Elsewhere

by Roger Alan Bonner, Geralt Pixabay, Andrea Piacquadio (Pixabay) (illustrator)

ELSEWHERE is a story of a revolutionary technology with the potential to change radically the lives of people everywhere. Invented by a megatech, ELSEWHERE allows people to move to and live in an electronic network, a virtual reality whose customers acquire the characteristics of electronic files and surrender those of human biology. Customers refer to normal life on Earth as 'Animal World.' The ELSEWHERE contract promises to preserve each customer's human body in cold storage until they decide to return to Animal World, if ever. More than a hundred million people upload to ELSEWHERE within weeks of its launch, ultimately with disastrous results. The story follows the lives of a dozen characters, some living as humans on Earth, others living as A.I.s on Elsewhere. The setting and much of the story are recognizable to modern there is immense pressure on tech companies and workers to innovate, to be the first to introduce a new technology. ELSEWHERE is introduced too fast, its capabilities exaggerated, its weaknesses ignored. The technology proves vulnerable to fraud, deception, and theft, with horrendous consequences for the flesh-and-bone society that has created and supports it. We experience this strange new world from the perspectives of a dozen human and A.I. characters, some deeply involved in technology, others allergic to technology and deeply committed to the world of flesh and blood. We will follow the lives of Jerrell, a skinny, awkward computer scientist, recently unemployed, now working as a rock & roll drummer, Johnny, an ex-con and guitarist, Greta, an A.I., developed by and fleeing from Jerrell, Sonya, a frustrated bombshell blond, now driving a bus in Philadelphia, Hans, the brilliant, scheming, greedy, sociopathic executive, and McLeesh, a tech trillionaire, the inventor of ELSEWHERE, openly skeptical of money and technology. ELSEWHERE has 186,334 words, 129 scenes, and 35 chapters. this story contains adult situations and language which are neither appropriate for minors nor politically correct.

665 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 22, 2024

About the author

Roger Alan Bonner is an American writer in crime, psychodrama, and science fiction. As of November 2024, he has written two novellas and eight novels.

In a prior life, he studied at Cornell University and the University of Minnesota, and lived for forty years in Washington, D.C., working as an economist for the U.S. government and the World Bank. He has also lived or worked in Venezuela, Argentina, Belgium, Germany, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.

He admires and recommends Edward Robertson and Adrien Tchaikovsky. Going back a few years, he also likes the work of Frank Herbert, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Ursula K. le Guin, Joyce Carol Oates, Jim Harrison, and Charles Bukowski.

His books are available on numerous ebook platforms, including Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Vivlio, and Tolino.

Readers and reviewers can best contact him via his author's page at Goodreads,
goodreads.com/author/edit/18082152.Ro...,
or via email to
roger.bonner.fiction@gmail.com.