BSFA Award shortlisted cover by Sinjin Li
A Strange and Brilliant Light – Winner of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s ‘Best First Novel' Award
Exploring the effects of artificial intelligence on the future of work and our sense of purpose, A Strange and Brilliant Life is a provocative slice of speculative fiction that follows three young women on the threshold of a completely new kind of world.
Lal, Janetta and Rose are living in a time of flux. Technological advance has brought huge financial rewards to those with power, but large swathes of the population are losing their jobs to artificial intelligence, or auts, as they're called. Unemployment is high, discontent is rife and rumours are swirling. Many feel robbed - not just of their livelihoods, but of their hopes for the future.
Lal is languishing in her role at a coffee shop and feeling overshadowed by her quietly brilliant sister, Janetta, whose Ph.D. is focused on making auts empathetic. Even Rose, Lal's best friend, has found a sense of purpose in charismatic up-and-coming politician Alek.
When vigilantes break in to the coffee shop and destroy their new coffee-making aut, it sets in motion a chain of events that will pull the three young women in very different directions.
Change is coming - change that will launch humankind into a new era. If Rose, Lal and Janetta can find a way to combine their burgeoning talents, they might just end up setting the course of history.
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“Important ideas are wrapped in an absorbing, character-driven novel that's also a thought-provoking consideration of the ways we might cope with something that is already happening all around us.”
— Lisa Tuttle, The Guardian
“If you like small, intimate fiction that asks very big questions, this is the perfect novel for you”
—FanFiAddict
“A disquieting take on Big Tech’s plans for the future of work.”
— Gwyneth Jones, author of Bold As Love, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award
“Wonderfully written, putting a human face on the complex prospect of work in the age of AI and what it means to be alive.”
— Nina Lyon, author of Uprooted: On the Trail of the Green Man
“Eli Lee has done a remarkable job revealing the human side of AI . . . Often bleak, A Strange and Brilliant Light is also sad, hopeful, funny, and brilliant, such that I expect to see it on a lot of award lists. It will, I hope, inspire many to think long and hard about what we want our future to be like.”
— The British Science Fiction Association Review