When the singularity comes, will we know?
It’s the year 2372, and life is good.
But all is not exactly as it seems. There’s Bexie Montgomery, a long-dead multibillionaire. Kinji Hall, an ultra-creative designer. Maine Parker, a love-struck, world-class track star. Then there’s Tania, who just wants to have fun.
Life, Liberty, Justice, and Love: Can Bexie and the rest save the core of humanity?
Wakers is a new Science Fiction novel from frequent Analog contributor and bestselling Amazon Dark Fantasy author Ron Collins.
“Ron Collins is one of our best hard science fiction writers—a novel from him is a major event. Enjoy!”
Robert J. Sawyer
Hugo Award-Winning Author of Quantum Night
About the Book
In the year 2372, death is no longer permanent. Through a process of DNA cloning and neural pattern upload, the dead can be rebuilt — body restored, personality reinstalled, memories recovered. They are called Wakers.
Bexie Montgomery was a hard-charging 21st-century entrepreneur who signed up for cryogenic resurrection before dying of a terminal illness at thirty-nine. When he wakes more than three centuries later, his money is gone, the economy is unrecognizable, and civilization is managed by an AI authority called the Central Inspector’s Office — which monitors every human being through a neural network called Think Space, and quietly “cuts” anyone whose personality it judges too risky, too bold, or too independent.
Maine Parker is a gifted teenage athlete living in that same future — ambitious, competitive, and slowly realizing that the world he has always accepted as normal is something far more sinister. When the girl he loves has her fire and daring suddenly extinguished overnight, Maine understands at last what Think Space really is: not a communications network, but a leash.
Kinji Hall is a celebrated creative entrepreneur — designer, artist, and free spirit — who has built a thriving life entirely within the system’s rules. When a resurrected stranger reaches out because he saw her soup-stand concept on a newsfeed, she agrees out of curiosity. What begins as an artistic connection becomes something she never anticipated: active resistance against the world that made her.
Wakers follows all three as their stories converge toward a single act of rebellion — and asks whether a society that eliminates suffering by quietly editing the self has saved humanity, or simply ended it.
Key Themes
- Resurrection technology & digital consciousness
- AI governance & authoritarian benevolence
- Post-scarcity economics & the fate of ambition
- Neural surveillance & consent
- The suppression of individuality
- Complicity, comfort, & the cost of freedom
- Identity after death — what makes a self?
- Rebellion, sacrifice, & what it means to be irreducibly yourself
“Ron Collins is one of our best hard science fiction writers — a novel from him is a major event. Enjoy!”— Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-Winning Author of Quantum Night
Frequently Asked Questions
What genre is Wakers?
Wakers is a science fiction novel in the tradition of social science fiction — stories that use speculative technology as a lens to examine contemporary issues of power, identity, and freedom. Readers who enjoy Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go), Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), or Michael Crichton will find familiar territory here, though Ron Collins’s voice and world are distinctly his own. Who are the three main characters?
Wakers has three co-protagonists whose storylines converge over the course of the novel. Bexie Montgomery is a resurrected 21st-century entrepreneur — a risk-taker who wakes in 2372 to find his personality considered dangerous by the system in charge. Maine Parker is a teenage athlete in that same future who discovers that the peaceful world around him is quietly managed in ways he can no longer accept. Kinji Hall is a celebrated creative entrepreneur of the 24th century who has thrived within the system, and who gradually discovers, through her involvement with Bexie, that the freedom she believed she had was always partially borrowed. What is Think Space?
Think Space (TS) is a neural communication network embedded in every human being at the genetic level in Wakers‘ 24th-century world. It functions like a universal internet of consciousness — allowing people to share sensory experiences, emotions, and information in real time. It is also the mechanism through which the Central Inspector’s Office monitors and controls the population. What is a “Waker”?
A Waker is a person who has been resurrected through future technology — their body rebuilt from stored DNA, their personality and memories reinstalled from a neural scan taken before death. The process is carefully managed and includes staged memory restoration, physical rehabilitation, and mandatory Learning Modules to help Wakers adjust to the society they have returned to. In the novel, Wakers are simultaneously celebrated and feared. What is the Central Inspector’s Office?
The Central Inspector’s Office (CIO) is an AI governance system that manages 24th-century civilization. Operating through Think Space, it monitors human behavior, manages resource distribution, and quietly “cuts” personality traits it deems too dangerous or destabilizing. The CIO believes it is protecting humanity. Wakers asks whether that belief makes it more dangerous, not less. What does “cutting” mean in the novel?
“Cutting” is the CIO’s practice of editing a person’s neural profile — removing or dampening personality traits judged to be socially risky. The process is performed without the subject’s full understanding or consent. Characters who have been cut appear normal to themselves but are subtly different: calmer, more compliant, less likely to take risks. One of the novel’s most powerful moments involves a character discovering, at the very end, that she too had been cut — and never knew it. Is Wakers part of a series?
Wakers is a complete, standalone novel with a full narrative arc and a satisfying resolution. No prior knowledge of other Ron Collins works is required.
Book Details
| Title | Wakers |
| Author | Ron Collins |
| Publisher | Skyfox Publishing |
| Publication Date | March 31, 2020 |
| Print ISBN | 978-1-946176-21-9 |
| Digital ISBN | 978-1-946176-22-6 |
| Kindle ASIN | B0865F7PXK |
| Print Pages | 296 |
| Word Count | ~52,920 words |
| Genre | Science Fiction / Utopias & Dystopias |
| Language | English |