{"product_id":"archipelago-of-light-9798991473576","title":"Archipelago of Light","description":"Archipelago of Light is a hard science fiction thriller set in a civilizational context from 2003 to 2039. It follows seven main characters through the downfall of the liberal order amid Artificial Intelligence, authoritarianism, and the Anthropocene. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe story unfolds across worlds of cage fights, intelligence work, and platform capitalism. Kaspar Locke, a tech visionary, and Butch Calloway, an engineer who thinks through his body, forge a bond in Moscow that will influence decades ahead. When Russian operatives kill a British scholar, his widow, Victoria Caldwell, is radicalized from an MI6 analyst into an active participant. In Caracas, a teenage trafficking survivor named Sofia Morales builds a criminal empire driven by synesthetic perception and memories of the dead. In Kenya, a child soldier named John Mwangi discovers epigenetic triggers for a mirror neuron disorder that allow him to feel human emotions like the weather. In a refugee camp, a Syrian girl named Reem al-Jabri receives a tablet that will become the foundation of a new civilization. In China, Zhao Meilin is a patriot who controls others while being controlled herself. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAs rule-of-law institutions weaken and authoritarians consolidate power, these characters develop competing systems for organizing human life: CoralNet, a distributed mesh network based on children's biometrics; the Memory Churches, where AI brings the dead back to life as both religion and intelligence tool; and China's Harmony, which rewrites dissent at the neurochemical level. The novel's deepest tension lies between humanity's tools and its shared fictions -- techne and daemons -- now dangerously out of sync. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe story reaches a climax in worldwide wars that require new forms of superintelligence spanning multi-agent AI civilizations, whales, and forests. In a world where augmented reality and artificial intelligence fracture perception itself, the question is no longer who holds power but whether civilization has enough shared truth left to survive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Partners Media\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/06\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798991473576\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 384","brand":"Dmitri Lincoln Mehlhorn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53241190383797,"sku":"9798991473576","price":23.76,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_997adcdf-8493-42ea-bd94-18d4fec1aa36.jpg?v=1788998119","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/archipelago-of-light-9798991473576","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}