Cloudthinker

Summary

WINNER: First Place 2023 Writer's Digest Independent E-Book Awards for for Science Fiction.

Numbers don’t lie. But people do.

Math genius Boogie Wu struggles to redeem her slandered reputation by pushing the boundaries of her mind in a Zen monastery until she unlocks the secret of an ancient mathematical conjecture.

Little does she know that her groundbreaking solution becomes the key to her former employer Magenta Corporation's most disruptive technology: a job-taking AI service in the cloud that thinks by simulating connections of the human brain.

When Boogie discovers whose brain Magenta is simulating, she must confront the ethical and spiritual consequences of a technology that doesn’t just think, but feels.

As it becomes clear that profit is only the start of Magenta’s world-resetting ambition, to prevent them tipping the world into chaos that only an enhanced digital mind can resolve, she will have to solve a new kind of equation, one whose only solution equals danger.

Selected Reader Reviews:

✭✭✭✭✭ "If ChatGPT had a villain origin story, this would be it" - Deborah N.

✭✭✭✭✭ "Crackling near-term, hard-SF dawn-of-AGI novel. More ideas per page than any book I've read in ages... Rather than worrying about whether AI understands in a way that would satisfy a philosopher, he asks whether they feel in a way that would terrify an ethicist." - Harry S.

✭✭✭✭✭ "This distinctly creative, imaginative, and profound debut novel will delight fans of sci-fi, thrillers/suspense stories, technothrillers, and cyberpunk". - Terri Stepek for Reader Views

✭✭✭✭✭ "Hits the zeitgeist in a big way." - Jennifer Hill for Reedsy Discovery