The Venus Project: A Post Apocalyptic Sci-Fi

Book excerpt: Derin Kaplan was only six years old when her father was frozen, and a lot has changed in the world since then. The financial markets crashed with the interventions of a quantum computer built by her father, and biological weapons killed most of the global population. Derin and her mother survived and live in a female-only community in a high-tech building rising above the sea. The year is 2044 and, as a cryogenic engineer, Derin is working day and night to bring her father back to life. If he does come back, he will be three years younger than her, but what will that change? He’ll still be her father. She remembers his face from old videos, and she’s programmed her personal robot to speak with his voice. She misses him. Her mother is asking her to think this through more, but Derin is determined. She manages to freeze and thaw one of the hamsters she’s been experimenting with, but one is still dead. There must have been a difference somewhere in the process, but she can’t find it. She needs to ask Quantus, the community’s AI. No one else can help her. She won’t give up, even if bringing her father back means that two of the women who have applied for a baby this year will be turned down due to the community’s restrictions on population growth. The system is very different from the approaches of the past; unanimity is required in voting, not just a majority. She must prepare a speech and convince the other women to vote in favor of bringing her father back. However, when her own life and the fate of the whole community are threatened by artificial intelligence, Derin begins to question everything she thought she knew. Her questions will lead her into outer space in pursuit of a mysterious object that appears and disappears in the sky, and the answers that she finds will show her how humanity came to be on Earth and how they should live from this point forward. Derin’s story is interspersed with those of several other interconnected characters, with action taking place both before and after the crises that bring about the collapse of the old-world order.