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This is
the official page for my debut novel, Caffeine. I
am branding it as "my
unashamed attempt at Philosophical (Christian) Science Fiction," which
is indeed what it began as. I'm very happy with the result, and it is
posted here, free, in its entirety.
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Brandon
Dauphin feels like a dying ember. He’s jobless and feels worthless, and
falling in love has only made his problem worse. In an authoritarian
and overstimulated 22nd-century America, all he can do to relieve his
pain is indulge in the computer-simulated fantasies of a network called
Dynamic Reality, until a virus takes control of the simulation. Unable
to return to the real world, Brandon finds that the virus shares his
questions about existence, and that she will stop at nothing for her
answers.
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The story represents many things to me. Dynamic Reality is my
vision of the internet's future, one which is already emerging: a
universe in it's own right, created by human beings, for better or for
worse. Throw into this artificial intelligence, learning programs which
I believe will be a mature technology... given a couple of centuries,
that a user ("ascender") will interact with just as if they were
people. Virtual Reality is a well-explored concept, as is humanoid
artificial intelligence (yielding the what-if-they-became-self-aware
story); but then there's a third concept...
Ever open the attachment on an e-mail? You did scan it for
viruses first, right?
Though DR is vastly different from the modern internet, it is
still a
wide-open, global computer network. Certainly, there will be hackers
writing viral AIs; and certainly, the virus will be a greater threat
than today, being literally able to kill the users whose conciousnesses
are online. Yeah, scary, but wait...
1. What if, in addition to the friendly AIs, the viral ones
could
become self-aware, too?
2. What if (and I'm being a Christian here), God could forgive their
sins?
This novel isn't so much in-your-face-praise-Jesus evangelism as an argument for why faith works. Since my own tastes gravitate toward "deep" fiction, it was natural for me to contribute accordingly. I put the "Christian"
in
parenthesis above because I meant for this work to target secular
audiences as much as Christian ones. | | Click here
to preview the first chapter  .
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Novel-Format
PDF
Laid
out like a polished, published, it-cost-you-money novel.
1.67 MB (.pdf)
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Printer-Friendly
PDF
Ideal
for reading onscreen or for printing
on 8.5 x 11" paper.
1.27 MB (.pdf)
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Text-Only
Files (zipped)
Small
download, readable in all kinds of programs/platforms.
295 kB (.zip)
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 So
here it is, submitted for your review. Caffeine
may be freely distributed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License , and I encourage
you to. There is
no big-name publisher to promote this, after all, so I'm relying on
word-of-mouth. If you like it, blog/post/review/discuss it wherever
you're so inclined.
I regret that Caffeine is not available in print (yet).
| | | | Caffeine was written between October 2007 and August 2008, with editing and publisher-hunting going until September 2009. Writing this novel was an exciting project. I got to use completely new ideas (at least, that I couldn't find in any existing work) to craft a meaningful story, which glorifies Christ rather than the evolutionary ideas working their way into more and more sci-fi (though they do get treatment in Caffeine). In October, I decided to release Caffeine online under a Creative Commons license.
Caffeine was a finalist in Marcher Lord Select's 2009 Premise Contest. Thanks to the many people who supported my work. | |
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An illusion thoroughly tested...
