A first novel is a massive undertaking, and this one took about three years, so it comes with an equally large list of people who deserve my gratitude. Foremost, thank you to my agent, Cameron McClure, for her patience, wisdom, and good humor with this fledgling writer over the past five years. She helped me navigate the rocky terrain that is a first novel and guided it to the destination I was aiming for.

Thank you to my editors: Navah Wolfe, who was the first one to believe in Machinehood and give it the strength it needed, and Joe Monti, who took up the baton and carried it to the finish line. Also, thank you to Valerie Shea for meticulous copy edits, Madison Penico for keeping things on track, Lauren Jackson for the publicity support, and the rest of the team at Saga and Gallery.

This book is my “artificial intelligence story,” one that integrates subjects that I first began learning in college. My thanks to the professors who inspired my deep love of machine learning and neuroscience: Christoph Koch, Pietro Perona, John Hopfield, Jim Bower, and Henry Lester. The novel also needed quite a lot of expert advice to make it credible. Thanks to Dr. Bijan Pesaran and Dr. Kristen Bandy for their help with the neuroscience and medicine. Thanks as well to Dustin Butler and Alison Balzer for their help with intelligence work and global geopolitics. I’m grateful to you all for sharing your knowledge and inspiring new ideas. I take full responsibility for all real or invented details and any associated errors in the actual story.

A massive thank you to all of my beta readers, starting with my spouse, Ryan, who was more of an alpha reader turned one-man cheering squad; my parents, Anusha & Shaker, who read multiple versions and supported my writer-life in so many ways; my friends Marshall Robin, Yvonne Maier, Owen Landgren, and Ion Hazzikostas for their feedback; and fellow authors Stewart Baker, Laurence Brothers, Steph Bianchini, and Steve Bordelon for their critiques.

Thank you, my friend Pinguino Kolb, for the awesome robot fist logo design, which helped complete the book cover as well. A hearty thanks to Wang Zi Won for the inspiring mechanical Buddha artwork, Richard Yoo for the cover design, and John Vairo for the art direction. While it’s true that you can’t judge a book by its cover, a great one can tempt a new reader to open its pages. I hope this one accomplishes that for at least one person.

Thank you to my eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Bos, in whose class I wrote my first science fiction story; my generous benefactors in 2018, whose retreat allowed me to finish revising this book in record time; and Maya, for wanting to read this book, even though she isn’t old enough yet.