The fiction behind it
Sarah Perriam used to expose the truth. Now the truth could get her killed.
Sarah Perriam was once an investigative reporter. Now she’s a burnt-out tech journalist writing the safe, corporate-approved stories that keep powerful people happy.
Until a whistleblower hands her evidence that Britain’s supposedly impartial government AIs are being manipulated from within.
The conspiracy is called Project Radiant. Ministers and billionaires are profiting from it, the last person who tried to expose it is dead, and Sarah may be next.
Project Radiant, the first book in James B Wood’s Red Tape & Ruin series, is a darkly witty, distinctly British political techno-thriller about power, technology and what happens when the truth becomes an error in the code.
James B Wood
Techno-political thrillers
Stories about technology, political power and the people who discover what happens when supposedly impartial systems aren’t quite as impartial as they seem.
Red Tape & Ruin
The series
Follow journalist Sarah Perriam into a near-future Britain where government, corporations and technology are becoming dangerously intertwined and the people pulling the strings would rather remain anonymous.
Techno-political fiction
Who controls the algorithms?
What happens when governments hand decisions to artificial intelligence, but powerful people still decide what the machines are allowed to think? Project Radiant explores the uncomfortable gap between technological impartiality and human ambition..
Dystopian satire
Dry, not doom
A distinctly British take on dystopia, where political hypocrisy, corporate self-interest and bureaucratic absurdity can be every bit as unsettling as a rogue AI. With considerably fewer killer robots.
A note on the writing
The problem isn’t the AI.
It’s who’s pulling the strings.
After nearly thirty years working in technology, James B Wood knows that the most worrying systems aren’t necessarily the ones that go rogue. They’re the ones working exactly as someone intended.
Project Radiant explores what happens when governments hand decisions to supposedly impartial artificial intelligence, while the people with money, influence and political power quietly manipulate the outcomes.
It’s a distinctly British dystopia, where the greatest threat isn’t a machine becoming self-aware, but the entirely human ambitions hiding behind it.
And, as with most good satire, the uncomfortable part is how little of it feels impossible.