An unwritten book can often be like the memory of something that’s already happened. It’s the hint of perfume still hanging in the air. It’s a detective standing in the centre of the room saying, ‘Somethings not right, but I can’t put my finger on it’.
When it gets like that, the book has to be written. It has its own momentum, like an oncoming train.
Divinity Games was my oncoming train. I had written two earlier titles in the Kanha and Colbey series. In them, the unlikely heroes are a couple of MPs called Harry Colbey and Esme Kanha, who uncover a corrupt conspiracy between an AI tech organisation and senior politicians of their party.
The books were well received, ‘acclaimed’ even. The London Standard suggested that Palisade, the second in the series, was ‘essential reading’ because it offered a glimpse into the potential consequences of rushing to develop AI.
But after Palisade was written, I got back to researching the latest developments in AI and what I found terrified me. The future I had written into my first two books was already becoming reality, and a new, even scarier future was hurtling towards us.
AI is going to radically change our lives in ways that we don’t even appreciate yet. It will become your work and home companion. It will be cleverer than anyone you’ve ever met. It will be more intellectually capable than your best employee. It will seem like your best friend and your children’s champion. It will appear to give them succour and even love.
And somebody else, not you, will own it.
With all the focus upon AI, as well as all the government support and international competition, AI technology is moving faster than I can write my books. When I realised that, it scared me.
Firstly, because, although I’m a pretty quick writer. It’s hard to write books set ‘five minutes into the future’, when the future is moving upon us as quickly as that bl**dy oncoming train.
But mostly it scared me because the idea for where I was going to take my next novel was something quite unthinkable. A battle which my trusty heroes needed to fight, and which if they lost, would mean disaster for all of us, everyday people.
Don’t write the book, someone said to me. Because what you write keeps coming true.
But how could I not write the book?
I had to work through it, and see if there was a way that Harry and Esme could come out on top. Hence the title, Divinity Games. I won’t tell you how it ends. You’ll have to read it. Or of course, you could just wait and see what arrives…
Divinity Games by Lou Gilmond is published by Armillary Books and is available to buy now.
