What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

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► UNSOLVED: One specific book > First book of a sci-fi novel series. World is ruled by a benevolent AI, male, emotioneless protagonist with a semi-sentient glaive.

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message 1: by Warfoki (new)

Warfoki | 1 comments This is the first novel in a reasonably long series, I think with spin-offs and all it's like 10 books or so. The protagonist is a male, I think in his 30s, though I'm not sure. The world is ruled by a benevolent AI, after it overthrew human governments, since it deemed them inefficient. The protagonist is one of the agents of this AI, and as such at the start, he is connected to the grid: he can access the AIs entire knowledge base and download any info he deems necessary. In fact, he does so without thinking on it, which has a side effect of making said agent emotionless, not much space for subjective opinions and feelings when the objective knowledge is all there. Because of this, agents are generally disconnected from the grid after only a few years, the protagonist staved this off way longer than he should have and as such the first book is his struggle to get back to being a normal human without all the access to knowledge, after the AI cuts him off the grid for his own sake (he was at the brink of losing his humanity completely).

I do remember that the story starts with said protagonist having sex with rebel against the AI, and getting busted as an agent, since he was having sex efficiently but without any emotions whatsoever, so they figured out he was connected to the grid. The protagonist also has semi-intelligent glaive kinda tool as a weapon. The setting has humanity living in an intergalactic empire connected by wormholes, no aliens (at least I don't remember any in the first book). Most of this empire is controlled by the AI, but the planets on the outer rim are controlled by the heirs of the original human ruling class. This always ends in failure: as long as people accept the rule of this class, the AI does not act. Once more people want AI rule than human rule to be saved from corruption, the AI comes in with an android army and takes over. Rinse and repeat. Also, I do remember that capital punishments don't exist in this universe: the AI does not execute people, instead they get their memories wiped and instead happy memories and an agreeable personality is uploaded to their brain, so they become harmless to society while also being the happiest they've ever been.

The book's actual plot is hazy, I do remember that one of these worm-gates has an accident, the protagonist suspects sabotage, and then he finds a whole conspiracy. There's also a female love interest, with whom initially the protagonists clashes a few times, but then make it work.

I read this like 4-5 years ago, I think the first book, the one I'm looking for, was initially released in the early to mid 00s, maybe. Not that old and the author is still alive and publishing (or, well, at least was 4-5 years ago when I read it).


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