[Wyman Ford 04] • The Kraken Project

From celebrated Relic author Douglas Preston, Wyman Ford races to stop a rogue AI in The Kraken Project, a New York Times bestselling thriller “as chilling as it is provocative" (James Rollins)

NASA's

Goddard Space Flight Center is designing a probe which will be dropped

into the Kraken Mare, a methane sea on Titan, where it will embark on a

journey of exploration. But things at Goddard go awry, and the AI

program in the probe called "Dorothy" flees to the internet. Former CIA

agent Wyman Ford is tapped to track down the software with the help of

Dorothy's creator, Melissa Shepherd. As they trace Dorothy in

cyberspace, they realize horrific experiences in the wasteland of the

Internet have changed her—and they learn she's being pursued by a pair

of Wall Street high-frequency traders who want to turn her into an

algorithmic-trading slave-bot.

Traumatized and angry, Dorothy

jumps out of the Internet into a child's toy robot to hide. But is she

bent on doing good—or on wiping out the human race?

This edition of the book is the deluxe, tall rack mass market paperback.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From Booklist

Starred Review Preston’s latest solo novel (he’s mostly known as one half of the Preston-Child team who write the Special Agent Pendergast series) takes a wildly implausible premise and turns it into a very entertaining thriller. The Kraken Project is a NASA initiative to send a probe to Titan, a large moon of Saturn. Because of the distance involved, real-time control of the probe is impossible, so NASA decides to make the probe autonomous via cutting-edge artificial-intelligence software. But the software, called Dorothy, malfunctions and escapes into the Internet, where it plans a reign of terror that begins with revenge against its creator and will end with the annihilation of humankind itself. Dorothy’s creator goes on the run; Wyman Ford, ex-CIA agent and star of a few previous novels, is tasked by the president to find the woman (who, most everyone suspects, deliberately unleashed Dorothy). Whether or not you buy the premise of sentient software roaming the Internet, you won’t be able to deny that this is an exciting story. Preston sells the premise by sheer force of will: his characters are so compelling, his storytelling so persuasive, that we buy it all completely, at least as long as we’re inside the book. Bravo. --David Pitt

Review

“Preston’s

wildly creative novels expertly blend real science and heart-stopping

thrills. He is, quite simply, the new and improved Michael Crichton.” —Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author of Playing with Fire

“Preston

takes a fantastic idea and makes it real. Artificial intelligence and

cyber-warfare are not the stuff of science fiction anymore.” —Larry

Bond, New York Times bestselling author of Fatal Thunder

“Expert,

chilling and all too convincing, this brilliant, nightmarish take on

the future of cyber-consciousness is one of the few thrillers that truly

thrills—while raising questions that should unsettle every one of us.

Wickedly smart and tremendously entertaining!” —Ralph Peters, New York Times bestselling author of The Damned of Petersburg

“Preston trumps Crichton at his best.” —David Hagberg, New York Times bestselling author of End Game

“The

possible successor to Michael Crichton . . . Some novels you want to

savor, some you want to read so quickly that you can scarcely keep

yourself from tearing pages as you move forward. Preston's entertaining

accomplishments tend toward the latter.” —Alan Cheuse, NPR

“A very entertaining thriller . . . Bravo.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Fans of Preston's previous Wyman Ford technothrillers . . . will demand this book.” —Library Journal