The story behind the book: Dead Headz

You can’t beat a pub quiz - when you reach a certain age. I wouldn’t have dreamt of attending one in my 20s and 30s when I was too cool for school-like environments in which you had to answer questions!

But now I’m older and wiser? All over them. And it’s good to see competitors aged 20-80 taking part in the one in my local boozer. Phones away. Engage the brain. Bit of healthy competition.

It took the team I quiz with about ten thrashings and a few close calls before we won. Victory brought no prize. Just a sense of shared achievement. In a machine-free world.

I can’t remember when I first thought that quizzing could form the basis of a dystopian novel. Some may say they wish I hadn’t. Too late now. Dead Headz is out there.

In the book, the youth-led government that’s so sold on letting machines control the world (sound familiar?) makes a series of strange decisions, including clamping down on the asking of questions. Sounds far-fetched? Is it? Aren’t people in government already leaning on bots to help them write speeches and perhaps even make decisions?

The hero of my story, Kent Sanderson, is disgusted by how supposed grown adults can be so sold on what amount to glorified toys (see Microsoft’s recent admission about their slop generators). He’s also disgusted by how many people are content to delegate their thinking and doing to machines.

Scary times lie ahead if this kind of reliance on bots continues, so much so that I just had to write about it. Cognitive decline is on the cards, and who knows where that will lead to? I provide a fictional answer to that question in the book.

I hope that much of what happens in Dead Headz does not come true. I hope too that Dead Headz serves as a warning of what might be around the corner if we continue down a path in which machines are seen as saviours, and sources of intelligence beyond human comprehension.

Question everything, people. Form your own opinions. Do not accept that there is no alternative. By not embracing the bots, you are not getting left behind. You are choosing a better path, in which humanity remains the priority, and in which the slop generated by machine lovers is met with the disdain it deserves.

If you don’t agree with any of this, don’t read Dead Headz.