Autonomous by Chris Howard
- Reads 205
- Votes 9
- Parts 3
Ongoing30m
Last published Wed, Oct 1, 2014
Autonomous is a thriller about wild-ass technology, the future of intelligence, floating cities in the middle of the ocean, murder, and autonomous underwater vehicles. It's a stand-alone story, loosely connected to my book Salvage (Masque, 2013). If you've read Salvage then you've already met a few of the characters, but if you haven't, what's the worst than can happen? Right, but besides that?
If a story can have a shape, then I think Autonomous is funnel-shaped. It begins sort of loose, with a wide spread of characters who appear to be moving in different directions, and as we progress, the funnel walls impose on the narrative. They close in—metaphorically—and most of the characters and their stories slip into the more concentrated flow with other characters and their stories until we have a richer, deeper, more complex story that carries everyone through to the end. (Almost everyone).
Then again, maybe that's every story ever told?
Scratch all that. Autonomous is a murder mystery at its core, but it's also about many different people, and groups of people, taking sides to solve a serious problem. And by serious I mean civilization-ending, or deadly on a global scale. Not all of these people end up on the same side. Some of these people do not survive. Some of these people are inside one person—the principal character, Nathan Isenart, is made up of three very different aspects of the same person, sharing the same name, sharing the same physical form, but not much after that. Autonomous is also about three fairly-secret military programs with rival visions for the world's future.
There, I think that covers some of it. If that sounds daunting or just weird, don't forget that Autonomous is really about wild-ass technology, the future of intelligence, floating cities in the middle of the ocean, and autonomous underwater vehicles.
—Chris Howard, 2014, Somewhere near the Atlantic
All Rights Reserved
#478
mermaids
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A story told in two perspectives. Set in an alternate industrial world where radio technology is rendered nearly obsolete due to a magnificent yet mysterious and devastating phenomenon that has crippled its use. Nations has prospered with the further development of flight and the inception of the skyship, a series of heavily-armed floating warships that has the ability to cross continents and wrest control of the skies. This story arc is told in the perspective of a young Aurelian soldier, Everent Clauvis Griswall, who struggles to come in terms with his brother's 'death'. Severely delusional and suffering from a complex, he inadvertently sets out to find the truth behind the War that had killed his brother and engulfed the whole continent of Steiffer with chaos and death. The second story arc is set in the future Earth where an unexpected turn of mysterious events has triggered a massive War that has destroyed many countries, rendering the surviving nations struggling for what's left of the resources on the ravaged world. Unable to travel across devastated wastelands stretching hundreds of miles apart, nations have developed and built gravitational elevators as a main mode of transport among each other. The second story arc is told in the perspective of Jeremiah Kelson, a young and aspiring scientist/operative who had an unexpected military background and skill. Having no memories of his past, Kelson finally sets out to find the roots of his forgotten memories without knowing that it would place him in dangerous situations in search of his past life. After crossing paths with many different peoples of the other world, Kelson would eventually begin to question himself of his origins and has decided to find it out. Little does he know that fate will bring him in a chance encounter with another young soldier that might have some connections with him, leading to the revelations of a bigger and more shocking truth of the relations between the both worlds...
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