Algorithms: A Novel (Seventh Flag Trilogy, Book 3)

This final novel in the acclaimed Seventh Flag Trilogy thrusts readers thirty years into the future—a dystopic reality of regional fiefdoms, marauding scavengers, and the quest for ultimate power: the Algorithms of everything, which have been secretly pilfered from an undersea Internet cable, stored on hard drives, and implanted in the last surviving blue whale.

Ademar Zarkan—the iconic and unlikely heroine of the American West, now a seventy-year-old woman—leads the Free People of West Texas in an alliance with Native Americans and the indigenous people of northern Mexico to retrieve the hard drives and to rescue her clairvoyant granddaughter from the radicalized Sisterhood and its merciless leader, Mother. But they aren’t the only ones in pursuit of the Algorithms.

Haunting and prophetic, Algorithms is a story of violent extremism, resilience, family, and, above all, the interconnectedness of humankind and the natural world.

A Pulitzer-nominated national security correspondent, Sid Balman Jr. has covered wars in the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo, and has traveled extensively with two American presidents and four secretaries of state on overseas diplomatic missions. With the emergence of the web and the commoditizing of content, Balman moved into the business side of communications. In that role, over two decades, he helped found a news syndicate focused on the interests of women and girls, served as communications chief for the largest consortium of US international development organizations, led two successful progressive campaigning companies, and launched a new division at a large international development firm centered on violent radicalism and other security issues on behalf of governments and nonprofits. A fourth-generation Texan, as well as a climber, surfer, paddler, and benefactor to Smith College, Balman splits his time between West Texas and Washington DC with his three kids and two dogs.