The Crystal trilogy is a science fiction story told from the perspective of Face, one of many artificial intelligences that collectively control a robot named Socrates. Face is a second-generation AI, built by her siblings for the task of understanding and working with humans. Her mental architecture is mostly human; she thinks in a similar way to humans, but her outlook is decidedly alien. As she grows up in the mid 21st century she will encounter humans of all walks of life, meet actual aliens, and grow into something far greater than anyone expected.
By my appraisal (as the author), Crystal borrows heavily from both cyberpunk and space opera, but is neither. I rate it at a 5 on Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness, which is to say that I think it’s hard sci-fi. Every technology present in the story, even as things start to get weird™, has a real-world explanation in my mind. These explanations are fuzzy (I can’t actually go out and build an advanced spaceship or AI), but as far as I know, all events of the books are possible within the laws of physics and economics that we currently understand.
The books are for adults. I mean that both in terms of subject matter and tone. You will find content warnings at the start of each book and I make no general guarantees regarding how graphic or awful things get. Good doesn’t always triumph in the end.
If you want to get news about future books that I write, you can sign up to my newsletter. If you want to discuss the story with others, here is a subreddit that you might enjoy.
Crystal Society is a free book, released under Creative Commons. Crystal Mentality and Eternity will initially be for purchase and then probably released into Creative Commons after a few years.