Masks of the Technocrats

by H.M. Richards

Like a sucker punch, automation's takeover came fast and hard. The hangover is what lingers on, and Adam Ross can't shake it. Feeding the digital entities that swallowed his job prospects is all he can do to keep the roof over his head - but that might be the least of his problems. When a renegade psychic cult hacks into the government-owned surveillance hardware embedded in his body, he finds himself embroiled in a disastrous tug-of-war amid the specters of machine-led coups, epidemics, rogue bounty hunters, feral cannibals, the death of privacy, and the loss of human connection.

Meanwhile, society's very foundations crack and crumble under the bloated weight of its authoritarian rulers, whose petty infighting and reckless embrace of poorly understood technology threaten to cement humanity's newfound role as an eternal underclass. With fluid perceptions of truth molding the physical world to confirm the delusions of those in power, it may already be too late to escape such a fate - unless, of course, the most radical delusions turn out to be true.

Who are the technocrats, and what lurks behind the masks?

258 pages, Paperback

Published October 31, 2025

About the author

H.M. Richards is an applied economist, data scientist, and technology consultant. He does not use A.I. in his writing. Masks of the Technocrats is his first novel.