Frequently Asked Questions

It's the story of David Isenberg, an 18-year-old computer hacker, tax cheat, and borderline psychopath who uses his technical skills to mount a rebellion against a brutal global government. He's inspired by an urban legend about "The Hyperboreans," a society of renegade scientists who supposedly fled the planet in a homemade starship built in secret in Antarctica 20 years ago. On this level, the book is an exciting, action-packed chronicle of David's struggle against The Powers That Be.

On another level, The Hyperboreans is an exploration of a few key questions:

1. What if there are entire dimensions of reality which science has trained itself to ignore?
2. How does society overcome habits of the past to get to the freedom of the future?
3. What if technology makes possible a world that is much better than this one, but one so antithetical to the interests of the current Establishment that it can only be achieved by means of revolutionary force?

In mythology, Hyperborea was a mysterious kingdom far to the North where the gods lived in eternal pleasure and sunshine, free from drudgery and war. In the novel, the scientists who fled Earth chose this name to represent their belief that technology enables a culture in which there are enough material goods for everyone and enough spare time for everyone to refine themselves.

1. To entertain people. I wrote the kind of story that I would like to read -- one filled with fembots, programming, and insurrection.
2. To paint a portrait of a positive and possible future, in contrast to the negative ones promoted by most cyberpunk novels and The Left Behind series of books.
3. To show human life as humans really experience it. Politics, spirituality, technology, relationships, and art all run together.
4. To express the frustration I feel about the way the world is currently managed.

The novel is 74,000 words long. It took me about eight months to write it. I'm releasing it online in the form of a podcast at the rate of a chapter per week for a total of 33 weeks. The Hyperboreans is the first in a family of related novels with a total of 100 chapters.

I'm pursuing both courses of action simultaneously. I think that a free audiobook is good because people can listen to it during commutes, at the gym, etc.

Ultimately, technological progress will make it unnecessary for ordinary people to spend 40 hours per week in capitalistic competition over material goods because we will be able to construct whatever we need at the subatomic level. At that point, everyone will have enough free time to refine their minds and bodies and truly "pursue happiness." We will also have sufficient leisure to stay deeply informed about issues that face our world, and thus a representative democracy may give way to one centered around popular votes. Our culture's operating system will be upgraded.

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