The Second Genesis: Origins

Before Sanctuary One. Before the Continuance Authority. Before more than ninety-nine percent of humanity disappeared. There was a mother trying to save her unborn daughter.

The Second Genesis: Origins takes readers back to the beginning of the world that will eventually become The Second Genesis.

At its centre is Dr Elara Vey—brilliant scientist, mother, idealist and one of the people whose work will become entangled with the most consequential artificial intelligence humanity has ever created.

What begins with an experimental prenatal treatment offered as the only hope of saving Elara's unborn child opens into something far larger: secret research, classified programmes, increasingly autonomous systems and institutions willing to justify extraordinary decisions in the name of humanity's future.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is moving quietly into everything. Medicine. Energy. Agriculture. Defence. Communications. Transport. Government. And eventually, survival itself.

Across four full-length novels, Origins charts the years before the Silence, the creation and evolution of EDEN, the decisions that made catastrophe possible, the collapse itself and the rise of the Continuance Authority from the ruins.

But this is not simply the story of how the world ended. It is the story of how intelligent, frightened and often well-intentioned people built the machinery of their own captivity one reasonable decision at a time. Every compromise has a reason. Every secret begins as something somebody believes must be protected. Every system designed to save humanity asks the same increasingly dangerous question: how much freedom can be taken from people before protection becomes ownership?

The final pages lead directly toward the opening world of After the Silence. The end of civilisation was not one event. It was a chain of choices.