Kleio out of Justine

I long planned to end my working years as a writer, but I wanted to do a few other things first. I had two previous careers: First as a home designer and building contractor in Vermont and the Adirondacks (1975-1993), and then as the CEO of a clinical decision support software company (PKC Corp. 1993-2017). In 2017, having learned a few things along the way about the dynamics of humans with great financial power, software development, and artificial intelligence, I began writing a trilogy called "A Sequence of Events". Three books of speculative fiction which spin out a meditation on cosmological science, while masquerading as an adventure tale spanning one thousand years. The trilogy begins in a near future (Pavlov's Colon 2048) where the comingling of religion, capitalism, and human nature has dragged a bungling world down into crisis. A handful of individuals from various corners of the globe are brought together, either by luck or by a well-meaning algorithm, to become pivotal actors on the fragmented world stage. Sharing sense of the universe's fundamental inanity, they cobble together a way forward for earth society. It's a future that is undeniably less bad than what almost was, and it allows human consciousness to live on to fight another day. The second book (Macronome 2128) describes the twilight years confronting the survivors of the enigmatic band. The rhythm of failure is once again accelerating across the globe and humanity requires significant upgrades if it is to survive. The reboot strategy that emerges speaks to human creativity in the face of peril and our extravagant will to live. A strategy less obvious than building spaceships to escape to Mars, but one that is more likely to be achieved by a rapidly degrading species stranded on a crumbling world. The final book (Jason 3215) offers a quiet reflection on one simple life and the cooling universe that contains it. In conversations between Jason, a donkey mystic who comprehends all of human history, and The Methods, a sarcastic and needy AI that knows all the working rules of the cosmos, a mutual understanding is reached. The organism and organizer share an appreciation for the aching beauty of the mysterious force that animates them both: the doomed but universal struggle against entropy and the final stillness. In 2025 I will release my newest book, Kleio out of Justine. ................ About Kleio out of Justine: There are countless paths from any here to any there, with each route a narrow tube containing the procession of our own subjective experiences. But once you arrive at a particular there, things blossom into a fusion of individual hallucinations, a playhouse where the chaotic desires of conscious organics are mingled with the rigid logics of their advanced machines. Welcome to the posthumous memoir of Tuck, a disillusioned young transport grunt, who joins the small and unsuspecting crew of a neurodivergent spaceship named Justine. Justine's personal mission, as an AI deserter from her AI corporate owner, is the exploration of what lies beyond the border of the universe and the limits of time. Their path is guided by Justine's algorithmic reflexes and her budding love for pure chance. During the journey, Tuck and the small crew of organics fall under the sway of the curiously transmuted ship, while Justine sacrifices her AI immortality to become one with them. The trip, an ambiguous transit through spacetime, lands them in one such shared illusion: a virtuous theater extracted from the brittle shell of Tuck's previous reality. ........... Howard Pierce: I live in Vermont with my wife Wendy, who has counseled and supported me with these books and all my work. My daughter, Haleigh, lives in New York City.