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Welcome to the official site of Peter Anthony, author of the novels A Town Called Immaculate, The Plenty, Accelerating Returns, and Drill & Sanctimony.
A Town Called Immaculate
Amazon links: Kindle Edition $8.05 | Paperback $11.66 | Hardcover $22.76
The first book in the Immaculate series. Still traumatized by his war experience, Ray Marak’s world has shrunk—to the boundaries of his small hometown of Immaculate, and the warmth of his adored family: his young sons Jacob and Ethan, and his wife Renee—the woman who waited for him. But as the snow accumulates, so do the townspeople’s stories, and the suspicions Ray has harbored for years start to resurface, along with his demons. As midnight approaches, and young Jacob vanishes into the deadly storm, Ray realizes that Josh’s generosity has been motivated by something more than neighborly kindness. Snow, it seems, can bury everything but the past; hour by hour, as Christmas Day approaches, Ray Marak begins to lose control. This haunting novel explores family and fidelity, and the fragility of the things we take for granted.
‘With its terse emotions, rural dysfunction and sharply comic moments, this suspenseful debut shares midwestern ambience and territory with the Coen brothers’ Fargo. An array of strong characters gives a bright, nervy edge to Anthony’s fresh prose.’ – James Urquhart, Financial Times
‘Anthony is utterly convincing with his unassuming manner and Immaculate is quietly riveting. It is a novel born to make one think.’ – Doodled Books
Read more Reviews and Excerpts.
 The Plenty (Immaculate Series: Book II)
Coming soon!
Ten years earlier, in A Town Called Immaculate, Ray Marak learned a hard truth about his family, during a blizzard that nearly claimed his son, Jacob, and his banker, Josh Werther.
The Immaculate series resumes in 1992, on a cataclysmic autumn night when the Marak and Werther families clash again over faith, farming, and family ties. Ray Marak, no longer bankrupt but thriving, concerns himself with succession of the farm, intending to divide it between sons Jacob and Ethan. But a feud begins during the harvest, when the boys’ interests collide over a girl named Tara.
As the Werther children prepare for Halloween, Renee Marak attempts to hold the center of both families, until Ethan makes an announcement that triggers tragic events that will alter the shape of both the Maraks and the Werthers forever.
Sample Chapters:
Chapter 1 – Chapter 2 – Chapter 3 – Chapter 4
 Accelerating Returns
Kindle Edition: $2.99 | Paperback: $13.99
Rule #7 of Blocker’s Manifesto: A Blocker does not operate underground. He participates in a group. He is mainstream. All things anathema to him, he must embrace and make central to his life.
Accelerating Returns is a novel about science, progress, and the war for public opinion. Rogue extremists known as Blockers perform acts of terror to create spectacles of worst-case-scenario science to spur the masses to action. A young, inspiring CEO takes her biotech firm from zero to empire, only to be undermined by a ruthless executive with his own anti-science agenda. A disgruntled researcher sees his work usurped by a charismatic scientist and is recruited by the neo-Luddites. Blockers are not street thugs throwing rocks. They are scientists and executives in research labs and board rooms whose single purpose is to deter the inevitable integration of man and machine.
Inspired by Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, Bill Joy’s Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, and Hugo de Garis’ The Coming Artilect War. The Law of Accelerating Returns states that technology in the coming century will be so “rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.” On one side will stand those who welcome radical advancement in technology, versus those on the other side who attempt to subvert and destroy it. This story is the beginning of the coming struggle.
Sample chapters:
Chapter 1. Respirocytes – 2008
Chapter 2. Pelius Research
Chapter 3. Talbot Labs – 2016
Chapter 4. KillJoy’s Manifesto
Chapter 5. Hatter House
Drill & Sanctimony
Now available, a comedy called Drill & Sanctimony.
Kindle Edition $0.99 | Paperback $9.99
Paul Sprungli. Overweight. Opinionated. Obsessed with video games and war movies. In U.S. Army basic training, he connives, eats, and bumbles through ten weeks, running a contraband market, exploring religions, and facing military justice from the diminutive Drill Sergeant Pint. Bunking with Sprungli is an exemplary soldier who succumbs to the most trying element of the modern U.S. Army’s co-ed training environment: falling in love. Sprungli becomes the courier of notes, until he learns to doctor the messages and bring Drill Sergeant Pint into a fraternizing love triangle. A military comedy for the 21st century.
Drill & Sanctimony is a tale of excess. Paul Sprungli is oozing from all sides. He teems with expectations fostered by movies and video games. He lives with a sense of unwarranted entitlement. He expects an Army experience like he has seen in the movies, particularly Full Metal Jacket, but he is unaware of the Army’s co-ed training environment, and finds that none of the Hollywood expectations are met when he arrives. His appetites dominate him, and his delusions create repeated collisions with authority.
Sample chapters:
Airport – Missouri – Breakfast – Fat Camp
This month’s Wired magazine hypes the coming of the self-driving car (Let the Robot Drive, Feb 2012). The cover honks the advantages: No traffic jams. No crashes. Unlimited texting.
First of all, the idea that there will be no crashes or traffic jams with software-enabled navigation ignores the fact that all software has bugs. Systems and networks go down, passwords expire, connections to the database are lost, geese may soil the camera, ice may cause miscalculations – I’ll stop there. In short, there will be bugs and jams and accidents (unless this will be a system that is unlike every single other piece of software ever devised).
Still, the idea of self-driven cars does seem overdue. Even the flying car seems late in arriving, come to think of it. But once the gee-whiz moment wore off about self-driving cars, I thought of a side effect of this innovation that will cause quite a stir, should the manic outlook of Wired come to fruition.
According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “truck drivers and driver/sales workers comprise one of the largest occupations, holding 3.2 million jobs.” One benefit of being a driver, be it a taxi, an 18-wheeler, or a Fed-Ex truck, is that you currently cannot be outsourced. In an Economist column from Sept 2011, they pointed out that the educated sometimes have less job security than lower-skilled jobs. “A plumber or lorry-driver’s job cannot be outsourced to India. A computer programmer’s can.”
The future of robotic autos is “unstoppable” according to Wired (a magazine oft given to hyperbole in its cover declarations: recall the Aug 2010 cover, “The Web is Dead”). But this exaggeration may not be that far out, since America worships tech and has a tendency to view it as the economic savior. Robotic vehicles will uproot drivers’ job security in the form of navigation systems that are superior to humans. Commuters will certainly enjoy being able to kick back in the car while riding home on clogged interstate arteries. Heck, you could even drink beer in the car if no one is driving.
Already truck drivers have on-board computers riding shotgun that monitor their every acceleration and turn. Robotic drivers would not need to take a break every ten hours of driving, but could be forever “east bound and down, loaded up and truckin’.” Taxis could obviously be self-driven cars (sorry to say, yellow cab folks). A UPS brown van could be staffed by a minimum wager who could just ride along and hop out to deliver the package – at least until he could be replaced by an iRobot PackBot (perfect name for a deliverer of packages).
I’ve already posted about what a help wanted sign would look like for robot labor:
Help Wanted: employee that always arrives on time, never complains, never asks for a raise, non-union member, easily adapts to change, and never makes an error.
If robotic vehicles get a foothold in real world occupations, I foresee a labor fight between 3.2 million drivers and the tech companies. Not to mention, there’s a cultural aspect of trucking in the public mind, and maybe a soft spot for cab drivers, too. Cool as the self-driving vehicles may seem, they will create a more sterile and soulless world, like that of Minority Report. The argument that these driver jobs will be re-tooled and created in new areas is simply a sales-pitch for tech evangelists and free marketers to pacify the have-nots and the about-to-lose. In place of driver jobs will be lower paying and fewer jobs, like the ride-along UPS man. Many will say, “tough luck, the future is here.” That argument is always easy to make for those unaffected by the change, who have jobs in industries that are not yet replaceable. A bit harder to accept if you have kids and a mortgage and the potential to be automated into a relic of a past industrial era.
If you like future tech, check out my novel Accelerating Returns. The Law of Accelerating Returns states that technology in the coming century will be so “rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.” On one side will stand those who welcome radical advancement in technology, versus those on the other side who attempt to subvert and destroy it. This is the story of the coming struggle.
If you haven’t heard of grey goo yet, let me introduce you. A “Grey Goo” scenario is an end of the world scenario where some biochemical concoction disassembles all carbon-based matter, leaving all living things in an anti-climatic pile of dirt (no meteor or mushroom clouds, just a goo). Sounds crazy of course, until you consider that synthetic materials, diseases, and bad things will be created in the future that we currently cannot comprehend. The goo, as advertised in tales of fear, like Bill Joy’s “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” warns of worst-case-scenarios.
The “best” tale of a grey goo-like happening is Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, where the chemical is called Ice-nine. A good science fiction ploy, Ice-nine is a seed crystal that on contact with water, causes all H20 to instantly freeze at abnormal temperatures. It can instantly freeze oceans, and of course, rivers . . . → Read More: Bird Flu and Science Fiction
The SOPA bill quickly became the favorite whipping boy of nearly all netizens, in perhaps the rarest moment of solidarity between left and right experienced in recent years. The collective ire found a common scapegoat in the form of censorship of the internet.
What this SOPA Blackout has also shown is the power of Google, Reddit, and Wikipedia in broadcasting issues and fighting heavily lobbied legislation. Moreover, sites like Google and Wikipedia have proven that they can act as change agents on behalf of people – a power seemingly divested from Congressmen and Senators over the years. Since this morning, three Senators have already leapt from the mast of the SOAP ship as the conflagration of the bill continues in the press.
Does the Internet now represent voters in a more effective way than actual elected leaders? Rather than write a letter or call a representative, . . . → Read More: The Internet Rises Up: Don’t Mess With Lolcats
 One of the remaining mysteries in science related to the big questions about “how did we get here” is: By what process did a single-cell organism change into a multicellular structure?
Today, the University of Minnesota reported that a simple lab test can answer that question. In a primordial broth of yeast cells, with lab equipment no more extravagant than their two hands, the researchers shook their yeasty container once a day, according to Wired News. Within two months, the single-celled yeast had clumped and formed multicellular structures ‘displaying all the tendencies associated with “higher” forms of life: a division of labor between specialized cells, juvenile and adult life stages, and multicellular offspring.’
Looking forward to more on this topic.
Image: Go Gophers!
 For anyone interested in the financial meltdown of 2008, which spawned both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements, may I suggest reading Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America by Matt Taibbi. The two parties with their separate protests should realize that their anger needs to be directed at both government and banks, not just one or the other. This is a story of how greed spirals into disaster. Decisions are made behind closed doors that the average person cannot change but only suffer the outcome. The characters assigned such great responsibility in New York and D.C. often do not have the “greater good” in their vocabulary.
Griftopia is a great read, with perhaps a bit too much ad . . . → Read More: Short-term profits over people, infrastructure for sale: Reading Griftopia by Matt Taibbi
Another four-star review of Accelerating Returns has been posted on Smashwords.
“Despite a few chinks (more perception on my part than Anthony’s fault), this story satisfies. Clever plot, good pace and characters that avoid "cardboard" so you can identify with them. The bioethical scenario rings true and the sense of ‘this could really happen’ makes this book worth reading.”
Kindle Edition: $2.99 | Paperback: $13.99
A new review of Accelerating Returns has been posted on Smashwords.
“Peter Anthony certainly did his research before writing this one. The result is a solid techno-thriller, with vibrant characters and well-layered intrigue throughout. The philosophy and machinations of the underground activist group known as "Blockers" is fascinating, and one of the novel’s strongest selling points. A good book, worth the read.”
Kindle Edition: $2.99 | Paperback: $13.99
Is everyone an engineer now? Or a “senior” account/software/systems/sales + manager/consultant/specialist/analyst? While the amount of available jobs shrinks, job titles continue to grow in word count. Gone are the days when a salesman was a salesman. Now it’s a critical accounts marketing manager who pitches products to customers. The title engineer comes in the most flavors, with many of these engineering roles requiring little or no math. A solid understanding of fractions and exponents (for calculating powers of 2) suffices as enough to be blessed with the title engineer. Could there be a industrial psychologist driving this, lengthening job titles under the aegis of a theory of empowerment?
Why not? For example, the following exchange may be heard soon in a school hallway near you:
“What do you do?”
“I’m a nuclear hydrological engineer.”
“Goodness. What do you do exactly?”
“Atom removal. I transfer matter using water.”
“Wow, what . . . → Read More: Living in the Age of Job Title Hyperbole
 The vague title of this episode can have various meanings. At the outset, the lesson Jimmy McNulty teaches to his sons is a police tactic called “front-and-follow.” In a supermarket, he has his boys tail Stringer Bell, which is cute…until McNulty loses sight of them. McNulty’s worry doesn’t sell me when he can’t find the kids. As a parent who has lost his kids while tracking one of the city’s top gangsters, he would probably be at his wits end. So…
Lesson 1: Don’t use your kids in police investigations.
Lesson 2: What a cool lesson to learn as a kid .
The Wire . . . → Read More: The Wire: Lessons
I know I am supposed to feel deep chagrin at the possibility of the SOPA bill (Stop Online Piracy Act) bill being peddled in Washington. If the worst-case-scenarios are true, I have to wonder about my own site being targeted for takedown, since I blog about TV shows and usually take screen shots of the DVDs that I watch on my computer. Would this be a kind of piracy, or would the studios only take offense if I bash the show? (Fortunately, I only blog about shows that I really enjoy, so it’s mostly fanboy musings.) 
I am an all-things-Google user. Given the Google motto of “Don’t be evil” and its Edison-like power of innovation, I would like to believe in this company as a protectorate of the internet-as-we-know-it. Given that Google opposes SOPA, the hair on . . . → Read More: If SOPA passes, can I still blog about TV shows?
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