The world is in digital lockdown but one man has the key – he just doesn’t know it!
Inspired by the classic technothrillers penned by the likes of Tom Clancy and Larry Bond, Aimerica is an action-packed thriller following the protagonist from one perilous encounter to another as he discovers what it is that he has, and why every nation state in the world, including his own, is so eager to get hold of it, with or without his permission.
Aimerica is a technothriller set in the present day, exploring issues currently faced at all levels of society as we navigate an increasingly hostile world.
Christoffer Petersen is currently working on the project and you can follow developments by clicking the ‘notify me on launch’ button on Kickstarter.
Author’s note:
If you’ve read my blog posts over the years, or had the misfortune of mentioning AI in a conversation with me, you’ll know I have some strong views on AI or whatever the generative algorithmic applications are called. On the one hand, I have confused my friends by being so against it, while also failing to express how fascinated I am by it. While I loathe having the Copilot prompt in my Word document and wish I could nuke it out of existence, or at least out of my computer, I am impressed by what AI (let’s call it that) can do, and how it can be of assistance. But let’s be clear, I don’t believe it can positively affect climate change or be the solution we need to halt it, simply because it uses far too much energy to compute whatever measures are needed.
Honestly? Halting climate change, in my opinion, has far more to do with political and social willpower than technology. But that’s another discussion.
When it comes to AI, I simply can’t avoid it anymore. It is an invasive species. It’s everywhere, and it’s not going away. So, I can’t resist it as that resistance is indeed futile.
While I steer clear of the AI writing applications as they are just not useful to me, I must admit I fell over the possibilities of the generative art software, fully aware of all the implications that come with it. So, when putting the cover together for a thriller based on AI, I felt I could legitimately experiment with AI and you can see the results below, and in the final cover on this page.
It is ridiculously easy to write the ‘prompt’ for an image. Far too easy. And I guess that is the appeal. However, I wanted something different for Aimerica and so I turned to my favourite editing application Affinity Photo. As you may remember, I have been a long time (we’re talking decades-long) user of Photoshop, but Affinity is just better in every way, and there is no subscription! Anyway, you can see the results below.
The irony is I chose Affinity because it has no AI features. Which only makes me laugh when using Artspace.ai to generate an image before putting it through the non-AI software (I prefer that word to ‘application’) to ‘fix’ it.
I am obviously a confused luddite!