The Diamond Leviathan · Volume I
The Friction Layer
A struggle over freedom, care and the systems that increasingly mediate human choice.
Volume I · Available now
About the book
Who gets to decide who you become?
A nine-second video puts a minister’s face on words he never said. A surgical arm freezes above an open chest because premium customers have priority over the computing it needs. In a London clinic, a warehouse dispatcher tells his doctor that someone seems to have turned down the volume on his grief.
Artificial intelligence offers extraordinary possibilities. But as families, companies and governments come to depend on privately owned systems, their owners gain a growing say in the terms on which people live.
Julian Feron has a son in a neurological ward and an offer he cannot dismiss: a treatment that might help, from people who want his political support. Dr Cordelia Walters watches care turn into control, one setting at a time. Sloane Wilder leaves a technology empire carrying evidence of the systems she helped build. With Cordelia’s brother Cameron, they set out to build a civilisation where AI’s benefits can be shared without surrendering the right to decide who you become.
But some of the people they hope to protect understand the risks and choose the help anyway. Defending their freedom means defending choices Cordelia would not make herself. And Sloane wants a life with Cameron that they cannot keep postponing until the work is finished.
Their struggle spans twenty years. Looking back in 2065, Cameron gathers the surviving records. He is writing about his sister, his friends and the woman he loves. He knows what the records can prove and remembers what they leave out.
He needs to believe that what they built was worth its price.
The Diamond LeviathanVolume IThe Friction Layer
- Series
- The Diamond Leviathan, Volume I
- Author
- Hosein Khajeh-Hosseiny
At a turning point
A struggle over freedom, care and the systems that increasingly mediate human choice.
- 01
Human lives
- 02
Powerful systems
- 03
Choices under pressure
The people at the centre.
Across twenty years, the story follows people trying to share AI’s benefits without surrendering the right to decide who they become.
Julian Feron
A father with a son in a neurological ward, facing an offer tied to political support.
Dr Cordelia Walters
A doctor watching care turn into control, one setting at a time.
Sloane Wilder
Leaving a technology empire with evidence of the systems she helped build.
Cameron
Looking back in 2065, gathering the surviving records.
A struggle measured in decades.
Written by Hosein Khajeh-Hosseiny
About the Author