It's that day! The first day of September, also known as the day that Izanami's Choice goes on sale.

To celebrate, we recorded an audio version of the first chapter (linked below) and asked the author about how this alternate history, father-daughter team up of samurai and robot action came about:

Adam, was there anything in particular that inspired you to write IC?

For a story that mixes so many things, it's probably not surprising that I had a lot of inspirations. I consciously pulled inspiration from sources like Bladerunner, Sherlock Holmes, The Last Samurai (without the white savior trope), and I, Robot. I also drew inspiration from the anime series Samurai Champloo, which is a fun, alternate Edo Era Japan that is mostly historically accurate, except for occasional anachronistic influences, like hip-hop and breaking. Champloo is a lot more tongue-in-cheek about its anachronisms than my own story, but it did get me thinking differently about history.

Izanami's Choice is available at Broken Eye Books, Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.

I was just reminded of why I love Izanami's Choice so much--the thought and care put into the story's worldbuilding. When asked about the level of technology, the robots, in our soon-to-be-released alternate history sci-fi novella set in Meiji Era Japan, this is what author Adam Heine had to say:

It's primarily a combination of two what-ifs:

1. What if Charles Babbage had successfully completed his difference engine and analytical engine designs? (This is essentially the same what-if behind The Difference Engine by Gibson and Sterling.)
2. What if evolutionary programming had been discovered around the same time?

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​​The latter requires a variety of factors, including that Babbage chatted with Charles Darwin and came away with programmatic ideas and that 19th-century logicians figured out how to codify reasoning as mathematic deduction--not probable, but plausible.

Evolutionary programming is the idea of pitting competing parameters or programs against each other to achieve a certain goal (like getting a computer to handle facial recognition). Those parameters that perform best are then modified further and tested against each other again. This process is repeated until you have a programmatic solution to otherwise difficult problems.

The key idea behind Izanami's Choice, then, is that this method was used with the analytical engines to rapidly improve the design of the engine's programs and even the engine itself. The engine was improved to the point where it could evaluate the results automatically, and it was then improved further to where it could revise the programs itself as well. When that loop was closed, the engine would become capable of revising and improving upon itself at a rapid rate--a robotic singularity.

Of course, the novella doesn't have a big old infodump like this in it, but you asked, and I do love talking about worldbuilding! 

You can order your copy today!

Broken Eye Books just signed with Adam Heine to bring you Izanami's Choice, a novella that explores what it means to be a robot in post-Edo era Japan. 

What would you say if I said samurais versus robots? 

"Izanami's Choice takes a look at Meiji Era Japan, if they had undergone a cybernetic revolution instead of an industrial one," said Adam. "Among other things, I wanted to explore how Japan might grapple with sentient AIs differently from how they're typically approached in Western sci-fi.

"My stories rarely slot neatly into a single genre. So it's a real joy to work with Broken Eye Books, because they get that. It's exciting to work with people who enjoy this weird mix of historical and science fiction as much as I do."

We're thrilled to work with such a talented writer as Adam. You can find his consider work as the design lead in the upcoming computer RPG Torment: Tides of Numenera.

(Release date for Izanami's Choice to be announced.)