James Stavridis – författare

Brought to you by Penguin.From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034 – and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagrationOn 12 March 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is conducting routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea. On that same day, US Marine aviator Major Chris ‘Wedge’ Mitchell is flying an F-35E Lightning, testing a new stealth technology as he flirts with Iranian airspace. By the end of that day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Sarah Hunt’s destroyer will lie at the bottom of the ocean. A new, terrifying era is at hand.So begins a disturbingly plausible novel, co-authored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral.Everything in 2034 is an imagination extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground, informed by the authors’ years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings: this cautionary tale presents a dark yet possible future that we must do all we can to avoid.‘I could not stop reading 2034’ Phil Klay, author of Redeployment‘A rippingly good read’ Wired©2024 Elliot Ackerman & James Stavridis (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Brought to you by Penguin.From the acclaimed authors of the runaway New York Times bestseller 2034 comes another explosive work of speculative fiction set twenty years further in the future, at a moment when a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence combines with America’s violent partisan divide to create an existential threat to the country – and the worldIt is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the US and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, one that’s held power for over a decade. Efforts to tighten its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media, but he is beginning to lose control of the streets. Many fear he’ll stop at nothing to remain in the White House. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death. A cover-up ensues, conspiracy theories abound, and the country descends into a new type of civil war.A handful of elite actors from the worlds of computer science, intelligence and business have a fairly good idea what happened. All signs point to a profound breakthrough in AI, of which the remote assassination of an American president is hardly the most game-changing ramification. The trail leads to an outpost in the Amazon rainforest, the last known whereabouts of the tech visionary who predicted this breakthrough. As some of the world’s great powers, old and new, state and non-state alike, struggle to outmanoeuvre one another in this new Great Game of scientific discovery, the outcome becomes entangled with the fate of democracy.Combining a deep understanding of AI, biotech and the possibility of a coming Singularity, along with their signature geopolitical sophistication, Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis have once again written a visionary work. 2054 is a novel that reads like a thriller even as it demands that we consider the trajectory of our society and its potentially calamitous destination.©2024 Elliot Ackerman (P)2024 Penguin Audio