J.M. Mulligan has been afraid of artificial intelligence since college. When she was studying electrical engineering, she learned a little bit about the theories behind AI and where it could go in the future, and she found them unsettling. As Mulligan got older, she continued to be frightened by the idea of AI gone wrong. But she was also curious, especially about exploring those anxieties in fiction. So she considered: If all human life really is some kind of simulation set up by a system of AI gone rogue, what would be the point? And how could humans react to issues with AI systems that would enable us to continue relying on them and trusting them?

The City of Infinite Life, Mulligan’s debut novel, begins with her protagonist, Harper Lewis, stuck in traffic. A software engineer, Harper suddenly discovers that there’s a snake in her car. As if that weren’t bad enough, she’s suddenly ripped out of her reality and wakes up in a strange bed, in a strange body, with a stranger calling her by the wrong name:

 I hopped off the bed and landed solidly on the ground. Like, I commanded the ground. The ground was my bitch. When I looked down at my feet, I caught the first full view of my body. “Whoa.” Instead of my stubborn jelly belly that remained no matter how much I exercised, my stomach was flat. I rested my hand on it and could feel the muscles underneath. When I raised my shirt, a six-pack stared back at me. “What the hell? I’m…” I couldn’t think of the word. Skinny? Fit? No, it was more than that. My biceps bulged under the tight-fitting sleeve of my shirt. “I’m buff.”



“I know this is weird for you.” The guy stepped toward me. He had a sweet, woody smell that made my stomach flutter. “I yanked you out physically, but your mind is still in the simulation. But I did it to protect you, so please trust me. I’ll explain when we are safe, but right now we must go. With or without shoes.”



“Simulation? What simulation?”



 “Your life as….” He held his palms up at me with a questioning look. “What’s your name?”



 “Harper.”



 “Your life as Harper was a simulation.” He tugged my arm. “Your name is Prayze Hale. Come on.”

Harper/Prayze learns that she’s actually a powerful figure in the year 2123, and the reason she was in a simulation was that a security AI she helped develop went rogue and started working to control humans. She learns how to function in the strange, futuristic world and explores the possible ramifications of her vocation as a software engineer in a SF adventure that Kirkus Reviews calls “a thoughtful, involving tale about remarkable human allies fighting an insidious AI.”

Mulligan, who lives in Florida, moved into coding after earning a degree in electrical engineering. Now she writes fiction full time. That transition from the world of science to the world of fiction was pretty seamless for Mulligan, who wrote stories as a child and then even more when she was home raising her children. She drew heavily on her technological background to write The City of Infinite Life.

When she decided to try and take writing more seriously and worked on developing her skills, Mulligan discovered a story-writing technique called the Snowflake Method. She realized that plotting fiction and structuring computer coding weren’t all that different. That connection, combined with a lot of practice, eventually led to The City of Infinite Life. “This was probably my fourth full-fledged long book,” says Mulligan, “and I finally felt like I got the rhythm of writing a novel and understood it.”

Though she loves reading romance and women’s fiction, Mulligan finds herself more drawn to science fiction and action as a writer. When considering what kind of SF story she’d like to write, she returned to that old fear of artificial intelligence, questions about why AI would rebel against humans, and what humans could possibly do to fight back. Ever the researcher, she pushed back her fear and dug deeper to understand AI clearly enough to write about it. She found that through learning what scared her and then writing about it, she was able to ameliorate her anxieties as well as develop a compelling story idea.

That research opened Mulligan’s world up to whole new anxieties around concepts like what nanotechnology could do, but it also opened her mind to what could go really well in the future. “I wanted to know that we could have a future with AI,” she says, “because it is inevitable.” Research showed Mulligan what could go badly, but her imagination as a writer helped her discover ways to find hope and success for humanity’s future.

When it came to the human characters in her story, Mulligan gave her protagonist a STEM background similar to her own. But while some of Mulligan’s earlier writing borrowed more from her real life, The City of Infinite Life has characters who are native to the world Mulligan built for them, especially the characters from the futuristic world that Harper wakes up in.

Mulligan notes that it was particularly challenging to flesh out the character of Prayze, who is “over a hundred but looks young and has seen the development of AI over so many years.” Much of Prayze/Harper’s character development as distinct personas involves them learning to function in a world so unlike their own, a dynamic that Kirkus praises as “a high point of the book,” where “both protagonists are needed to rescue a flawed future in this engaging and provocative story.” 

Mulligan found that the world she created was so full of potential that she’s writing a sequel to The City of Infinite Life, set in a different city that uses AI in a different way. “I like the universe that I created,” says Mulligan. “It’s a good world, and I can explore a different aspect of it.” That new book is set to be released in the spring of 2023. Until then, Mulligan’s fans can listen to the podcast We Never Learn that she makes with her friend, where they do silly things and talk about their lives.

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn.