Scott Hutchins
Settled back into the San Francisco singles scene following the implosion of his young marriage just months after the honeymoon, Neill Bassett is going through the motions. His carefully modulated routine, however, is soon disrupted in ways he canâ€™t dismiss with his usual nonchalance.,When Neillâ€™s father committed suicide ten years ago, he left behind thousands of pages of secret journals, journals that are stunning in their detail, and, it must be said, their complete banality. But their spectacularly quotidian details, were exactly what artificial intelligence company Amiante Systems was looking for, and Neill was able to parlay them into a job, despite a useless degree in business marketing and absolutely no experience in computer science. He has spent the last two years inputting the diaries into what everyone hopes will become the worldâ€™s first sentient computer. Essentially, he has been giving it languageâ€”using his fatherâ€™s words. Alarming to Neillâ€”if not to the other employees of Amianteâ€”the experiment seems to be working. The computer actually appears to be gaining awareness and, most disconcerting of all, has started asking questions about Neillâ€™s childhood.,Amid this psychological turmoil, Neill meets Rachel. She was meant to be a one-night stand, but Neill is unexpectedly taken with her and the possibilities she holds. At the same time, he remains preoccupied by unresolved feelings for his ex-wife, who has a talent for appearing at the most unlikely and unfortunate times. When Neill discovers a missing year in the diariesâ€”a year that must hold some secret to his parentsâ€™ marriage and perhaps even his fatherâ€™s suicideâ€”everything Neill thought he knew about his past comes into question, and every move forward feels impossible to make.,With a lightness of touch that belies pitch-perfect emotional control, Scott Hutchins takes us on an odyssey of love, grief, and reconciliation that shows us how, once we let go of the idea that weâ€™re trapped by our own sad historiesâ€”our childhoods, our bad decisions, our miscommunications with those we loveâ€”we have the chance to truly be free. ,A Working Theory of Love, marks the electrifying debut of a prodigious new talent.
Fiction,Romance,Contemporary,Science Fiction,Novels,Literary Fiction,Adult Fiction,Relationships,Adult,Artificial Intelligence
A Working Theory of Love