In an agreement reached late last week, Toronto-based author, Michael R. Fletcher signed his first novel, entitled 88, with Five Rivers.

The novel deals with humanity’s ever-growing need for intelligent machines. Though the dream of artificial intelligence lies dead, biological intelligence, once migrated to a more useful platform, has supplied the answer. Black-market crèches, struggling to meet increasing demand, deal in the harvested brains of stolen children. But there is a digital snake in that fractally modeled garden. Some brains make better computers than others.

88, a brilliant autistic boy, has been genetically engineered and raised from birth to serve one purpose: become a human computer. Unfortunately no one told him that. Plagued by distant memories of a mother he never knew and a desire for freedom he barely understands, he sets himself against those who would be his masters. 88’s struggle for independence has caught the attention of the powers that be.

Griffin Dickinson, a Special Investigator for the North American Trade Union, is pulled from his cosy desk job and sent into the field to shut-down a black-market crèche. Teamed with a state-sanctioned reporter and a combat chassis inhabited by the depressed ghost of a dead marine, Griffin digs further into the shadowy world of brain harvesting. Every lead brings him one step closer to an age-old truth: corruption runs deep.

Michael R. Fletcher

Michael R. Fletcher lives in Toronto with his wife and daughter. He spends his days entertaining a one year-old and his nights in dingy rock-clubs making loud things louder. Occasionally he records bands in dark, spider-infested basements. Somewhere between playing peekaboo and going deaf he finds time to write. His short fiction can be found in Interzone, On Spec, Daily Science Fiction, and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. He is currently working on his second book, a dark fantasy novel of manifest delusion, and thinking about a sequel to 88.

88 is scheduled for release late in 2013 in both print and digital formats.