I'm a Futurist in the Security space for a large retailer. In my free time, I write near-future novels. The Condition Set is a trilogy — Redundant, Contingent, Essential. Julian Bleecker and I were on the same team in 1999, back when the web was new. Small world.

The near-future creates too many complicated conversations: politics, environment, and labor politics. Fiction worth reading expresses opinions through sarcasm and cynicism, humor, and cultural observations. My conclusion: near-future world-building is best done off the clock.

Three ideas span the trilogy. UBI and Agency: everyone was excited about UBI, but a few years in there's a general sense of ennui — comfort as pacification. The Resistance: while the future happens, people continue to fight it — the series focuses on the ways AI complicates that fight. Inference Engines: carrying forward current trends — AI accelerating vulnerabilities, adversaries increasingly autonomous. Resistance is futile.

PDF and ePUB — audio coming. Fiction isn't finished anymore — the blog continues, the terminal interacts. AI helped with planning and ideating, but final reader-ready prose? Even the best models still really suck at it. Free for Near Future Laboratory Patreon supporters — just email me. If you read it and conclude it was awful, I owe you a drink. Not a money-making venture, but the low price offsets the token cost.