On this episode of Everything is Canon, Steve talks with Akemi Dawn Bowman all about her great new book The Infinity Courts!
Ever think about robots and if they have feelings? What about Artificial Intelligence? Do you think just because a machine can talk that is deserving of our sympathy? And I don’t mean calculators, I mean Siri, Alexa, Sherpa, and other virtual assistants. Do you ever find yourself “considering” them at all?
These are the types of questions you’ll be asking yourself when you dig into this great new YA sci-fi/fantasy novel from Akemi Dawn Bowman, the first in what should be a tremendous series.
Here’s the summary…
Eighteen-year-old Nami Miyamoto is certain her life is just beginning. She has a great family, just graduated high school, and is on her way to a party where her entire class is waiting for her—including, most importantly, the boy she’s been in love with for years.
The only problem? She’s murdered before she gets there.
When Nami wakes up, she learns she’s in a place called Infinity, where human consciousness goes when physical bodies die. She quickly discovers that Ophelia, a virtual assistant widely used by humans on Earth, has taken over the afterlife and is now posing as a queen, forcing humans into servitude the way she’d been forced to serve in the real world. Even worse, Ophelia is inching closer and closer to accomplishing her grand plans of eradicating human existence once and for all.
As Nami works with a team of rebels to bring down Ophelia and save the humans under her imprisonment, she is forced to reckon with her past, her future, and what it is that truly makes us human.
Ominous singularity forecasting aside, The Infinity Courts is full of fun contemporary riffs including enough pop-culture references to shake a lightsaber at, and as lead characters go, Nami is sympathetic, strong-willed, and courageous, all the things you want in a main character.
Steve and Akemi talk about the sometimes downside of interacting with fans online and how much access do you allow, how much the two of them have in common including their fear of Artificial Intelligence, The Infinity Courts of course, and much, much more.
The Infinity Courts is out now, click HERE to order a copy!
