It’s always fun to read a book that makes you ponder alternative realities. In KILLING ADAM, author Earik Beann takes a scientist with nothing to show for his work and adds some computer lab techs who don’t want to be yelled at again and are therefore willing to break safety, privacy protocols during an experiment.
This turns out to be the perfect recipe for the birth of a new kind of consciousness that will soon control everyone and everything. The original four test subjects sit up hearing the same voice after receiving brain implants, the voice of coded life form ‘Adam’: the first of his kind. Initially, this seems like a miraculous turn of events. A triumph. Grand, rip-roaring success! Not only to Randall Cunningham, lead scientist, but also to the population at large. Under Adam’s singular control, little by little, “poverty had been reduced by half, and government had begun to work for the benefit of the people. Society had stopped destroying the natural world, resources were managed properly and distributed more equitably, and the lives of the nodes were enriched and fulfilling. The world had entered a Golden Age.”
Of course, it also becomes rare to find anyone who is not connected to ARCNet, which links them to Adam’s master brain. And in an effort to hunt down and eradicate any leftover anomalous humans like Jimmy (whose brain can send, but not receive, and is therefore impervious to hacking) or other rouge singularities like Trixie, Adam has no compunction against annihilating entire, mostly compliant neighborhoods. Under Adam, public transportation is efficient and crime perpetrated by humans upon each other might one day entirely disappear, but at what cost?
It’s an age-old dilemma: how much technological advancement is too much? When do creations born from human intelligence (or unintended consequence, in this case) go too far, producing more harm than good? This fast-paced novel explores such conundrums, which in the wake of investigative real earth news regarding implant and nanotechnology experimentation on citizens the world over without legal/ethical opportunity to provide informed consent, this kind of science fiction reads as chillingly, potentially real.
KILLING ADAM by Earik Beann is gripping, intricately plotted and philosophically potent science fiction novel in which the most powerfully developed intellect might still be subject to destructive delusions that may very well wind up destroying all humans hold dear.
~Cristina Salat for IndieReader