Nate Kenyon

Nate Kenyon is the author of Bloodstone, a Bram Stoker Award finalist and winner of the P&E Horror Novel of the Year, The Reach, also a Stoker Award Finalist, The Bone Factory, Sparrow Rock, StarCraft: Ghost Spectres, and Diablo: The Order.

Kenyon's new novel is Day One.

From his Q & A with AJ Colucci for The Big Thrill:

DAY ONE has gotten great reviews and has been lauded for being both chilling and plausible. What inspired the story?

I’ve always been fascinated by artificial intelligence. The possibilities are nearly endless, and they include both the idyllic and horrific visions of the future. My editor at Thomas Dunne is fascinated too—he approached me first with the idea of a man commuting into New York who gets caught in the city as all hell breaks loose, and has to fight his way out. We brainstormed on this for a while, brought in another fantastic editor, Peter Joseph, for his opinions, and I ran with the concept from there. That’s where DAY ONE was born.

As an author of science thrillers, I know the genre requires an enormous amount of research. Can you tell us what subjects you investigated and some of the methods you used?

What I found scared the heck out of me. First of all, let me say that a true artificial intelligence, one that learns and thinks in a very human way, is most definitely coming—probably within the next twenty years. Many, many companies such as Google, Microsoft, IBM and others, as well as the US government, have created well-funded think tanks to build such a system. Universities are hip deep in research too. It’s going to happen, and the implications are frankly terrifying–because while billions are being spent in research, very little thinking is being done around safeguarding it.

An AI that can learn on its own and has the capability to become many times as intelligent as a human being (they call this artificial super intelligence, or ASI) might decide that humans are...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Nate Kenyon's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Day One.

The Page 69 Test: Day One.

Writers Read: Nate Kenyon.

--Marshal Zeringue