Under the Blue

A lead debut novel: a literary thriller about a pandemic, the rise of AI, and how — or why — we might save the human race

A road trip beneath clear blue skies and a blazing sun: a reclusive artist is forced to abandon his home and follow two young sisters across a post-pandemic Europe in search of a safe place. Is this the end of the world?

Meanwhile two computer scientists have been educating their baby in a remote location. Their baby is called Talos, and he is an advanced AI program. Every week they feed him data, starting from the beginning of written history, era by era, and ask him to predict what will happen next to the human race. At the same time they're involved in an increasingly fraught philosophical debate about why human life is sacred and why the purpose for which he was built — to predict threats to human life to help us avoid them — is a worthwhile and ethical pursuit.

These two strands come together in a way that is always suspenseful, surprising and intellectually provocative: this is an extraordinarily prescient and vital work of fiction — an apocalyptic road novel to frighten and thrill.

'A book of insight and foresight, lit with wit and gorgeous with intelligence' — Jay Griffiths, author of Wild: An Elemental Journey and Why Rebel