Beautiful Intelligence

AI or BI? Artificial intelligence or beautiful intelligence?

The race to create a sentient machine is headed by two teams, led by former researchers at Ichikawa Laboratories, who escape the regime there – and each other – to pursue their own dreams in the world beyond Japan.

Leonora Klee is creating a single android with a quantum computer brain, whose processing power has never before been achieved.

Manfred Klee is creating a group of individuals, none of them self-aware, in the hope that they will raise themselves to consciousness.

But with a Japanese chase team close on their heels, will either be successful before they are trapped and caught?

Beautiful Intelligence is a fast-paced, philosophical thriller that confronts questions of how we will create artificial sentience, and whether it will be beautiful.


"...a thrilling chase across a ravaged Europe, a burgeoning North Africa and balkanised US, interleaving excellent action set-pieces with fascinating philosophising on the nature of consciousness. A gripping read to the poignant last line." The Guardian

"A bracingly imaginative novel... a rich, complex vision of a relatively near future which in some ways is familiar, in others, startlingly alien... a work which looks to a diverse global future with excitement and verve." Gary Dalkin, Amazing Stories

"Palmer is a writer of unique and remarkable imagination...a suspenseful and entertaining story" Teresa Edgerton, SFF Chronicles

“A supremely odd yet deeply rewarding experience...” Jason Pettus, CCLAP

“Stephen Palmer is a find.” Time Out