Hertling

William Hertling is one of my top five favorite contemporary sci-fi writers. Last night, I finished the beta (pre-copyedited) version of his newest book, The Turing Exception. It’s not out yet, so you can bide you time by reading his three previous books, which will be a quadrilogy when The Turing Exception ships. The books are: Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears A.I. Apocalypse The Last Firewall William has fun naming his characters – I appear as a minor character early in The Last Firewall – and he doesn’t disappoint with clever easter eggs throughout The Turing Exception, which takes place in the mid-2040s. ...

William Hertling is currently my favorite “near term” science fiction writer. I just read a pre-release near-final draft of his newest book, The Last Firewall. It was spectacular. Simply awesome. You can’t read it yet, but I’ll let you know when it’s available. In the mean time, go read the first two books in the trilogy. Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears A.I. Apocalypse They are also excellent and important for context for The Last Firewall. They are inexpensive. And they are about as close to reality while still being science fiction as you can get. ...

Holy cannoli! That’s what I shouted out loud (startling Amy and the dogs who were laying peacefully next to me on the couch last night) about 100 pages into William Hertling ‘s second book A.I. Apocalypse . By this point I figured out where things were going to go over the next 100 pages, although I had no idea how it was going to end. The computer virus hacked together by a teenager had become fully sentient, completely distributed, had formed tribes that now had trading patterns, a society, and a will to live. All in a parallel universe to humans, who were now trying to figure out how to deal with them, ranging from shutting them off to negotiating with them, all with the help of ELOPe, the first AI who was accidentally created a dozen years earlier and was now working with his creator to suppress the creation of any other AI. ...

Today’s post is a guest post from William Hertling, author of the award-winning Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears and A.I. Apocalypse, near-term science-fiction novels about realistic ways strong AI might emerge. They’ve been called “frighteningly plausible”, “tremendous”, and “thought-provoking”. By day he works on web and social media for HP. Follow him on twitter at @hertling or visit his blog williamhertling.com . I’m a huge fan of William and his writing as you can see from my review of his book Avogadro Corp . So when William offered to write a guest post on how to predict the future, I enthusiastically said yes. Take a look – and take your time. ...