infinity plus: Beautiful Intelligence by Stephen Palmer

Beautiful Intelligence by Stephen Palmer

AI or BI? Artificial intelligence or beautiful intelligence?

The race to create a sentient machine is headed by two teams, led by former researchers at Ichikawa Laboratories, who escape the regime there – and each other – to pursue their own dreams in the world beyond Japan.

Leonora Klee is creating a single android with a quantum computer brain, whose processing power has never before been achieved.

Manfred Klee is creating a group of individuals, none of them self-aware, in the hope that they will raise themselves to consciousness.

But with a Japanese chase team close on their heels, will either be successful before they are trapped and caught?

Beautiful Intelligence is a fast-paced, philosophical thriller that confronts questions of how we will create artificial sentience, and whether it will be beautiful.

"A supremely odd yet deeply rewarding experience..." Jason Pettus, CCLAP

"Stephen Palmer is a find." Time Out

"Stephen Palmer is a writer you should read. His work is unique, original, sometimes challenging, always fresh and sometimes barking..." Amazing Stories

one of our bestsellers

Cover by Steve Jones

Published: 01 Jul 2015

"...a very effective SF thriller with plenty of action but also good deal of thought-provoking exploration of the implications of artificial intelligence." Brian Clegg, Popular Science

"...a thrilling chase across a ravaged Europe, a burgeoning North Africa and balkanised US, interleaving excellent action set-pieces with fascinating philosophising on the nature of consciousness. A gripping read to the poignant last line." The Guardian

"A bracingly imaginative novel... a rich, complex vision of a relatively near future which in some ways is familiar, in others, startlingly alien... a work which looks to a diverse global future with excitement and verve." Gary Dalkin, Amazing Stories

"Palmer is a writer of unique and remarkable imagination...a suspenseful and entertaining story" Teresa Edgerton, SFF Chronicles

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Stephen Palmer

Stephen Palmer is the author of fifteen novels: Memory Seed (Orbit 1996; Infinity Plus ebooks 2013), Glass (Orbit 1997; Infinity Plus ebooks 2013), Flowercrash (Wildside 2002; Infinity Plus ebooks 2013), Muezzinland (Wildside 2003; Infinity Plus ebooks 2011), Hallucinating (Wildside 2004; Infinity Plus ebooks 2011), The Rat & The Serpent (as Bryn Llewellyn, Prime Books 2005; Infinity Plus ebooks 2012) and Urbis Morpheos (PS Publishing 2010). His eighth novel, the surreal and fast-paced Hairy London, was published by Infinity Plus Books as a paperback and ebook in 2014, while the ninth, Beautiful Intelligence, was published in 2015, as was the subsequent short novel No Grave for a Fox. In 2016 Infinity Plus Books published his Edwardian steampunk trilogy, Factory Girl. His most recent novel, published in 2019, is The Conscientious Objector. His short stories have been published by Spectrum, Wildside, NewCon, Unspoken Water, Mutation Press, Solaris, Theakers, Eibonvale, Dog Horn, Manchester Speculative Fiction, Woodbridge Press and elsewhere. He lives and works in Shropshire, UK.