In 2030, our planet teeters on the brink of political, economic, and environmental catastrophe that threatens our collective survival, will Professor Julian Marshall be able to save us all as he navigates the crisis-riddled, yet superintelligent world of the near future?
Climate change, poverty, epidemic disease, human conflict, terrorism, and famine ravage the globe. Amidst the chaos, the United States and China compete for the thirty-billion-dollar Singularity Prize to be awarded by a hedge fund billionaire to the team that creates a machine intelligence superior to humans. With hackers entrenched in a cyberwar that cripples the grid in multiple countries and a nuclear weapon threatening a major city, Julian Marshall , leader of the Berkeley based US team, knows that a recursively improving superintelligence with inviolable ethical codes could be humanity's only hope.
Love and betrayal threaten Julian and his team of coders, distracting them from their life-or-death task. Meanwhile, the deep vaults of our primeval past extend a long arm of intelligence and survival to Julian's world of 2030. Arion and his clan's collective intelligence survived the great Toba volcanic eruption around 74,000 years ago and began the great migrations out of Africa to populate the world. Could this tribe of the past hold the key to surviving the future? The Singularity Prize is an epic chronicle of humankind's potential grandest triumph.