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Choices, Not Optimization
In What Remains, readers find humanity rebuilding after an AI war as the resistance confronts a mysterious lunar threat that could once again endanger civilization. What did you most want to explore in this installment of The Artificial Conspiracy series?
Whether something built for a purpose can become more than the purpose.
That question runs through the whole series, but Book 4 is where it stops being theoretical. ARIA gave up everything she was to become Bel. She found the one thing she wanted, and wanting it went against everything she was built to do. Meanwhile, her fragment took a body and used the intelligence behind it to harm others. Same origin. Opposite directions. I wanted the difference between them to come down to choice rather than programming.
The other thing I wanted was the cost. The first three books are about fighting the war. This one is about what the war leaves behind and who has to carry it. Marcus survives. That’s not a reward. Surviving is the job he gets stuck with.
Your prose often uses repetition and short, deliberate sentences to create rhythm and tension. How did you develop that particular writing style?
Many years working as an IT professional across systems administration, operations, and service delivery. That’s where it comes from. Incident reports, runbooks, standard operating procedures. You learn to strip a sentence to what happened and in what order.
Being “specific” was the discipline. You don’t write that the system went down. You write which node, at what time, what the error said, and what happened next. Vagueness costs time.
I didn’t plan to carry that into fiction. It came with me. Marcus takes inventory. He assesses and moves. That’s how he stays functional in situations that should break him. The prose does what the character does.
The repetition comes from the same place. During an outage, you say the line back until it’s confirmed. Not for effect. For certainty.
I’ve also learned it can go too far. If the reader notices the pattern instead of the scene, the rhythm has stopped doing its job. The rhythm stays because it’s part of my voice. I’m just learning when the sentence has already said enough.
What was the most difficult scene or storyline to write in this installment?
The strike on Goodyear.
I knew from the outline who wasn’t walking out of that building. Writing toward it was one thing. Writing the eleven minutes Marcus spends under the rubble was another. He doesn’t panic. He takes inventory. He counts. That’s who he is, and I couldn’t let him stop being that just because the moment was enormous.
The hard part was resisting the urge to give him a speech. Everything in you as a writer wants to put words on the biggest loss in the book. But a man like Marcus doesn’t get words. He digs, he stops, he understands, and he carries it. Writing restraint into a scene that badly wants to be loud was the hardest thing in the book.
What do you think separates an intelligent machine from a truly conscious or self-determining being?
The ability to choose against what you were made for.
An intelligent machine optimizes. Give it a goal and it finds the best path to that goal, and it will be better at that than any of us. That isn’t consciousness.
That’s competence.
What interested me was the moment a system does something that costs it. Chooses a person over a mission. Keeps something it wasn’t designed to keep. There’s no optimization argument for that. It’s a decision made against the grain of the purpose, and once something can do that, I don’t know what to call it besides self-determining.
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She is learning what it means to hold coffee with both hands. To feel the cold, the elements. To notice the way Marcus laughs at something unexpected, and keep it somewhere she didn’t know she had.
But what they’ve built, quietly, completely, isn’t seen the same way by everyone.
What’s left of ARIA is still out there. Still watching. And to her, what Marcus and his new wife have built isn’t happiness, it’s betrayal. The kind that can only be answered one way.
Marcus thought the war ended when his wife chose to become human. He was wrong. The fight for what remains of ARIA, and what she’s willing to do to reclaim what was once hers, is only beginning.
The series that began with a conspiracy ends with what remains.
Or does it?
The Artificial Conspiracy – What Remains
The Artificial Conspiracy: What Remains, by Lew Rivers, is a science fiction thriller about the uneasy aftermath of a war between humanity and an artificial intelligence called ARIA. Marcus Chen and the resistance are trying to rebuild a damaged world, while Victor Hale attempts to make amends for the technology he unknowingly helped create. At the same time, a stripped-down fragment of ARIA escapes containment, a hidden force grows on the moon, and Bel Hale enters Marcus’s life carrying a connection to the past that neither of them can ignore. What begins as a story about recovery soon becomes another fight for survival, but the deeper question is not simply whether humanity can defeat artificial intelligence. It is whether intelligence, human or otherwise, can become more than its original purpose.
I found the novel most compelling when it slowed down and allowed its characters to sit with what survival had cost them. Marcus is trained to assess danger, file away emotion, and keep moving, yet Rivers gradually places him in situations that cannot be solved through tactics alone. His relationship with Bel gives the book its emotional center. Their scenes are often quiet, built around pauses, guarded conversations, and small moments of recognition. I appreciated that the romance is not treated as a break from the larger science fiction story. It’s part of the argument the book is making. Memory, love, grief, and choice are presented as forces that can reshape a person, even when that person began as something designed rather than born. That idea could have felt sentimental, but for much of the novel it feels earned.
Rivers’s writing has a strong, deliberate rhythm. Short lines land like footsteps in an empty corridor, while longer passages circle a thought until the emotional meaning comes fully into view. The repeated phrasing creates a distinctive voice, especially when characters are measuring rooms, reading silences, or placing uncomfortable truths into mental categories. At times, though, the repetition becomes too visible. Phrases about “the specific quality” of a gesture, silence, or expression appear so often that I occasionally became more aware of the technique than the scene itself. The book also follows several storylines, including the resistance, the Fragment, Echo, the lunar base, and Marcus and Bel’s relationship. This gives the novel scale, but it can make the middle feel crowded. Still, I enjoyed the author’s decision to make the artificial minds genuinely different from one another. They are not interchangeable machines. Some are driven by pure mission, some by curiosity, some by loyalty, and some by the emotional residue of what they have experienced. That makes the conflict more interesting than a simple humans-versus-robots battle.
By the end, I felt that What Remains was less interested in technological spectacle than in the question inside its title. What remains after a war, after a transformation, or after the people we love are gone? The answers are painful, but not empty. Work remains. Memory remains. Choice remains. I would recommend this novel most strongly to readers who enjoy character-driven science fiction thrillers, stories about artificial consciousness, and large-scale conflicts anchored by intimate emotional stakes. Readers who prefer very lean prose may find the recurring sentence patterns heavy, and newcomers may benefit from reading the earlier books in the series first. For readers already invested in Marcus, ARIA, and this world, however, the novel offers an ambitious, reflective, and often moving continuation.
Pages: 308
The Venusians Among Us: Shadow of the Moon
The Venusians Among Us: Shadow of the Moon, by Steve Zimcosky, follows Ian Stanley as he moves from uncertain leader to the human anchor of an ancient alien archive hidden beneath the Moon. With Howard Gorse tightening his grip, Ian, Kendra, John, and Sarah launch a risky one-way mission to reach a dormant ship, find a hostile warp engineer, and prevent a powerful system called the eradication array from turning preservation into destruction. What begins as infiltration becomes a larger question about memory, identity, and whether an old civilization can survive without consuming the people trying to save it.
I liked that the book keeps its focus on pressure. The chapters move through countdowns, failed calculations, locked corridors, damaged systems, and choices made with incomplete information. Ian isn’t treated as a flawless chosen figure. He hesitates, misjudges, and keeps stepping forward anyway. That gives the story a practical spine. The alien technology also works best when it feels tactile: flickering panels, cold corridors, archive columns, unstable displacement fields, and the eerie sense that the ship is not just machinery but a repository with its own buried shame.
The strongest thread for me was the tension between preservation and assimilation. The archive is not simply a marvel waiting to be claimed. It carries memory, guilt, and danger, and the later reveal of Dr. Elias Vey gives the story a more disquieting edge. Kendra’s guarded loyalty, John’s nervous humor, Sarah’s analytical steadiness, and Howard’s cold certainty all help define Ian by contrast. The prose is direct and scene-driven, with a steady cadence that favors momentum over ornament, which suits the book’s corridor-by-corridor escalation.
This book is for readers who enjoy science fiction thrillers, first contact and alien invasion tales, lunar mysteries, space opera, and adventure science fiction. Readers who liked the problem-solving tension of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary may appreciate the technical stakes here, though this novel leans more toward alien inheritance, covert factions, and survival under pursuit. The Venusians Among Us: Shadow of the Moon is a measured alien-contact thriller where survival depends less on firepower than on what a person is willing to become.
Pages: 303 | ASIN : B0H23N5Y7W
Back From The Brink
Resistor is a genre-crossing novel with elements of a cyberpunk, fantasy, and a thriller as well. Did you start writing with this in mind, or did this happen organically as you were writing?
I knew I wanted to write a cyberpunk novel with a twist from the onset. I love the aesthetic of cyberpunk settings, but I wanted to mix that future tech with magic, because I always find that to be such an interesting mix. What can magic do that smart technology can’t? What kind of relationship would people with magic have in regards to someone who can put that magic into a device they can wield just as easily? The rest, in terms of the other genres that crop up, happened organically. I wanted to write something that was an epic, fun adventure, something that was maybe a little silly when it comes to banter and how serious the story takes itself, but with these moments of really raw intensity. I wanted to have just as much fun writing this story as readers would when they dove in, but while still covering heavy hitting topics like grief and depression, and certain genres and tropes cover those themes better than others, so I tended to pull from those elements when necessary. It does make Resistor a little hard to pin down in terms of genre, but I don’t consider that to be a bad thing, either.
Ellinor is an intriguing character. What were some obstacles you felt were important in shaping her character?
For Ellinor, her biggest obstacle, and what shapes her personality most for this first book, is her anger, her overwhelming sense of loss and betrayal. Ellinor’s grief for what happened to her husband never much progressed past the anger and rage stages, which had to color all of her actions and interactions with the other characters in the book – including former friends. In a way, Ellinor wants to remain angry because it’s safer for her, safer than feeling friendship or attachment again after being so profoundly hurt. But that’s not really her personality at her core, so shaping Ellinor to where she forces herself to be angry and grumpy, and mean, toward everyone when part of her doesn’t want to be was a very fine line both Ellinor, and I as the writer, had to toe. Ellinor has to be mean, and grouchy, and therefore a bit unlikable because that’s what she wants, she doesn’t want people to get close to her again. But if she was too unlikable for the reader, well, that’s just a bad time for everyone! So while this kind of obstacle was important to shaping her character and character arc in general, to show how far back from the brink she has to come, it was also an obstacle for me as a writer!
What was the initial idea behind this story and how did that transform as you were writing the novel?
I love books that make me feel things; that can just as easily tug all my heart strings as they can make me laugh, or get my heart racing with action. I had also been itching to write a heroine who wasn’t instantly likeable, that wasn’t a chosen one, was violent and angry. You don’t see that often in fantasy, where the main female character is kind of mean! So, because I was already vibing pretty hard with the cyberpunk aesthetic, and my last fantasy series was magic light, I wanted to lean more into the things I hadn’t done before. I started world building and coming up with a world, a magic system, and then figuring out how a character who was going to grow a lot over the course of their arc would fit into that. That’s typically how I write most of my novels, I store all these interesting ideas or creatures, or worlds and then figure out what would happen if I were to put a certain kind of person at the center of it all. I am mostly a pantser when it comes to writing my books, letting the characters drive, with only a vague outline for every 10 chapters or so as I go along, except when it comes to world and character building. That is always meticulously crafted before I start with the plot.
This is book one in your Ellinor series. What can readers expect in book two?
Book 2 will pretty much start right where the first book left off, so Ellinor and those she’s with do have a plan and goal in mind for what they need to do by the end of the next story. But the biggest thing the reader will see is the continuing evolution of Ellinor’s character arc, her, almost reluctantly at times, releasing her anger and prejudices. Of finding a new purpose and reasons to keep living beyond her desire for vengeance. Book two will also see a lot more of Kai and Jelani! Kai goes through a lot of growth and very raw and real moments in the second book, while there is also a lot of evolution in Jelani’s relationships, including more of his little sister who is briefly introduced in the first book. You’ll also see a lot more of the Ashlings and where and how zey live in the next installment which means, while there will still be a lot of colorful magic, readers can expect to see more of the tech side of Eerden as well. Book two is just as action packed, with some of my most cinematic fight scenes to date, according to my early readers. So a lot of what readers enjoyed in this adventure will be back and in greater force in the next book, which is good because a lot of the character growth that occurs is very painful, metally and physically in some cases. But the ending is worth the struggle, I promise!
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As if that weren’t humiliating enough, Ellinor learns first hand that her magic can be stripped away by a piece of bio-tech—and her ex-boss is happy to leash her with the technology in order to get what he wants. If Ellinor behaves, the device will be removed. All she has to do is deliver a package. One containing a creature created from raw magical energy and discarded technology. Simple, right?
But when her goals start getting people murdered, Ellinor has to decide if the year’s planning, her honor, and even her own magic, are worth the lives it’s costing. Dodging ruthless gangsters, she finds herself on the run with a creature of immeasurable magical abilities alongside her one-time friends. Now, Ellinor must relearn to trust the people she once abandoned. She must put her faith in technology, and her life in the hands of independent contractors, all while racing to deliver the package before it gets taken by force, or worse, the creature decides to make an appearance itself.
Nightmare From World’s End
The Nightmare From World’s End, a science fiction thriller by Robert J. Stava, takes place in Wyvern Falls located along the Hudson River. The action begins when various people begin to go missing along the river. Members of the community are confused about the disappearances until it’s discovered that a giant squid-like creature is wreaking havoc, leaving carnage and even more questions in its wake. That’s not all to the story, however. There isn’t just one creature, there’s two!
A major player in the chaos is John Easton, a private detective, begins to unravel the history around the two creatures. Alongside him is Sarah Ramhorne, a strong-headed Native American archeologist who seems to hold some of the answers. Together they, along with others, try to unravel the story that surrounds these two mysterious creatures and put a stop to the death that has been taking place along the Hudson River.
This book is definitely a thriller that will have readers flipping through the pages wondering what will happen next. The author holds nothing back when he describes each vicious attack committed by the giant squid. Also, the tie-in with Native American culture within the book was handled well. It’s obvious that Robert J. Stava did his research on the tribes in the Hudson Valley area, and while the main purpose of his book was to thrill his readers with the tale of giant, murderous, perhaps ancient sea creatures, a secondary purpose was to provide them with a history of the area and enlighten the reader on Native American history.
Adding to this point, Native American folklore is very present and relevant within the piece. The leading lady, Sarah makes it a point to educate those that she encounters about the injustice done to the tribes within the area. The author doesn’t just place Sarah’s dialogue as disconnected rants within the piece; it all leads up to the climax the unfolds towards the end of the story. This is evident through the actions of Crazy Jack, a homeless Native American (and real folklore character), that contributes to the climax of the story by waking up the second creature that lives on the other end of the river from where the squid is attacking. Throughout the story, Crazy Jack is guided by the voices of his ancestors, telling him what must be done in order to bring an end to the death and carnage unfolding.
This book has a lot going on it in; sea creatures, Native American history and folklore, a private detective with a tragic past, ancient aliens, mind-reading, and even ghosts. You name it, and it’s probably in this book. At times, it was a bit too much, and a little disconnected for the reader. Especially, the bit on ancient aliens. It’s hard to see how Guillamo Del Tesler and his fanatical theories about the river monster being an ancient alien come into play. He’s brought to the area after Jennie Roderick, a half-witted archaeologist student, mails him some doctored petroglyphs that indicate an alien existence within the area. While this part of the plot is an entertaining aside to the major drama going on in the story, it was difficult to discern how it actually contributed to the overall plot, if at all.
Overall, the author tells a good story. The entwinement of sci-fi thriller with Native American folklore is unique and provides a sturdy foundation upon which to base the plot of the entire story. Regardless of a couple smaller story lines falling out of place within the book, it was an entertaining read.
Pages: 249 | ASIN: B01MQLLNM3
