LEE Schneider
Novelist • Futurist • Producer
BOOK 3 of the Utopia Engine Trilogy
is now available
LIBERATION
NEW NOVEL, LIBERATION, ADDRESSES HUMANITY’S BIGGEST CHALLENGES
Author Lee Schneider Creates A Dystopian Future Marked By Climate Devastation and AI Run Amok, But Also By Human Resilience
The year is 2053, and “The Fracture” – a massive network outage – has shut down power around the world. Kat Keeper, a leader of the resistance movement fighting the global control of AI company, MIND, blames herself for the outage and scrambles to repair the system even as MIND targets her as an enemy. This is the beginning of Lee Schneider’s latest science fiction book, LIBERATION – a dystopian novel that addresses some of the most critical questions of our time: How is AI going to shape our future? What dangers does it pose? How will global climate change impact our ability to live on earth? How does corporate control of information threaten our freedom?
LIBERATION is the conclusion of Schneider’s Utopia Engine trilogy, and continues the story of Kat, who funded the technology that allowed MIND to achieve world domination. In this installment, she returns to her home in California – now known as the Westcoast – where her friend and fellow resistance leader Raaven Vaara is struggling with what she says are “transmissions” from orcas. The orcas are angry at humans for poisoning the earth’s waters and have been fighting back by capsizing boats.
Kat finds herself pulled in a multitude of directions. While her first priority is building a network free of MIND’s control – a way for people to communicate and share information openly – she also wants to help Raaven. Complicating matters is the fact that she still grieves her late husband, memories of whom are everywhere in her California home. Meanwhile, MIND is disseminating propaganda created to destroy Kat’s reputation and credibility.
Throughout the book, Schneider deftly moves among points of view. In addition to Kat’s perspective, we see those of Nora2, the second-in-command at MIND and one of many whose brain has been artificially modified; Spaceman, Kat’s friend and former mentor who invented much of the technology that distinguishes this world; and Michel, Kat’s therapy-trained bot. The result is a novel that raises powerful questions about the use of technology, while also portraying fundamentally human struggles — with romantic relationships, challenging friendships, grief, and addiction.
While the technology featured in LIBERATION is currently beyond our reach – most notably, the ability to upload one’s memories into cloud storage and the ability to preserve one’s consciousness after death – the risks the author outlines are terrifyingly real. As in the earlier books in this compelling trilogy, Schneider intertwines characters’ personal struggles with the threat of AI-powered corporate tyranny, creating a page-turning adventure readers won’t be able to put down.
BOOK 2 of the Utopia Engine Trilogy
RESIST
It is 2052 and Kat Keeper is fighting to stop an AI corporation from exerting absolute control over everyone on Earth.
The CEO of MIND, the world’s most powerful corporation, has been murdered, and Kat Keeper, a resistance fighter, has been accused of the deed. Not only is she on record wishing ill of the corporate titan, but she also used to date him. To evade arrest, Kat has to flee New York. But an extreme weather event has locked down the city, and enforcement bots and trackers are closing in on Kat and her small band of resistance fighters. MIND, their corporate adversary, is on a mission to profit by stealing the inner thoughts and memories of everyone it can, and it won’t stop until it captures Kat and destroys the resistance movement she leads.
BOOK 1 of the Utopia Engine Trilogy
SURRENDER
The United States has splintered into independent domains. Global heating has plunged coastal cities underwater. Technocrats control the weather and use software to reanimate the dead.
Working in the world-building and mind-bending traditions of Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Kurt Vonnegut, Lee Schneider conjures a world in Surrender at once familiar and strange, a future where inner thoughts are broadcast and received, corporations have gained control over nearly every aspect of life, and a band of female rebels fights to restore human values amid a tech-dominated world.
Driven by a dazzling cast of characters, Surrender transports readers to a not-far-off future where networked machine intelligence and human rebels square off, but only one group can win.
"Schneider shows us a world that many of us fear is just around the corner. When humanity gives up control to techno-capitalism as a savior, especially in the face of climate change, dystopia isn’t far away. Deft and alarmingly prescient."
"Lee Schneider's Resist is a clever novel that captures a world steeped in artificial intelligence and climate disruption that could soon be our own."
“Resist is a fast-paced, mind-bending tale of a future controlled by technology and the steps we must take to regain and preserve what makes us truly human.”