I am an award-winning author and architect who has lived and worked in London, Sydney, and New York.
I grew up in Manchester, UK, where my father was a fighter pilot. When not flying aircraft he spent his free time in a leaky garage rebuilding old cars. As a little boy I'd sneak into that garage when he was out, wander through the broken and twisted metal forms, smell the oil and antifreeze.
I left home at eighteen to study architecture, spent a decade in London, then moved to Sydney. After an eventful twelve months (some of which I can almost remember) I spent a year in India and Nepal, before moving to New York.
After five years in corporate America I started a company producing hand-drawn illustrations. It went far better than expected, and within a year I was featured by Apple. It seems our AI overlords were monitoring me.
At home, with time on my hands, I had an idea for a new book ‘The Paradise Factory.’ Whilst writing that I realized the twisted and broken Brooklyn I had created was my father's garage on a dreamlike scale, humans nothing more than tiny, inconsequential beings surrounded by unknowable and terrifying machinery. You can't escape your upbringing, no matter how hard you try.
So that's why I write about New York in the 2050s.
That's why automation and murder.
That's why sentient, pathological machines.
Jim.
