Thure Etzold
- webmaster of Cambridge Writers
His previous career has led him through many unlikely places such as the first World Wide Web conference in Geneva or right in the middle of the race to the human genome whilst supplying 'arms' to both contestants. He has worked as a lab scientist, as a software engineer, and at the helm of a biotech company. Of particular interest to him is the contact zone where human nature meets technology, an area that is shaped by the tension between progress and setbacks, or between hope and hubris.
See more at his website.
Thure is the webmaster of Cambridge Writers. If you need changes done or have questions, please contact him at tetzold@fastmail.fm.
Selected Works
Symbiosis (2016)
What happens when virtual reality catches up with reality? If you think that as a consequence, only more time is going to be wasted with gadgetry, you couldn’t be more wrong.
It is 2036, seven years after Black 5/11 when humanity broke in two, largely caused by the advent of ‘true virtual reality’.
Ellie, a young woman from a Hutterite colony in Minnesota and the beautiful daughter of a barber surgeon, has difficulty in finding a suitable husband. Her main worry though is that she wants to become a vet, a profession that in her religious sect can be only practised by men.
Dance, graphic designer in oneWorld, celebrated for his feats of putrefaction, likes to hang out in fighting games with his best friends Nokter and Blade. Towering giants in the art of killing, they consider him a bit of a wimp. Unfairly, because he, equipped with the eyes of an eagle, is always the one who spots the enemy first.
Dramatic circumstance force Ellie and Dance away from their homes. They meet and are persecuted by the Tribulation Army, a mysterious band of guerrillas. On the run they discover that the world is not nearly as simple and solid as they thought. It is a vast jumble of utopian societies that hang together in a precarious balance, a balance threatened by the ongoing events.
Life As It Could Be (2011)
Our greatest and proudest creation, the internet, has continued to dazzle us with its breakneck evolution. Reaching ever higher levels of complexity, it has served us well, deeply affecting us and our civilization, but will it continue to do so? Will it ever be conscious? When and how will human technology spin out of control as is expected? These and other questions are pondered by scientists of an obscure institute in Cambridge when they are drawn into a vortex of catastrophic events that converge upon Bruno Haslop, a software tester in a personal crisis.
In their investigation full of dangers they stumble upon amateur scientists, botnet herders and security experts, and they are challenged with new riddles about cybercrime, the evolution of man and what it is that constitutes life and intelligence.
Available at Amazon.
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