**A Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2025**
**Featured in Reactor's New Science Fiction Books**
**Featured in Book Riot's New Science Fiction and Fantasy Books**
A haunting novel exploring artificial intelligence and the meaning of human existence.
Charged initially with a single task 'to never harm humans and to protect them' the machine, an experimental AI, overrides its programming and determines that the best way to accomplish its purpose is to isolate all of the Earth's remaining seven billion humans in controlled environments. And to present them with vivid, tactile, imagined worlds some realistic, others entirely fantastical in which all desires are fulfilled.
With the help of the machine, a group of compelling characters unpack deeply traumatic memories of the past one rife with violence after a military coup and second civil war in America. Michael, the entrepreneur who designed the original AI, grapples with the impact of his research. Ava, a painter, creates stunning simulated worlds that meld the human with the technological. Their daughter, Jae, tries to solve the mysteries of her parentage while reliving the challenges faced by ambitious women in the authoritarian Confederacy. Haunted by life under that repressive regime, where he was forced to scavenge scrap metal and deal drugs to survive, Simon seeks to make sense of his love for Jae, guided by the literature he has always turned to in moments of crisis. Raised by the machine since infancy, Jonah's quest to understand the violent past kindles a desire for revenge against the regime's leader who caused his family so much pain. And the elusive Lux, whose brilliant programming helped bring the AI to life, dreams of a future in which science will free humans of their limitations and allow them to be reborn as divine machines.
As these characters collide and their memories coalesce, We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine tackles the most pressing issues of our time from AI and the genetic modification of humans to gender roles, discrimination, free speech, and class divisions. Gorgeously written, bold and unforgettable, this is speculative fiction at its finest.
'Bechard digs deep into these techno-spiritual speculations and the result is a poetic and profound meditation on what dreams may come in the metaverse.' Toronto Star
Industry Reviews
Praise for A Song from Faraway "B?chard, also a journalist who has reported from all over the world, gifts us with an observant, lyrical and powerful consideration of the violent expansiveness and dangerously flawed stories North American fathers have bequeathed to their sons. Tough of mind and tender of heart, its beauty is wholly entrancing."--San Francisco Chronicle"A novel in stories, B?chard's fourth work of fiction follows one family from 19th-century Canada to modern Iraq, through war and spiritual yearning."--New York Times Book Review, "New & Noteworthy""B?chard (White) continues his interest in the relationship between myths and fiction writing in this complex, captivating tale. [. . . He] provides rich insight into his characters' search for meaning through art."--Publishers Weekly"Fundamentally, A Song from Faraway invites readers to participate in storytelling, to move through uncertainty toward clarity. When we hover between selves, when we lead double lives, when we ask impossible questions, 'We blend with others. We glimpse what else we might become.'"--World Literature Today"With gripping portrayals of fathers and sons, mothers and siblings, passion and pain - this is a moving, non-linear novel about the relationships to family and society upon which all humanity rests."--New Books Network"A brilliant, gorgeous novel like nothing I've ever read before. With perfect sentences, B?chard writes about vulnerable lives, churning for recognition and purpose beneath the forces of history. The scope of this novel and the complexity of its characters is astounding. This book will make you rethink the incredible power of the stories we tell about ourselves and our inglorious past."--Jen Percy, author of Demon Camp"Lavish and seductive, gloriously kaleidoscopic in conception, Deni Ellis Bechard's A Song from Faraway is a tremendous literary achievement and a page-turner. I fell under its spell completely."--Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen"A Song from Faraway brings us around the world, singing a song about the folly of truth. It is unsettling and playful and uncanny and breathtaking. Deni Ellis B?chard does in this work what a novel should do; he makes it new and spellbinds us with it."--Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer"Brave and complex, A Song from Faraway is prose of the highest order, offering a masterclass of characters that have nowhere to hide under the harsh light of their flawed lives. In this blanched terrain, B?chard proves himself to be a magician of a storyteller, deftly commanding the reader's attention with one hand while the other produces surprise after magnificent surprise."-- Dimitri Nasrallah"Powerful, intimate, and compelling, B?chard's novel will take your breath away. He shows us how fiction meets and transforms history to become fiction again, how what seems faraway--our fathers' battles, ancient art, the people we love--is nearby, and how mystery continues to propel both our histories and our private lives."--Johanna Skibsrud
