The Infinet (The Trivial Game) - Softcover

Akers, John W

Softcover

ISBN 10: 099919061X ISBN 13: 9780999190616

Publisher: Tech Noir Press, 2017

Synopsis

The most powerful AI ever created. The greatest threat of all time.

Oreste Pax, famed inventor of the Univiz, is in trouble. His mixed-reality glasses have replaced smartphones and computers and made him the head of the biggest technology company in the world. But after a decade at the top, his position is being challenged by disgruntled shareholders, and he needs to come up with something big to prove he should remain in charge.

Pax’s only hope is a longshot--to reinvent the Univiz by connecting it to a brain-computer interface. To his surprise, the effort not only succeeds but reveals the possibility of a previously unknown form of human cognition. He begins to hope of not just saving his job but reinventing what it means to be human.

But his plans are upended when a deadly computer virus begins attacking people through the Internet of Things. Shortly afterward, Pax is abducted by a group of people with technology far beyond anything he has seen before, which he learns was created by an immensely powerful artificial intelligence called the Infinet. When Pax learns the reason why the Infinet was created—and what it wants from him—he’ll have to make a choice that will change not only his life but the future of humanity.

"A gripping tale of the near future that is scarily real."
- Readers' Favorite

About this title

About the Author

John Akers was born in New York City and grew up in Westchester County. He got his undergraduate degree in behavioral sciences at Rice University, and to this day he enjoys telling people that he got a B.A. in B.S. A few years later he earned a master's in human factors engineering from Georgia Tech. He went on to work at several well-known hardware and software companies as a human factors engineer and user experience designer. John has always been fascinated by man-machine systems and the ways we design interfaces for the technology we create. He is a big fan of Big History, particularly the evolution of life on Earth, as well as human civilization and the ever-accelerating development of human technology. These interests, plus his observations over 20 years of working in high-tech, became the inspiration for his first novel, The Infinet. Long an avid reader, John read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash while he was in graduate school and fell in love with science fiction as a literary genre. In addition to Stephenson, John counts Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula Le Guin, Philip Dick, Orson Scott Card, and more recently Hugh Howey and Justin Cronin among his literary inspirations. John lives with his family in San Diego, California.

Review

"I love speculative fiction. I love a good thriller. Sometimes it seems I haven't seen the two genres combined into a great book since cyber punk exploded onto the scene. The Infinet by John Akers is such a book and it is great. I find it hard to imagine where the world we live in will take us sometimes. I find it hard to put the future into coherent pieces that make sense. John Akers does these two things brilliantly, and the result is a masterpiece. The result is The Infinet. It is rich in detail, both human and technological, and Akers combines them into a seamless whole. I was blown away and sometimes more than a little afraid. This is when I knew that I was reading a winner."

- Readers' Favorite

Edition details

• Publisher: Tech Noir Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 099919061X
• ISBN 13: 9780999190616
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 420