In Pausback’s novel, a journalist conducts a three-day interview with a reclusive game designer who just might have the answers to life’s biggest questions.

The author has structured this work of fiction in an interview format. The interviewer, called “D,” never reveals his subject’s identity, electing instead to refer to him simply as “K.” Readers learn that, at one time, K was a millionaire game designer and professor of game theory living in the United States who seemingly “had it all.” Like many ascetics and spiritual seekers before him, K decided to give it all up and live a life of quiet solitude, in this case on the outskirts of Panama. That’s where D crosses his path. What follows is an extended conversation between the two in which K is more than happy to share his thoughts on life, love, death, immortality, and everything in between. According to K, we are all living in a kind of “simulation.” Unlike other proponents of similar theories, K posits that the point of this simulation is to become “Love.” That might sound lofty and a bit woo-woo at first blush, but the discourse between the two comes across as grounded and sober: “Lots of people are confident tech will save us. Like believing in the second coming of Christ,” the anonymous interviewee says. “In reality though, the only thing that’s kept us from total annihilation so far has been cool-headed, rational, mature thinking (along with a good measure of dumb luck).” Their discourse is fascinating and lucid, with welcome doses of humor along the way. (“Do you believe in reincarnation?” the interviewer asks at one point. “Not this time around,” his subject replies.) K gives hope to those fearing that AI will “wake up” one day and decide to destroy humanity; he asserts that AI will never achieve true consciousness—and without true consciousness, there can be no free will. However, there’s the “burden of eternity” to contend with—K says it’s the one thing we really must learn to reconcile. It’s all very heady stuff, but, as Pausback’s ideas are rendered here, engaging with them feels as effortless as passing the time with your favorite barstool philosopher.

Bold and thought-provoking. 

In Pausback’s apocalyptic debut thriller, a deadly hacker unleashes a virus that threatens to delete the human species.

Roughly a century in the future, a convergence of wars, disease, and disasters called “the Great Upheaval” kills a third of mankind. As “the corporate elite” takes over for failed governments, survivors dwell in an age of techno-wonders and incipient nightmares. Robots and drones do grunt work, and a global corporation, OmniaR, has created a vast artificial intelligence called BESI (which stands for “bioengineered, synthetic intelligence”). Human teleportation is a reality, and a technique called “remolecularization” has enabled the digital reduction of any matter, including living people, to two-dimensional storage. It allows the easy colonization of planets, but it’s also bad news for poor and genetically undesirable people, who are summarily digitized off the map. One technological innovation, however, is most salient to this book’s plot: every person has an implanted “life chip” that permits constant monitoring by those in power. Soon after rebel hackers attack the corporate paradigm, compromised life chips start infecting people with a synthetic version of the Ebola virus. Top cop Jake Kepler combats a lethal, enigmatic super-hacker called Brimstone and his virtually limitless minions: a commandeered army of security/military robots. Other authors might have relayed this doomsday scenario in a multivolume saga of doorstop-sized tomes (à la Justin Cronin) or skimmed through the mayhem lightly, like a movie-adaptation hired gun. Pausback takes a middle path; sometimes he’s generous with description and dialogue, and other times he’s parsimonious, with billions perishing in a space of a few paragraphs. Characterizations suffer in this uneven mix, with Kepler registering mainly as a Schwarzeneggerian he-man archetype, complete with a cranky superior chewing him out (“Damn it Kepler. Why the hell can’t you just be normal and teleport like the rest of us?!”). But once the narrative properly boots into action mode, it becomes as addictive as a hit video game. Its especially satisfying sequence of endings and epilogues may remind readers of an old computer term: “graceful exit.”

A fast-paced, if occasionally buggy, cyberthriller with some nail-biting passages.