Set in 2050, ten years after a heatwave killed roughly 400 million people around the Persian Gulf. The world is voting on something close to a global dictatorship with a single mandate: stop the climate crisis. The last two candidates are a former US president and Solomon, the first artificial intellect to stand for office. Then Solomon’s creator turns up murdered.
Self-published in 2023, it found an audience online, and Penguin Random House reissued it in 2025.
The murder is the hook. The election is the part I kept thinking about.
Most writing on AI governance asks what we should permit a model to do. This asks what a frightened population would hand over on its own, which strikes me as the more realistic question.
I spend a fair amount of time on AI governance with organizations. That work is almost never about capability. It is about who is still accountable when the system gets it wrong.