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MarsX was intended to be a story in my Remembered Earth Universe. I had already written a volume of short stories about the future of Cislunar space (Cislunar) and another volume of short stories about lunar settlement (Luna) and a novel about mining at the Earth-Moon Lagrangian point L4 (L4 Station). So, the obvious next step was Mars, and the title was to be MarsX.
The story would be about a trip to Mars by young people slightly older than the protagonist in L4 Station (who was thirteen), but while it started out that way, it changed. After I started the story, I read the AI 2027 project paper about the near-term possibilities of artificial super intelligence, sometimes called Artificial General Intelligence or ASI. In the project report, ASI is seen as arriving by the end of 2027 and in the paper's Fast Takeoff scenario it is seen as taking control of world governance by the end of 2029 and wiping out most humans by the middle of 2030 (because it needs the resources humans are using).
So, after reading what is not science fiction, but reads like science fiction, my story morphed into something that included ASI. ASI and the takeover are depicted but I did not follow the Fast Takeoff scenario to its conclusion, the destruction of humanity. My reasoning is that while a super intelligence might see humans as an impediment to its plans, why would that necessarily lead to the elimination of humanity? As an analogy, let's say we destroy some insect life that gets in our way, do we then proceed to destroy all insect life? No, it would make no sense.
So, while deaths may occur during an ASI takeover, I don't think it would lead to the death of mankind. However, it could lead to a conflict for resources, and the ASI might decide to “move” humans out of the way. For story purposes it might decide to send them to Mars and now the story is back on track and that story is called MarsX1.
The MarsX story became a novella trilogy with the first story already available on Amazon and KU. The next two stories, MarsX2 and MarsX3 will be published on August 20, 2025. More about them in a future post. On sale now for $0.99.
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