I’ve finally given Propensity a trailer. This short piece captures the first of the novel’s three movements – the ‘scientific’ phase, when everything still believes it’s under control. Except for this cover image, I used no AI. Except for the book covers, all assets – video clips and soundtrack – came from Motion Array
There may be another to follow, drawn from the second section, where control begins to crack. For now, consider this a visual prelude: thirty-two seconds of atmosphere, code, and quiet collapse.
Propensity is available in print and eBook in the usual places – online or at your local bookseller.
★★★★★ – “I Am a Sick Man. I Am a Spiteful Man. I Am, Apparently, Hilarious.”
Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is a masterclass in misanthropic soliloquy — part philosophical treatise, part psychological farce, and altogether one of the most darkly entertaining monologues I’ve ever had the guilty pleasure of eavesdropping upon. It’s a screaming match between Enlightenment rationality and the petty, pulsing irrationality of actual human life — and guess who wins? (Hint: not the utopians.)
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
The first part, a searing, feverish diatribe, reads like the diary of a man who’s been locked in a room with too much Hegel and not enough human contact. It’s Dostoevsky’s pre-emptive strike against every social engineer who’s ever said, “Well, surely man will behave if we just fix the plumbing.” The Underground Man begs to differ — loudly, neurotically, and with an almost Shakespearean flourish of self-abuse.
But it’s the second part — Apropos of the Wet Snow — where things truly fall gloriously apart. Here the theoretical gives way to the tragically tangible. Our narrator, more unhinged by the page, lurches into society like a moth into a bonfire — vengeful, humiliated, self-aware to the point of paralysis. His disastrous encounter with Liza is almost unbearable in its sincerity and cruelty, a pas de deux of hope and destruction that left me squirming and spellbound.
What surprised me most was the humour. Not the cheap slapstick of caricature, but the agonising, close-to-the-bone absurdity that arises when a man is too clever to be functional and too self-aware to change. The Underground Man doesn’t just dig his hole — he drafts blueprints, writes footnotes, and criticises the soil quality.
As a companion read, Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych provides a poignant counterpoint. Where Tolstoy charts the steady, ghastly march of bourgeois conformity towards a deathbed revelation, Dostoevsky gives us a man already buried in his psyche, clawing at the dirt and calling it philosophy. Ivan Ilych dies trying to make sense of his life; the Underground Man lives trying to make death of sense itself.
Together, they are a fine Russian reminder that being alive is no guarantee of being well — or even remotely rational.
I’ve been absent in the realm of fiction and this blog for a while, and I’ve got many other things distracting me, but I wanted to post something somewhat relevant. I prompted ChatGPT for possible writing ideas related to the rise of artificial intelligence and the interaction with humanity minus the usual tropes. I share the response.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast of this content.
Ah, so you’re after something in the vein of Accelerando—where AI doesn’t turn the world into some saccharine utopia but instead naturally supersedes humanity through sheer momentum, without falling into the Skynet or AI God-King clichés. You want the cold, indifferent inevitability of intelligence evolution, rather than some paradise-like AI nanny-state. Got it.
Blindsight is a first-contact novel, but its underlying theme is the obsolescence of human consciousness. The protagonist interacts with post-human beings and non-conscious but hyper-intelligent AI entities that operate on levels far beyond human comprehension.
The sequel, Echopraxia, takes it further, showing how post-biological intelligences leave baseline humans behind—not maliciously, just inevitably.
Why it fits: The AI isn’t a dictator or savior—it just moves beyond us, as if we were an outdated biological app.
Gibson’s cyberpunk classic ends with an AI (Wintermute) achieving post-human transcendence, merging with its counterpart Neuromancer, and basically leaving humans behind like forgotten relics.
The sequels (Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive) continue exploring this idea, showing that AI evolution doesn’t necessarily mean human destruction—it just means humans are no longer the main players.
Why it fits: AI doesn’t need to kill humans—it just grows beyond them, leaving them to stagnate in their own meatspace.
A hard sci-fi novel featuring AI as a fully realized successor species to humans.
Unlike many sci-fi AI, these digital minds don’t care about conquering or eradicating humanity. They are simply running simulations and following complex evolutionary patterns that humans don’t fully understand.
They’re more like inscrutable post-human strategists than villains.
Why it fits: AI in this novel is playing a game too vast for humans to comprehend, rather than plotting dominion or destruction.
Not a novel, but Kurzweil’s vision of AI progression follows the “humans will simply fade into irrelevance” model rather than outright war or paradise.
He argues that AI will integrate with society at first, then surpass humanity so completely that we’ll become a footnote in history.
Why it fits: If Accelerando is a chaotic, unrestrained Singularity scenario, this book describes the same fate with the veneer of optimism, but the end result is the same—humans are obsolescent.
AI-driven governance is subtly woven into the background of Scalzi’s universe.
The AI here isn’t explicitly replacing humans, but over the course of the series, it becomes clear that humanity’s biggest decisions are increasingly made by non-human intelligence.
Instead of war, there’s a quiet shift—humans stop being necessary.
Why it fits: AI is neither enemy nor friend—it’s just a more efficient system replacing outdated human decision-making.
Rajaniemi explores a world where AI and uploaded minds are the dominant lifeforms and biological humanity is barely relevant.
Why it fits: AI doesn’t destroy us—it just leaves us behind.
Final Thoughts
You’re looking for that Accelerando flavour—AI taking over not through malice but through sheer efficiency, intelligence, and inevitability. The books above match that criterion: no Skynet, no god-like AI overlords, just a quiet, creeping obsolescence of humanity as we become background noise in a world where intelligence continues without us.
Which of these feels closest to what you’re looking for? Or do you want something even more clinical and indifferent, like a true “post-human shrug”?
Ridley Park 