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An illusion thoroughly tested...

Caffeine Cover This is the official page for my debut novel, Caffeine. The new 2180 Edition was released in 2023 and can be purchased below. The original e-book was published here in October 2009, and a print edition was available through Splashdown Books from 2011 to 2019.

 

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.

  Preview first chapter

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 its own right, created by human beings. Throw into this artificial intelligence - learning programs I believe will be mature technology in 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 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 the deep and existential, it was natural for me to contribute accordingly.

Download or Buy

Click here to preview the first chapter

Creative Commons Version

Creative Commons Non-Commercial Edition, E-Book

Novel-Format PDF
The standard 5 1/4" x 8" layout. Page numbers match the 2180 Edition.

EPUB File
For your Kindle or other E-Reader.

Text-Only Files (zipped)
Small download, readable in all kinds of programs/platforms.

2180 Edition

2180 Edition, E-Book or Paperback

Paperback
Available in the U.S. through Barnes & Noble. Website only, not in physical stores.
ISBN 979-8-9887111-0-0

E-Book
Available through Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.
ISBN 979-8-9887111-1-7

The 2180 Edition includes:

  • Deleted Text
  • Author Commentary
  • Discussion Questions
 

Amazon makes it difficult to publish Creative Commons works to its platform, so for now it's not available there. Sorry.

CC BY-NC-NDCaffeine may be freely distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License , and I encourage you to. Blog/post/review/discuss it wherever you're so inclined.

Find Caffeine on...

Google Books download; submit reviewskassidor.com
Internet Archive download; submit reviewsgetfreeebooks.com
TV Tropes edit wiki; submit reviewslibrarything.com
Scribd download; rate; reviewopenlibrary.org
ManyBooks download; submit\r\nreviewsonlinenovels.net
Goodreads comment; share on social media 
Unglue.It comment; share on social media 

Background

Caffeine was written between October 2007 and August 2008, with a non-commercial e-book released to the public in October 2009. This e-book was a finalist in Marcher Lord Select's 2009 Premise Contest.

Writing Caffeine 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).

Splashdown Books picked up the novel and released print and Kindle versions of it in November 2011. This version left the market in January 2019. A new commercial release, the 2180 Edition, took its place in October 2023.

In 2012 I began work on my second novel, This Falling Eden . It's not a sequel, but it has enough in common that Caffeine's fans are sure to enjoy it.

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https://www.egrabow.com/rm.php?e=Caffeine
EGRABOW.COM and its original content Copyright 1999-2024 Ryan Grabow. May be reproduced in good faith unless otherwise stated.
EGRABOW.COM and its original content Copyright 1999-2024 Ryan Grabow. May be reproduced in good faith unless otherwise stated.