Three things I learned about the future writing Oceanus

Outlawing AI, the wealthiest continent, and Mars

A starship drifts, its crew gone. The planet it orbits has no name. Survivors are separated on the surface. Exhausted. Hunted. Lost.

The longer they stay, the less they can trust their own minds. Their captor is as patient as he is bent on revenge.

Some prisons have no walls.

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Outlawing Artificial Intelligence

The 24th century is a world where artificial intelligence has been outlawed in the interests of peace. In the 22nd and 23rd centuries, technologies advanced considerably and much like in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, AI helped humans colonise space, but as with all competitive industries, ethics lost meaning somewhere along the way. As a result of two catastrophic incidents on Earth, Governments across the settled worlds agreed to bury their dark pasts behind them in the hope of preventing history from repeating itself.

Africa as Earth’s wealthiest continent

Africa is Earth’s wealthiest continent: several of its nations reclaim their natural resources over time and as a result, become the largest trading body on the planet. As a result, Africans barely leave Earth to seek out other fortunes. Seretse Walner is attention-grabbing as he is a captain of an envoy ship–a job seen as beneath a lot of Botswanans, but he loves it.

Mars could become the galaxy’s industrial site

Mars is the galaxy’s industrial site, but it holds the largest human historical archive (handy for use in negotiations). Many of the colonists work as miners, mechanics or engineers. One of the main characters, Balthazar Swaine, is a cabin steward: a job he can barely hold on to, but he’s following a different path to many of his fellow Martians.

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Hanna Delaney is a speculative fiction author whose debut sci fi novel Oceanus, a reimagining of The Tempest by William Shakespeare, was published in 2024. Since then it has had a second edition published with Tiny Worlds.Her other works include the Muldoon supernatural thriller series, Gothic mysteries that combine police procedural with supernatural horror. They are set in her home city of Liverpool, but in the 1890s. Hanna lives in Liverpool with her husband and three daughters.

Hanna Delaney: Substack | Instagram

Oceanus: Tiny Worlds Shop