(Outline of an unpublished novel)

NARCIS is a novel set in the late part of the 21st century, after an unspecified catastrophic event.  The novel was inspired by a vision of my friend, the late Jan Groneberg (1941-2014), which he shared with me in the 1970s.

A large government-run digital Archive, in the desert of New Mexico.

Purpose of the Archive, and the giant computer housing it,  is to make animal research obsolete.  Instead, any hypothesis can be tested by running the text formulating it through a “truth filter.”   This filter passes only statements that are consistent with all existing knowledge, and rejects all that don’t.

The scientists and programmers are living in a pastoral setting — in large communal tents pitched in the plain below the hill where the buildings of the digital Archive are located.

Meanwhile, man-sized, music-loving  cockroaches are wandering through the desert in search of food and live classical performances.

We see the unfolding story, which includes many intrigues, sabotage and even murder, through the eyes of a postdoctoral student, who was raised in the Boston area, and who is trying to get his footing in this difficult terrain.

© 2024 Franx Fiction – Joachim Frank. All rights reserved.