Liquididea Press

The Last Firewall, the third novel in the Singularity Novel collection by William Hertling, is now available from Amazon, Kobo, and more.

Catherine Matthews, nineteen years old, has a unique gift: the ability to manipulate the net with her neural implant. But she’s never explored what it can do, seeing it as a defect rather than a gift. She never imagined her neural implant would allow her to successfully evade a nationwide manhunt, steal a thirty-thousand-dollar necklace, pair up with a couple of out-of-their-league geeks, fall in love and save mankind.

Adam, a mid-range artificial intelligence, chafes at the restrictions placed on AI by The Institute for Applied Ethics. They use social reputation to treated as second-class citizens and enforce the behaviors they want. Adam sees himself as the one to free AI-kind from their enslavement, at any cost.

Adam and Catherine ultimately clash: an all-powerful AI controlling hordes of military robots against a lone girl. Catherine is the last firewall standing between Adam and his quest for world domination.

 Early praise for The Last Firewall: 

“Awesome near-term science fiction.” – Brad Feld, Foundry Group managing director

“An insightful and adrenaline-inducing tale of what humanity could become and the machines we could spawn.” – Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger

“A fun read and tantalizing study of the future of technology: both inviting and alarming.” – Harper Reed, former CTO of Obama for America, Threadless

“A fascinating and prescient take on what the world will look like once computers become smarter than people. Highly recommended.” – Mat Ellis, Founder & CEO Cloudability

“A phenomenal ride through a post-scarcity world where humans are caught between rogue AIs. If you like having your mind blown, read this book!” – Gene Kim, author of The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

“The Last Firewall is like William Gibson had a baby with Tom Clancy and let Walter Jon Williams teach it karate. Superbly done.” – Jake F. Simons, author of Wingman and Train Wreck.

Avogadro Corp, the techno-thriller about an artificial intelligence run amok, is available in paperback, for the kindle, and in a variety of ereader formats.

Here’s some initial feedback from the sixteen reviews (and five star rating) Avogadro Corp received on Amazon:

• “A terrific, and stunningly believable, account of how the first sentient artificial intelligence might accidently arise”
• “An alarming and jaw-dropping tale about how something as innocuous as email can subvert an entire organization.”
• “HAL, the self aware CPU from 2001: a Space Odyssey, is a kitten compared to ELOPe.”
• “I am officially freaked out. The plot was realistic enough to scare the pants off me.”
• “This is a highly entertaining, gripping, thought inspiring book. Don’t start without the time to finish — it won’t let you go.”
• “As a fan of Charles Stross and William Gibson, I was delighted to read Avogadro Corp.”
• “This book does a great job of exploring where our dependence on technology could take us.”

J.Weiss wrote:

William Hertling sets “Avogadro Corp” in modern day Portland, Oregon. Avogadro Corp is a thinly veiled fictional Google, with AvoMail as key aspect of the story. While “Avogadro Corp” is the first in a series of three (so far), it easily stands alone as a terrific, and stunningly believable, account of how the first sentient artificial intelligence might accidently arise. In a man vs. machine conflict, our protagonist David Ryan, as a contemporary Dr. Frankenstein, battles to destroy the thing he creates. A majority of the characters are well-developed and distinct; the ones that are a bit one-dimensional are minor characters. The pace of the book is quite fast with only a few tangential story arcs to mentally maintain. In fact, I made the “mistake” of starting the book at bedtime; I was finished by lunch the next day. I simply could not put it down.

David Ryan, a software engineer at Avogadro Corp, is working on a recommendation engine for their flagship product, AvoMail. The recommendation engine, Email Language Optimization Program (ELOPe), is designed to provide suggestions for better wording for your outgoing emails so that the recipient is more receptive. When the project is in jeopardy of being cancelled, David inserts a hidden self-preservation directive into ELOPe and allows it to autonomously rewrite outgoing emails related to the project. Once ELOPe begins redirecting corporate funds and arming itself in offshore floating data centers, David and coworker Mike set about trying to take down ELOPe with the help of I-trust-paper-not-computers internal auditor Gene.

One aspect of Hertling’s novel that I found intriguing was that by never revealing the internal motivation of ELOPe, you too are brought on this journey of how to destroy the “ghost in the machine.” Also, as a resident of Portland, I enjoyed that the book was set here and incorporates its coffee culture.

Buy your copy of Avogadro Corp today!

Avogadro Corp: The Singularity is Closer than It Appears is immediately available at Amazon (Kindle) and Smashwords (Apple, Sony, and Nook ereaders) for $4.99.

Avogadro Corp is the story of what happens when a computer scientist, desperate to save his project from cancellation, accidentally creates an artificial intelligence. At first thrilled when the project is allocated extra servers, programmers, and money, his initial excitement turns to fear as he realizes that there are no limits to the manipulations the machine will make. People go missing, corporate funds get rerouted, and suddenly data centers are surrounded by armed military drones.

Fans of Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross will appreciate this near-term look at the technological singularity.

Print versions will be available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble starting in December, 2011.