Nick Cook

Nick Cook is a bestselling author, technology consultant and corporate storyteller. His non-fiction title The Hunt For Zero Point, published in 2001 (in the UK; 2002 in the US), described his ten-year search inside America’s sprawling military-industrial complex - whilst a senior editor at Jane's Defence Weekly - for the ultimate technology: anti-gravity.

Today, in addition to thriller-writing, he blends his experience as an author (of his own fiction and non-fiction books, plus four bestselling Sunday Times ghost-written works) with technology consulting to ‘corporate storytell’ for companies that want to take a narrative strategic approach to messaging their missions and values - using the power of story to create the purpose and energy needed for significant, meaningful organisational change.

Nick also talks on topics ranging from futuristic aerospace and defence concepts, to AI and consciousness and sustainability – most recently at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) where he spoke about his 25 years’ reporting on the cutting edge of technology and ideas.

Nick lives and works in London, where he is currently in the throes of writing his follow-up to The Grid.

Nick, in his own words, on how The Grid came to be written:

'When I look back, it seems as if everything I’ve done has led up to my writing The Grid – and it is, in a way, reflective of my own journey to this point of my life.

Having worked as a journalist reporting on the defence industry, I got a close-up look into that world. It made me think deeply about global problems, secrecy and the politics of power.

My subsequent work with defence companies - after my two decades at Jane's - to try to create planetary solutions to big, global problems such as climate change and environmental catastrophe – problems defence companies are well structured to tackle, if only they were minded (or incentivised by governments) to do so – went some way toward satisfying my desire to do something constructive after merely reporting on the business.

Having studied the Qu’ran (as a student of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Exeter University), I was also, for a while, and as prep for the book, keen to explore the faiths of other world religions – including, nominally, the tradition I was raised in (Christianity) – to see what they offered, if anything, in the way of problem-solving. The answer, of course, is not at all straightforward. There is a religious backdrop to The Grid that flows from these ideas …

I was also, of course, fascinated, too, by the explosion of technological ideas and concepts that was emerging in the mid-2010s via the 4th Industrial Revolution (the Internet + AI + digitisation + robotics + new manufacturing concepts) …

Somewhere in this cauldron of thoughts and explorations a simple idea came to me: what would happen if we could scientifically prove the existence of God? What would that look like as a thriller?

The finished work evolved significantly from there, but from that simple premise, the book's plot was born.'