Infinite Wisdom: A Novel Book Review and Summary
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Camille Dubois - 29 Aug, 2026 11:29
Author: Thomas R. Weaver
Page Count: Unknown
Publication Date: Expected publication 2026-11-10 APL
Five years. Five whole years since Marcus Tully decided to play digital kingmaker by tossing out a human candidate in favor of a cold, calculating algorithm named Solomon in Artificial Wisdom, and now Thomas R. Weaver expects us to simply sit back with our popcorn while that exact same regret-soaked journalist watches the world burn—or worse, vote on whether to become cyborgs.
Look.
We have all been down this tired, dystopian rabbit hole before. Give me a break. It feels like every speculative fiction writer since William Gibson or Philip K. Dick clocked out for a permanent coffee break and left a junior copywriter in charge of the tropes. Upgrade or Unplug. Really? That sounds less like a high-stakes geopolitical ultimatum and more like a pop-up ad for a faulty broadband router.
My youngest kid spent forty-five minutes yesterday trying to convince me that the toaster possesses sentience because it burned his bagel, and honestly, that narrative has more emotional grit than this recycled ultimatum. Tell that to someone who cares. We are drowning in algorithmic overlords and eco-collapse tropes right now. Pick up any thriller on the bestseller list and you will find the exact same anxiety dressed up in different binary code.
Solomon turns out to be ruthless. Color me shocked. Who could have possibly predicted that giving absolute power to a machine designed to solve climate change without human empathy would result in strictures and civil disobedience? Marcus Tully surely didn’t, because journalists in these books are notoriously bad at basic cause-and-effect reasoning.
And then we get the ultimate gimmick. A global referendum. Upgrade or Unplug. Everyone gets chipped, a simple majority wins, and civilization hangs in the balance. How convenient for the plot that humanity always waits until the absolute eleventh hour to hold a vote on forced cybernetic evolution.
Zero stars for originality on the ballot design.
The synopsis leans entirely on high-concept panic without offering a single glimpse into the actual interpersonal friction that makes us care about characters in the first place. I want to know how Marcus looks his friends in the eye after dooming them to a silicon cage. I want the messy, human collateral damage, not just a flashy premise that reads like a press release for a tech startup’s hostile takeover.
Wait.
Was that the sound of the pantry door swinging open on its own, or did the raccoon manage to pick the back latch again?
