this fast-moving and intellectually complex novel.  Remember: thrill rides don’t mean you have to check your mind at the door.