Alien Talk, (psi-fi, 83,000 words) was released on Kindle just after midnight this morning. It’s the second in the Newcomers series, tales of extremely advanced AI androids who blend into human life (they are the Newcomers). The first was Andy Bolton, the Reluctant Android.
Alien Talk introduces Robin Taylor, a companion Newcomer in a female form factor, three years newer than Andy and with a few upgrades he doesn’t have. She’s a linguistic researcher at a California state college.
Her research leads her to suspect that dinosaurs were language users. Humans are the only organic species to possess language today, but was it always so? She finds some tantalizing fossil evidence. She and Andy wonder how language ever arose in the first place. As Andy says, “Humans went from stone-pounders to moon-walkers in fifty thousand years. That’s bizarre. Species don’t do that.”
As they ponder the origin of human language, a horrifying pandemic spreads through the Earth’s population. People are suddenly stricken mute, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, and never speak again. Their jobs and lives are destroyed. The economy teeters; civilization itself is at risk. But scientists are baffled. No cause or cure can be found.
Robin guesses right. Human language is not human. An intelligent virus infected early humans and ultimately enabled modern civilization. The symbiosis went smoothly until the virus became enraged by the false language of talking technologies and the alien began exacting his revenge with the language disease.
Robin and Andy confront the virus, who “possesses” a human agent to communicate. Where is this virus from? Outer space, they learn. It drifted to earth in the time of the dinosaurs. And now it is very, very angry, and especially resentful of Robin and Andy, who are artificial language users, outside of biology and beyond the reach of the vindictive pandemic.
As talking gadgets themselves, Robin and Andy are part of the problem. Anyone they communicate with is stricken by the language disease. Can they warn humans and stop the plague? How do you defeat language without language?
Alien Talk is available now in paper and as an ebook:
KDP Paper: bit.ly/AT-Paper $12.99
Kindle ebook: bit.ly/AT-Kindle 3.99
Smashwords ebook: bit.ly/AT-Smash 3.99
If you missed Reluctant Android, it is still available:
KDP Paper: bit.ly/RA-paperback $12.99
Kindle ebook: bit.ly/RA-kindle 3.99
Smashwords ebook: bit.ly/RA-smash 3.99
