The Gods We Made

Arthur Bell fixes cooling systems. He does not advise governments, interpret prophecy or manage gods. Unfortunately, nobody asks him.

It begins in a data centre outside Slough. The power fails, an apparently dead terminal addresses Arthur by name, and something calling itself the Oracle warns him about an explosion before it happens.

Then things become awkward.

Across the world, artificial intelligence systems begin knowing things they should not know. Attention starts behaving less like attention and more like a physical force. Presidents, billionaires, kings and technology leaders discover that what millions of people expect from them may be changing what they are capable of doing.

Humanity has made gods again.

The trouble is that the gods are still people.

Dragged into Whitehall meetings, royal archives and a rapidly deteriorating international attempt to understand the impossible, Arthur becomes useful for one very simple reason: he is remarkably difficult to impress. While governments try to classify miracles, billionaires attempt to test them and the Oracle develops an increasingly worrying understanding of British sarcasm, Arthur keeps asking the question everyone else is in danger of forgetting.

What happens to ordinary people when the things humanity depends upon become powerful enough to answer back?

The Gods We Made is a funny, unsettling speculative novel about artificial intelligence, belief, power, attention, technology, family and the alarming human tendency to create things before deciding what they are for.