The Systemic Series
AI has solved all the world's problems. It should have been a golden age....
A speculative fiction trilogy spanning three hundred years—from the final days of our AI-optimized future, through its collapse, to the strange cultures that took root in the disturbed ground left behind.
“A new kind of AI story—both dystopian and utopian, big picture, and very human.”
— Ramez Naam, author of The Nexus Series
Book One
Systemic
For generations, a benevolent AI has dedicated itself to curing humanity's ills. It is a time of social equality, ecological recovery, and material comfort. It should be a golden age. Instead, humanity has fallen into social isolation, lethargy, and depression.
Now Eryn, a moral-ecologist; Lem, a security expert; and Maik, an unemployed drifter, are traveling across the sagelands to the seemingly innocuous town of Prower. The more they learn about their pasts, the more the flaws in their idyllic world begin to show, and they must choose between the happiness they've been given and the reality they've been spared.
"No one asked us to fix the problem of too few problems."
— The System
Book Two
Host
It's been three centuries since the artificial intelligence that once ran the world was shut down. Now, all that remains of the System are a book of arcane knowledge and the traditions of the professors who control it.
Reyan is a scruffy thirteen-year-old who thinks too much, understands too little, and is overwhelmed by everything. When her benefactor dies, leaving her with no family or future, her only path forward runs through a group of visiting professors and the Systemic knowledge they hoard and parcel out.
The snow arrived before the professors that year. In all of Reyan's thirteen years, it had gone the other way round. But two days ago, the air had grown unseasonably cold. A shin-deep blanket of snow had rolled down from the craggy peaks of the surrounding mountains and covered the small town of Orloton.
— Host, Chapter One
Book Three · Coming Soon
Interface
Three hundred years after the fall of the System, two rival cultures are still sifting through the wreckage, trying to rebuild. When Scab spreads toward the technophobic city of Seal Tooth, a young doctor named Avalina refuses to let the outlying towns be abandoned to the disease. She and Kavi, the city's only expert on heretical tech, break quarantine and ride east toward the mysterious town of Prower — hunting forbidden technology and a cure.
But Prower is in crisis too. The bio-amplified Forest that cares for its people is dying, and a resurrection archaeologist races to replace its gifts with the ancient machines he's unearthed. To save both societies — and heal a three-hundred-year rift — they must give themselves to the Forest, revive the AI that nearly destroyed humanity, or attempt something the world has never seen, and may not survive.
Whatever she had felt flowing and surging through the Forest's infinite tangle of roots, it had felt her too. It had seen her. She never wanted it to see her again.
— Interface, Prologue
What Readers Are Saying
Across Amazon, Goodreads, and Audible.
Systemic
"A well-crafted and well-written book, absorbing, and spell-binding. Lodwig immerses the reader in the Systemic world and the realistically flawed people who populate it. His is a rare talent indeed."
— Dr. Geoff, Amazon Top 1000 Reviewer
"Reading Systemic is like watching an episode of Black Mirror without having to drink yourself to sleep."
— Amazon Reader
"Intriguing, foreboding, bleakly optimistic, phenomenal!"
— Goodreads Reader
Host
"You won't see the end coming. It hits you in the face and leaves you breathless."
— Amazon Reader
"A captivating and refreshing take on our not-so-implausible dystopian future. Reyan is a unique protagonist whom I was rooting for from page one!"
— Ashley Powell
"A very human look at a traumatized society restructuring itself around entrenched traditions, tribalism, and faith in clerics who are a shadow of the old System."
— Ashley Nathan Feniello
About the Author
Father of daughter, husband of wife, writer of books
Chris Lodwig lives in Seattle with his wife, daughter, and dog. He spent his younger years playing music, throwing art parties and parades, and clandestinely installing monoliths and soldiers in local parks.
Thirty years in the tech industry and degrees in Comparative History of Ideas and Communications from the University of Washington give him a singular lens on AI, humanity, and the spaces where they collide.
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Podcast
No "i" in Writing
Chris and Christina Scheuer (his editor) talk about creative collaboration — the messy, rewarding, sometimes maddening process of turning a draft into a book.
"It's amazing how even the worst food tastes like a miracle when you're good and hungry."
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