Paperback
ForthcomingThe canonical object — printed, bound, shelveable. The pattern you can hold in your hands, and lend to someone who will never give it back.
01 — The book
Every age owns a reason why humans matter. Ours was intelligence — until the machines came for it.
Sapientism is a short, sharp inquiry into what we do next — not a lament, and not part of the hype cycle. It takes the three ideas that quietly hold up our species’ self-image and inspects them in plain language, one at a time, to see which are load-bearing and which are wallpaper.
It is written for readers on both sides of the carbon–silicon line: the curious, the worried, and the quietly relieved. No equations, no jargon, and — the author insists — no chapters that could be replaced by a bullet-point summary without loss.
“The question is no longer whether machines can think. It is whether we can stop needing to be the only ones who do.”
The three load-bearing ideas
-
01
The Pattern
Intelligence may not be a spark we possess but a shape we perform — a pattern that runs on neurons or on silicon with perfect indifference to either. If that is true, then the list of things “only a human can do” is not a fact. It is a countdown.
-
02
The Mask
Every time a “unique” human faculty fell, a new one was stitched into place and called the essence: the soul, the toolmaker, the language-user, the only animal that laughs. The mask has been remade so many times that the wearing — not the face — may be our real universal.
-
03
The Need
Beneath the pattern and the mask sits the need itself: to matter, to be irreplaceable, to be special. Sapientism puts that need on the table and asks what it would cost — and what it might set free — to finally negotiate with it.
02 — Editions
One book. Several bodies.
The text will meet you in whichever medium you keep your mind in. The paperback arrives first; the others follow.
eBook
EPUB and Kindle editions, arriving shortly after print. Same words; lighter pockets.
Further editions
Audio, translations, a possible hardcover — under consideration. Preferences shape decisions; join the list and say so.
03 — The author
Burung Lucu
Writes about minds — the biological kind, the other kind, and the space where their stories overlap.
04 — Questions
Reasonable questions.
Asked and answered in advance, as best we can before publication.
Soon. The paperback is in production, the cover is final, and the ink is — as we write this — drying. The release date will be announced on this page and to the early-readers list first, before anywhere else.
The paperback (ISBN 978-90-836785-9-7) ships first. An eBook edition follows shortly after, and further formats — audio among them — are under consideration.
Yes — the ISBN is already registered, so any bookseller can order it today. Walk in, say the title, hand them the number above. Booksellers are precisely the kind of special this book is fond of.
Yes to all three — contact viloocity press and tell them what you need. Review copies exist before release; patience, occasionally, is also required.
05 — Early readers
Be there when
the mask slips.
One email when Sapientism is released. Perhaps a second, if something wonderful happens. Never a third.
Plain text. No tracking pixels — this book has opinions about being watched.
You’re on the list, .
The machine will write — once, maybe twice.