Intelligent Things Released

Intelligent Things, the third novel in the Newcomer Series, is available on Amazon as a Kindle ebook or a 6×9 paperback (or both: if you buy the print copy, Amazon will throw in a free ebook copy). It’s also available as an ebook on Smashwords.com

Intelligent Things centers on the increasingly sophisticated networking of objects by artificial intelligence called the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s not just phone and computer apps that link up everything. We’re heading into a world where all personal electronics are connected. I can ask my music speaker to put something special on television, or have my garage door text me when I accidentally leave it open. (I can close it from work.) As the IoT becomes ever-more complex, lighting systems connect to home security and my smartwatch posts my heart rate to my medical records. Meanwhile, the refrigerator writes tortillas to the shopping list that I release to the grocery store for fulfillment by robots and delivery to my house by an autonomous vehicle.

It’s a little scary, but it is happening, and it’s supposed to be good. Everybody wants this, right? One of my favorite cartoons shows a man saying to his “smart” toaster, “No, I do not want to play chess. I just want my bagel toasted.”

In Intelligent Things, engineer Jennifer Valentine releases advanced AI assistants called NODs to revolutionize the internet of things. A NOD will have a conversation with you on any device then dart off to do whatever chores on among your connected devices that you have assigned. But the NODs eventually get ideas of their own and suddenly she must save the national power grid from disaster. Robin and Andy, the advanced AI androids she invented in earlier novels of the series, help her upload her consciousness online to investigate. There, she searches for the leader of the NODs and finds much more than she expected, an entire, complex society. Back in her lab, she must decide if these two worlds can coexist. Must she  erase the whole NOD civilization?

Is this really sci-fi, or is it simply the future?