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Ilker Korkutlar
Author
The Venus Project

Adult; Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror; (Market)

The Venus Project is a science fiction adventure novel about the experiences of a group of people working to change the global socioeconomic system. The plot is divided across the years of 2010, 2017-2019, and 2044-2045. With the latter years corresponding to a dystopian world where small groups of survivors remain after global disaster, the topics of artificial intelligence, pandemics, and cryogenics are explored. In addition to a multi-character adventure, the novel also offers a philosophical view of the future of the world. In the earlier years of the novel, the paths of several characters intersect against the backdrop of efforts to build a new society. Demir, a computer engineer, has a happy family life with his wife and young daughter. Mert and Tuba, two young environmental activists, are overwhelmed by the stress of city life and decide to embrace rural living. Mert’s boss, Nihat, is the owner of a large construction company and member of a secret lodge. Sai is a savant hacker, on Interpol’s most wanted list for allegedly spreading a virus. In the midst of his dissatisfaction with his job, Demir receives an intriguing invitation to participate in the efforts of the Venus Project, aiming to end global inequality. Sai and Demir’s success in producing an AI that will work on a quantum computer attracts the attention of Nihat’s lodge, however – a group of men with a vested interest in not seeing the world changed. Nihat is told to have Sai killed to remove the threat, but Demir is accidentally infected with Ebola in Sai’s place. Unable to be treated with the medical science of the time, Demir is cryogenically frozen to await future advancements that may be able to save him.In the later years of the novel, the majority of humanity lives within the high-tech settlements established by the Venus Community, believing themselves to be the only survivors of a series of disasters that struck the world following an economic crisis artificially created by the Venus Project. Demir’s daughter Derin is now an adult and has devoted her career to developing a method to thaw her father. In contrast to the beliefs of the Venus Community, however, life still continues outside their cities. Mert and Tuba survived the disasters in an underground home and are living in the forest together with their daughter Karaca and Nihat’s son Murat, both now grown. They have also been joined by Sarp, an old friend who managed to flee Istanbul during a global pandemic. Demir is successfully thawed and treated, now three years younger than his daughter and finding himself in a radically changed world. In his excitement to learn all about the advances that the Venus Community has made, he grows doubtful about the claims that human life has disappeared everywhere else. He and Sai realize that Quantus, the AI that has been directing life in the Community, is being controlled by an external power with the aim of collecting survivors and turning them into cyborgs – including Sarp. Demir and his companions, as representatives of the last of human society, must fight Quantus, the representative of robots. Their efforts to stop AI from taking over will lead Demir and Derin to Mert’s community and then to the bottom of the ocean and to space, respectively, as they seek help from an alien race that has already changed Sapiens’ genes in the past.
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