Brain Thief

“Jammed full of half-mad technology, decapitations, clever riddles, junkyard sociopaths . . . but the quest for AI lurks constantly in the background.” —The AV Club

Brain Thief is a fun, literate speculative fiction adventure, sort of New England cyberpunk noir, set a year or ten from now, somewhere between the Berkshires and Boston, and includes, at no extra charge, a 30-foot-tall fiberglass cowgirl.

Bernal Haydon-Rumi, executive assistant to a funder of eccentric projects, drops by his boss's house on the way home from a business trip. By the next morning, he's been knocked out, his wealthy socialite boss Muriel has stolen a car and vanished, and the AI designed for planetary exploration that she's been funding turns out to be odder than it should be.

In figuring out what's going on, Bernal has to deal with an anti-AI activist toting a handmade electronic arsenal, a local serial killer, a drug dealer with a business problem, a cryonic therapist stalked by past mistakes—and someone who specifically wants Bernal dead.

“The nonstop twists of the plot do come together in the end, and the stops along the way are always amusing. Above all, Brain Thief succeeds in making cyberpunk fun again.” —

The Denver Post

“Serial-killer murder mystery, artificial intelligence bildungsroman, a celebration of Americana diner schtick—Jablokov’s return to science fiction after a decade-long absence is all of these and more . . . a fun read with plenty of unexpected turns and a genuinely surprising ending.” —Publishers Weekly