John W. Maly - Taut, Suspenseful, Mind-bending Thriller

John W. Maly is an award-winning author and futurist. With degrees in computer science, computer engineering, and law, he works in the field of intellectual property (a world every bit as magical and strange as any of his stories). His hobbies include long-distance motorcycling, caving, scuba diving, collecting tektites, pinball/video game restoration, and judging rum festivals. He resides near the Bermuda Triangle with his extraordinary daughter and a growing collection of strange beasts. He does not put ice in his whisky, nor should you. As our Author of the Day, he tells us all about his book, Juris Ex Machina.Please give us a short introduction to what Juris Ex Machina is about.It takes place in the 22nd century at a time when justice is airtight. All human error has been removed by AI, yet somehow Rainville, a well-meaning teenage kleptomaniac, ends up falling through the cracks, and is wrongfully convicted of mass murder. His ill-tempered attorney (Foxwright) will not rest until he finds out why. To save the city, and humanity itself, Rainville and Foxright have to join forces against an ancient evil.Juris Ex Machina opens with a deceptively mundane image, a piece of toast, and quickly spirals into a lethal reality. What inspired this opening, and how does it set the tone for the rest of the novel?I was reading an article on the kitchen appliances of the future (self-buttering, adaptively-heating toasters) around the same time I was working on the early chapters of this book – it was one of those synergistic “Eureka!” moments!This is your debut novel, yet the world, the pacing, and the legal-technical concepts are masterfully handled. What personal experiences or professional background most influenced this story?Thank you! I suppose at the time I started the novel, I wrote boring stuff (technical documents, patent applications, legal memos) for a living. Fortunately, I had a great cohort of writers in my writing program at Stanford, who kept coming back with “Too boring, try again!” and “Too much passive voice!” and “Too much exposition!” After eight or so drafts (and equally as many years), things were streamlined and fast-paced thanks to all of their feedback. (Side note: as an author, some of your most valuable beta readers are friends with short attention spans!)Arcadia is a domed, seemingly perfect city, while Wychwood is a crumbling necropolis run by inmates. What do these two contrasting settings say about societal order and control?This contrast represents the yin and yang of any utopian vision: it's always going to contain some inherent dystopia. The utopian aspects always seem shiny and new, while the dystopian parts are as old and bleak as the darkest corners of human nature itself.The novel raises sharp questions about algorithmic justice. Do you believe that a fully AIdriven legal system is plausible (or even inevitable) in our own future?Oh, definitely! I think different governments will roll out AI in different places (Estonia is already experimenting with AI judges, for example) but technology and the justice system will eventually be totally entwined, whether that's a good idea or not. Having a background in both computer science and law, I wrote this book to explore this seemingly-inevitable future: if today's justice system is rife with inherent bias, what will tomorrow's look like? And who, if anyone, will ensure it serves the interests of those it is meant to protect?Some readers compared this book to science probability rather than science fiction. Was it your intention to make the technology feel just one step removed from today?Oh, that quote came from Dean Haglund, who played “Ringo” on the X-Files and Lone Gunman! Not only did I love his work on those shows, but he's also done these documentary projects where he travels around gathering conspiracy theories and analyzing them, so I was truly honored to have Juris Ex Machina reviewed by him. To answer your question, no, I did not intend on that close of proximity to today’s AI; I started this book over 10 years ago and “lucked into” it not being ready to publish until it became so relevant.Rainville is a young, tech-savvy kleptomaniac who gets wrongfully convicted. What made him the ideal protagonist to challenge Arcadia’s “airtight” justice system?Rainville is young, mischievous, and tech-savvy, so he seemed like the ideal person to end up on the wrong end of technology-gone-berserk.Vyanna, the urban spelunker, brings a very different energy to the story. What role does she play in Rainville’s development, and in the bigger picture of rebellion or resistance?Vyanna developed out of my own love for urban spelunking. In the ways that count, she's the opposite of Rainville: she's an old soul, grounded with emotional intelligence and patience, in contrast to his rashness and ego. Where Rainville rebels for the sake of rebelling, Vyanna does it only with purpose.Foxwright, the baseball-loving attorney, brings wisdom and heart. Is he inspired by anyone you know personally, or is he a foil to the cold precision of the AI justice system?I think Foxwright represents tradition, and respect for societal institutions over innovation and flash. He regrets the loss of our national attention span which was required to appreciate baseball. He's loosely based on the archetype of the curmudgeonly old attorney characters from Charles Dickens' novels.The pacing is razor-sharp, with short, impactful chapters. Was this structure intentional from the start, and how did it influence the writing process?I learned this technique from studying Neal Stephenson's work, especially his excellent book Snowcrash – it took some real practice to perfect the pacing.Your novel forces readers to wrestle with questions like: Can justice be truly impartial if it’s fully automated? and What is the cost of eliminating human error? What’s your take on that balance?I think the morality and ethics of AI judges and juries will come down to what we train them to do. For example, do we want impartial machines that will not fall prey to emotion-driven logical fallacies, and enforce justice blindly? Or do we train them to value human empathy over strict enforcement? I suspect we'll need a hybrid approach, where we round up all the top legal ethicists then have them pick their top 50 cases in human history that show the justice system at its very best, and then train the AI on all of those outcomes.You hold degrees in both law and computer engineering. How did you strike a balance between accuracy, accessibility, and compelling storytelling?I tried to keep everything completely plausible, with the exception of some molecular physics necessary for fabricators of objects by machines, so that even people in the technical and legal fields could enjoy it, while still keeping it totally accessible to the average reader.The legal excerpts and fictional texts scattered throughout the novel added texture and history. How did you approach weaving these in without disrupting the narrative flow?This was tough! I kept digging deeper and deeper into these legal anthropology books, and each early system of justice was even more astonishing than the last, from Ashanti tort lawyers using idols to summon forth new legal disputes, to the singing-insult duels used in Greenland. In the end, I had to draw the line somewhere, and only included the excerpts most relevant to the themes of the story, and only at the beginning of sections so it didn’t interrupt the flow.With your first novel getting such high praise, what’s next for you? Will we be seeing Rainville or this universe again, or are you moving in a different direction?A sequel (Fuga Ex Machina – literally, Escape from the Machine) is indeed on the way, and we're also working on adapting JURIS EX MACHINA into a pilot script for a streaming series. I'm hoping to launch both audio and graphic novel versions of the book starting next year, and I’m also currently working on a fantasy novel (The Legacy of Nerevyn).