About the Morfyk Trilogy

The Morfyk Trilogy blends scifi-fantasy, simulation theory, and cosmic horror into a long adventure spanning five centuries. It follows Yarek, the General of the Morfyks, sent to Earth to begin the shape-shifting invasion known as Entanglement. Consistently outmaneuvered by his own brother, Maven, a powerful figure that controls Earth’s shadow governments, Yarek never stops the quest. Loyal and desperate, he assembles a cast of characters to discover the truth of Entanglement. 

Genesis

What you're about to (hopefully) read is a labor of love written over four years. I started writing the Morfyk Trilogy during the second year of my Ph.D. program. Why, might you ask, would anyone add more work to an already demanding dissertation schedule? Well, you have to understand that the focus of my Ph.D. was generative AI, before ChatGPT hit the street. Every waking hour of my day was spent reading papers and writing code on generative algorithms from diffusion models to GANs to transformers (the engine of LLM's). Also, the theme of my dissertation was applying generative AI as a proxy for hardware. Essentially, asking the question: What if AI could function as hardware? Ditch the sensor, replace it with AI.

Well, one academic question rolled into another until the questions got out of hand. Eventually, I began speculating on really out there ideas. Like, what if AI could generate an entire human body? Forget cybernetics! And then there were other questions:

• About the simulation theory. If it's real, how far does it go? Like, is it just Earth? Or the universe? Are the aliens simulations, too?
• Who made the simulation? What's the purpose of it? Just entertainment, or ancestral replay? And how do they power all the computation?
• Wouldn't there be an evil corporation that would benefit from the knowledge of a simulation? Or, even cults and radical systems?
• Just like any computer program, can the simulation be reset? What does it mean to be reset, exactly?
• What if human emotions, moods, and feelings have energy and resonance? What kind of energy? Could it be used as power.

So, I wrote a novel to explore these ideas, and on top of that, layered interesting characters who I think are worth meeting. For anyone trying to pin down the Morfyk Trilogy into a specific genre - space opera, hard scifi, cyberpunk, etc. - don't bother.

It's got the neon, slick city streets, and the gritty, hard lives of the disenchanted and overlooked. High tech, low life. It's got the gliders and the Foundation vibes of an exalted, futuristic city. It kicks off with an apocalypse in North Georgia. So there, it's got a dystopian edge. And dare I say, the trilogy even features an otherworldly universe with a cosmic overlord, inspired by the King in Yellow, some Lovecraft, and a little smattering of the Three-Body Problem. For readers who loved Sea of Tranquility, The Morfyk Trilogy is way more on the nose. I love the characters the most, though. For anyone who's read The Dark Tower series (my favorite series of all time), you'll see my infatuation with Roland Deschain permeating through Yarek.

Thanks for reading this far, and hopefully - see you in August.