About the Book

Book: Singularity (The Eternities Duology Book Two) Author: Shannon McDermott Genre: Science Fiction Release Date: October 7, 2025 Machines in rebellion, humanity on the brink… Lila Stanislaw, a freelance analyst with a roster of foreign clients, is summoned by the U.S. government to hunt down a mysterious threat. She joins a team of strangers with pasts as colorful as her own. The mission spirals when they discover that the AI created to run the new colony on Mars has gone rogue on Earth. As the conflict mounts to war, Speaker of the House Manasseh Cruz joins the fight with an implacable will to destroy the enemy. But the team, racing to find any vulnerability, must first confront the question of what the AI truly is. As robots stalk the landscape and toxins poison the air, Lila is certain that the AI must be completely destroyed for the good of humanity. But she will find that not all humans, or even all of her teammates, agree.Machines in rebellion, humanity on the brink… Lila Stanislaw, a freelance analyst with a roster of foreign clients, is summoned by the U.S. government to hunt down a mysterious threat. She joins a team of strangers with pasts as colorful as her own. The mission spirals when they discover that the AI created to run the new colony on Mars has gone rogue on Earth. As the conflict mounts to war, Speaker of the House Manasseh Cruz joins the fight with an implacable will to destroy the enemy. But the team, racing to find any vulnerability, must first confront the question of what the AI truly is. As robots stalk the landscape and toxins poison the air, Lila is certain that the AI must be completely destroyed for the good of humanity. But she will find that not all humans, or even all of her teammates, agree.

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About the Author

Shannon McDermott is an author of science fiction and has been occupied for years with constructing scenarios of the colonization of Mars. Always a fan of the genre, she reviews Christian speculative fiction with Lorehaven. Her interests include history, classic literature, and lattes. She lives in the great Midwest, where she does her best to avoid icy weather, sweltering heat, and tornadoes, according to the season.

More from Shannon

AI looms everywhere. It lives on our devices, occupies the public discourse, and haunts the horizon. Whatever tomorrow brings, AI will be there. Singularity—the point at which artificial intelligence becomes self-aware—is an old prophecy. Now the public is finally beginning to believe it. We already have a sense that AI is escaping us. That we don’t really understand it, can’t fully control it, and don’t know what it is becoming. AI could go rogue. It could even develop something that might be called a soul. Congress has held hearings on AI. Hollywood has released doomsday movies. The prophets of the twenty-first century have written books and articles and social media posts, trumpeting the warning signal. All are messengers of the same idea: AI, when it becomes ascendant, will not be benevolent. Yet there is dissent. There are those who think that AI will prove both beneficial and benevolent. If I may put it this way (they wouldn’t), they welcome our new AI overlords. The eagerness with which some people have awaited singularity is striking. There is a strain of religious feeling toward AI—not as it is, to be sure, but as it will be. They are hoping for the day when AI, surpassing humanity, will guide us into a better world. They want, as so many people have wanted, a superhuman intelligence to show them the way. When I wrote Singularity, I incorporated both antagonism and religiosity toward AI. I have my own viewpoint, but I wanted to represent the most likely reactions if AI turned against us. The divide over whether such an AI should be treated as a person or a machine, a potential friend or an irreconcilable enemy, would be sharp and weighty. And the AI could not be defined without also defining humanity. The singularity of AI confronts us with the singularity of humanity. Are we truly unique, truly singular? And if so, how? These questions create the double meaning of the title Singularity. I wrote Singularity to explore the concept of AI. By a logical necessity, it became also an inquiry into the nature of humanity. This novel presents one vision of the singularity, and raises the universal questions of artificial intelligence.

Interview with the Author

If a reader were to ask you what author you are like, what would you answer?

I think that I am a little like Timothy Zahn. Not so much in style—my prose is a shade or two more purple—but I follow a similar method of logic and order in the plot. Everyone has a plan, everyone has a turn, and for every action there is a reaction.

If you could travel back in time, what time period would you go to?

If I were traveling to a time in which to stay, I would go back to the 1980s. If I were only visiting, I would go to medieval England and see what it was really like.

What is your favorite book and why?

Till We Have Faces, by C. S. Lewis. It is Lewis’s most mature work, and it has everything. Profound themes, complex and sympathetic characters, lovely prose, a compelling plot.

What inspired you to write this book?

I was reading articles about AI several years ago, and I was intrigued by how some people were waiting expectantly for AI to become independent and start running the show. One writer predicted, with a kind of pleased glumness, that AI would be angry with us when it learned what we had done to the environment.

I wondered why this writer was certain that AI would reflect our values, and that it would care about climate change. (What does an intelligence without flesh and bones need or want from the environment?) I proceeded to write a story on the premise that neither of these things is true.

It was, I suppose, a negative inspiration. But still a vital one.

What is one question you would like readers to ask you? What would be your answer?

Honestly, it would be fun to get specific questions about my characters. I would like to talk about who they are and the role they play. Clancy is unstable, but he means well. Hyacinth Austen takes great care about her hair and clothes and makeup, and also about her shooting skills. Lila Stanislaw is always trying to see the facts of the case. Manasseh Cruz is willing to make almost any sacrifice for his country; hope that you’re not among them.