Early Adopter – Book Excerpt

Happy Thursday, friend! Welcome to an interview with author Drew Harrison about his short stories collection, Early Adopter. The stories centre around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and are bond to offer food for thought. I am excited to make time for this book! Let’s chat with Drew and learn more.

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Get to know the author: Drew Harrison

Welcome Drew! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

Hey there Kriti—thanks for having me! I’m a 29-year-old teacher living in Florida who graduated with a degree in broadcast and electronic journalism. Storytelling has always been my passion, but years ago I made the decision to pivot from telling stories about the real world—the domain of newspaper reporters—and instead moved into the realm of the imaginative and fantastical through private creative writings. I eventually mustered the courage to post flash-fiction online through my reddit account, and the reaction was far warmer than I’d have ever imagined. In the years since that moment, I’ve managed to rack up literal millions of upvotes, and my short-form dramatic/comedic writings in post comments have launched my profile to the top 100 in comment karma of all 430 million active site users. The mass feedback and constant encouragement cemented my passion for creative writing—one can only read “you should be a professional writer!” so many times before the belief proves contagious!

What inspired you to write this book?

At the risk of sounding like a cliché, AI is transforming our world. The 2030s and beyond will look like nothing we can imagine, and the train is only speeding up… technology’s growth is exponential. Despite the significance of these changes, discourse surrounding AI makes it clear that most people don’t quite understand the dangers.

Everyone has heard the doomsaying: “AI will destroy our economy!” “GPT5 will take your job.” “Artists will starve!” Some of those things may be true, but they largely misrepresent the threat. Pop culture does us no favors, either—sci-fi is littered with examples of evil AI who seem to have merely downloaded the “destroy all humans” software update. Oops.

But as someone with a long personal background in computer science (and machine learning specifically), I know that the dangers of AI extend to far more than financial concerns or an accidentally toggled murder-switch. My goal with this collection was to highlight these true, science-grounded risks in an approachable way—by the time they finish, readers won’t even realize they’ve learned about the alignment problem or reward hacking. The stories in the collection establish their rules and follow them faithfully to their thrilling (and sometimes horrifying) ends.

I’m no luddite; I’ve fully embraced AI tools in my professional life and I’d recommend most others do, too. But I’d hope any reader who finished the collection would agree that AI requires tremendous systemic caution. It doesn’t merely endanger our society… it endangers our humanity, too.

How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

Before this short story collection, I’d only ever written novels—thick doorstoppers to make a book agent quail. But in December 2022, an idea came to me for a story so small it’d barely need a few dozen pages. I spent a week tapping away at local coffee shops until “Early Adopter” (the titular story) was finished—and unsure of what to do with a work so small, I chucked it onto a webnovel forum, RoyalRoad.

The feedback there was instant and more enthusiastic than I could’ve ever hoped for. One reviewer called it the best story he’d read on the site; another called it a take on AI that challenged him so thoroughly he had to rate it 6/5. The fact that I could whip up a story so quickly and move a reader in so few words made me reconsider everything I thought I’d known about my writing preferences. If bookwriting was building a house, short stories felt like an exercise in making a model miniature… the lack of space demanded efficiency, but it was a thrilling, new challenge.

Sometime in January 2023 I created a Word doc entitled “general short story idea doc.” It didn’t matter if I was working, grocery shopping, or traveling—if an idea came to me, I’d whip out my phone and tap a few new bullet points onto the list. By February 2023, I’d written “To Run Again,” which I also posted on RoyalRoad. A reader there suggested I seek publication in a genre magazine, so I started querying my stories to sci-fi anthologies. Querying’s a slow process, so for a few idle months waiting to hear back, I continued to outline even more stories.

Finally, a candid magazine editor told me that, as my stories had been published online, few magazines would want to include them. And so, in June 2023, I resolved to have a collection of my own to publish. Work on this collection was in chaotic, short busts: I’d spend a few weeks thinking about a story, and then spend a weekend binge-writing until it was finished. By December 2023, I’d finished the final story, “The Emulated”. And a few weeks after that, the collection was fully published!

What makes your book unique?

Growing up, I loved to read Stephen King. Even if late-night binges of The Shining could get my pulse to quicken, I could always close my eyes and remind myself “I don’t live in a haunted hotel,” and the spell was broken.

Early Adopter gives readers no such reprieve: the dangers on display are largely real, even if they’re a few years or decades away from rearing their head. We do live in this particular haunted hotel—and we’d better get used to the ghosts.

Did you bring any of your experiences into this book?

I’ve been a computer science hobbyist and on-again-off-again programmer for most of my adult life. I also love and teach math, so things like machine learning were always a long-term interest of mine. I was playing with GPT2 and GPT3 long before ChatGPT ever became a sensation, and I was fortunate enough to land in the earliest closed betas for MidJourney, Dall-E, and more.

In that community, I met all sorts of people: most with healthy relationships with AI tools, and a few without. Through them, I was introduced to a rather strange branch of the internet where programmers create role cards for chatbot “characters,” and then users can engage in roleplay chat with those characters. Most were benign, like chat with your favorite video game character or maybe speak with a virtual therapist. But a few of the bots were most certainly not benign: there were character cards for violent fantasy enactment; there were even character cards where the bot would play an underaged character in suggestive scenarios. Seeing that sort of AI use triggered a wave of revulsion, but it was a revulsion that came with introspection: how could I rectify feeling so unnerved with my beliefs about the non-sentience of current LLMs? Mistreating a person is abuse; mistreating an animal is abuse. But can a computer program be abused, too? My mind and my heart seemed to disagree.

That tension planted the seed for the collection’s titular story, Early Adopter. In the discourse surrounding our relationship with AI, I’d never yet heard much discussion about the sorts of burdens we place on the AI themselves. Is it right for a human to love an AI? Maybe, for the right type of human… I’ve always been of the “live and let live” philosophy. But is it right for a programmer to create an AI and hard-code into it “you must love this human?” That violation of autonomy deserves—no, requires—deeper moral examination as our AIs get closer and closer to being awake.

Are there 2-3 stories from this collection that you are particularly proud of?

I named the whole collection after the story “Early Adopter” because I believe it to be the most thought-provoking of the collection. Readers’ reactions have been everything I’ve hoped for: this story has sparked so many fascinating and eye-opening conversations. It’s also a timely story: I think that our society will be grappling with the same questions that its main character asks in only a few years. Its name and theme serve as a dominant thread through most of the rest of the stories.

“Homonoia” is probably the one that I most enjoyed writing. There’s a bit of a gimmick with the writing style itself, which was actually a lot of fun to bring to life. It has a few scenes bordering on the surreal, and where reality gets fuzzy, creativity can bloom. Some of the scenes and narration lines still stick with me for how chilling I find them—maybe it’s true that you can’t tickle yourself, but apparently, authors can thrill themselves! I’d love to one day expand this story to a full novel treatment.

And lastly, “The Emulated” is a bit of an emotionally draining story, but it’s the thought experiment I find myself going back to most frequently. It’s a scenario with no right choices, and teasing over the possible decisions you might’ve made if in the story itself is the satisfying mental equivalent of fiddling with a Rubik’s cube.

Who would enjoy reading your book? 

This collection is cautionary sci-fi through and through… fans of TV shows like Black Mirror should find it a perfect fit. If you enjoy stories that make you think, stories that thrill, or stories that examine our changing world, Early Adopter may be for you.

Do you have a favourite quote or chapter or story in the book that you find yourself going back to?

I had a lot of fun writing one character’s dialog from “Early Adopter.” Most of Larry’s lines might qualify! 

What’s the best piece of advice you have received related to writing?

“Begin your story at the last possible moment, and end it at the first possible moment.” As someone who used to overwrite, adopting this philosophy helped me cut my stories down to their bare essentials. Readers are busy people, too… I try to respect the time they put into reading my stories!

If you could give a shout out to someone(s) who has helped in your writer journey, please feel free to mention them below!

Wherever I put my stories online—reddit and RoyalRoad especially—it’s been the commenters and reviewers that have driven me to keep going. The world’s collective words of encouragement have motivated me to never stop honing my craft. I owe a debt to all the well-wishers I’ve met along the way, and even more to the readers who have gone on to talk about my work with others and share it, keeping these stories’ readership going strong. I’d be nothing without them!

Where can readers find you on the Internet?

My author’s website: https://drewharrisonbooks.wixsite.com/home

My RoyalRoad Account (where you can read two of the stories in this collection for free!): https://www.royalroad.com/profile/334388/fictions

My reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/drewhead118/

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Book Excerpt from
Early Adopter

This excerpt is from the story: The Terminal on Europa

Shaking hands fumbled with the key slot on the riprider’s console. It took Tim three tries to get the engine to turn over, and a few minutes of steady riding to calm his breathing back down from the brink of hyperventilation—something all-too-easy to do in an atmosphere as thin as Europa’s.

His shift had started well; he’d even whistled as he worked, a chipper bobbing behind his step. But then, when it came time to get the buckets, it had all gone downhill so fast… now, Tim could do nothing but squeeze his face into the cold wind of his ride, teeth chewing and worrying at the inside of his cheeks. Three days… that was when the next batch of plats arrived. In that time, Tim would have to re-center himself and find his peace. He’d been at this for years, had been told most sweepers don’t last even a month on the job. If he’d made it this far, he could surely bounce back.

When the plats were visiting, White Ridge was ever the picturesque alpine resort: the snow was fresh-packed, and smiles were freely given. The moment the plats left, the character of the town changed: snow melted to dirt-stained runoff that tracked indoors, and the faces of the townsfolk fell to dismal exhaustion. Tim had once watched a particularly drunk man suck in his gut to impress some Jovian trader who’d been passing through town. Once the woman had left the bar, the drunkard let his gut spring back outwards, rasping out a strained sigh with it. In that gesture, he’d unwittingly captured the spirit of White Ridge: the plats were gone, and the unflattering gut of the town was back bulging out.

Tim guided his riprider to park in front of the same bar that had witnessed that scene: Carla’s. Alcohol may be no solution, but Tim planned to drink until he couldn’t even remember the problems. Numb stupor seemed a far better comfort than the turning questions of doubt he’d been battling since work.

As he made his way in, he saw that the snow gens had been switched off, and already the ground turned to salted slush that crackled and sloshed as he stepped. The sooty stains tracked with him inside the bar, where the air was warm and stiflingly damp. Body odor hung heavy amid a drape of burner fog, and couples with hunched shoulders spoke idly in private conversation. Tim tapped the bar to get the bartender’s attention.

“Hey, Sara—bring me a double of whatever’s cheap.”

“No beers for you this time?” She asked, reaching for a tall-necked bottle.

“Beers ain’t quick enough for an evening like tonight.”

She stared levelly at Tim as he took his shot. “See, normally, I’d ask my regulars if they had trouble with the wife or maybe a hard day at work… but you got no wife, Tim, and I know for damn certain that there are no easy days of work at the Terminal.”

Tim set down the small glass, already emptied. “Another, please.”

She poured heavily, nodding towards him. It didn’t count as Tim avoiding the question if she hadn’t even asked it directly. As she poured, watching the weary lines on his face—and with them, knowing the likely outline of Tim’s planned night—she felt compelled to add her verbal warning: “From here out, you gotta wait and let them settle before I pour the next; I won’t have anyone else in a meditube this week, or they might take away my license.”

Tim nodded and tossed back the shot.

He lost track somewhere around the eighth. He didn’t know when the drunkenness took him, but before long, the shot glasses seemed to get heavier, since the clink they made with the table became louder. His back crooked downwards, and the room began to gently sway, and then spin; he set his head in his hands, eyes squeezed shut, riding the wave of thought-drowning sensation. All in all, if his goal was to avoid dwelling on the Terminal, his night out had so far proven successful… but then the wooden doors swung inwards to admit Sven and Edgar, and the latter’s monobrow wrinkled as he called out to the bar, “Why is the freak’s riprider parked outside?”

Conversation clattered away as a dozen sets of eyes turned toward the newcomers. Edgar was a burly man who worked the Europan mines; his partner, Sven, was more like the man’s shadow—wherever Edgar went, Sven was at his back, and if Sven could speak at all, he’d never deigned to let the rest of town know. Both men were as sturdy as the stone their pickaxes shattered, as hard-headed as the yellow hats they wore on-shift.

“I said,” Edgar repeated, gesticulating to the patrons of Carla’s, “why is the freak’s riprider parked outside my bar?”

Tim himself could do nothing but swallow, hands gripped to the sticky metal countertop against the spinning of the moon. Edgar’s temper was an ice geyser, something that would erupt no matter what he might try to do.

“Lay off, Edgar,” Sara reprimanded, buffing a glass with a tattered cloth. “This ain’t ‘your’ bar, and he’s got the same Europa-given right to be here as you do.”

“No no,” Edgar scoffed, “no Europa-given rights for the likes of him. He wasn’t born here like you or me—wasn’t even one who endured the years-long flights, who arrived to town the old-fashioned way. No, our Timmy was squirted out of the bioprinters like a cur, built on a copy of daddy’s genes. And then, to add insult to injury, he works for the Terminal, doing their cursed work with the same apathy me and mine swing a pick—man’s not right in the head, he is. Man’s everything we don’t want to be. Man’s the reason our town became what it is—and we hate him for that most of all.”

“You can’t blame one man for the turning of the moon,” Sara said, pleading eyes locking to Tim, begging him to speak up in his own defense. But Tim learned long ago that when taking a beating from Edgar, verbal or otherwise, it was far better to wait it out curled into a tight ball; fighting against it only made the beating worse. Tim’s eyebrow still bore the splotchy scar of the sticky bar floor, a reminder of the time Tim had dared to throw a punch in return. Some mistakes need not be repeated.

“The turning of the moon,” Edgar repeated, spite dripping from his words. “My da dropped everything to come here. Sold an entire Earther solar farm to pay his way to come here via rocket—the proper way, not the unholy work of the Terminal—and he made that leap because he was sold on an idea about making a brave new homestead for humanity, a ‘foothold in the stars.’ Now what’s White Ridge? What’s become of that foothold, that ‘brave outpost?’” Edgar spat onto the floor of the bar and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “They closed the geological survey center to open a brothel; the terraforming lab’s a VR cineplex now, and the forge that melts the metal my dad spent his life prying from the dirt now melts it down to make weaves for the prim and proper outfits for dainty visitors from off-world.”

Everyone’s faces—even Sara’s—fell in acknowledgement of the town’s changes. The good people of White Ridge had long ago come to terms with their fact that their brave new colony became nothing more than a town of idle diversions for an exclusionary elite, but Edgar’s impassioned words picked at old scabs until scarred wounds bled once again.

“We were promised a new world, and we got a place to dance for the masters of the old one, a tourist trap,” Edgar continued. “And it’s his fault. Him and his da’s. Nobody wants him here. Ain’t that right, lads? Who here wants the freak in our bar?”

Edgar and Sven looked around the room, as though daring someone beyond Sara to raise their voice in protest. The patrons of the bar, like Tim, knew better than to meet Edgar’s eyes.

“See that, freak? Nobody wants your kind here.”

“Look, Edgar,” Sara tried, “I’m no happier about what happened to the Ridge than you are, but none of this has a thing to do with Tim.”

“It’s got everything to do with the freak, and you know it. He’s not the Terminal itself, but he’s the reason they’re here, their proof-of-concept, and that makes him the next-worse thing.” Edgar moved in close to Tim, looming over the seated man. Sven held close to his back, face neutral, but muscles tensed in readiness. “The freak knows it, too, or he’d speak up for himself, deny my words… but no, he stays silent, because he knows the truth. I can admire that honesty, freak. It’s the only honest thing about you, since you wear a name you don’t own, and you ride a bike that was never yours.”

“My father left that bike—” Tim mumbled, but Edgar barreled on:

“No, your ‘father’ left Europa—took his medical-trial paycheck and bounced as soon as the boys at the Terminal gave him the thumbs-up. Sold out, and hid on Earth in a life of pampered luxury until the Europan cancers caught up with him. He’s not your father any more than the mug in your hands could call its mold ‘mommy…’ Tim Bowen—despite his flaws—was a man with a backbone, and you’re nothing but the cast made in his image. He would’ve stood to face me,” Edgar growled, grabbing Tim’s collar and hoisting him to his feet. Tim waited, cowering, looking everywhere but into the miners’ burning eyes.

“I could beat you, freak—teach you your place the way a man of the mines does. Your one eyebrow’s got a spot from last time, but we could make it… symmetric, you know? Add one to the other?”

Edgar waited for Tim to protest, to thrash, to do anything… but Tim merely waited with downcast eyes.

“No, freak, you’re right—even if I broke your nose, the boys at the printers could just squirt you out a new one; to teach you a lesson on showing up at places you’re not welcome, I’ve got a better idea.”

Edgar released Tim suddenly. He then turned about-face to pick up a bar stool; Sven did the same. Sara tensed up, reaching for something out-of-view beneath the bar.

But on silent cue, Edgar and Sven trundled their way out of Carla’s, barstools still in-hand.

“What on Europa are they up—“ Sara started, and then came the first crash.

Metal clanged against metal with a miner’s rhythm. Then sounded the staccato tinkling of breaking glass. A deep grating scratching noise came next, followed by more aggravated strikes and the grunting of two men in physical exertion. Tim crept forwards on watery legs to the door of the bar, and just outside, he saw the source of the noise that he had already identified in his head… nonetheless, it hurt more to watch than any physical beating might have.

Edgar and Sven beat at the riprider with unchecked savagery. Both men brought their barstools down overhead in the wide, strong strikes of a pickax into rock, and the riprider chassis dented, chipped, and crumpled beneath their dual onslaught. Each piece that broke off—mirror stems, handles, and tailpipes—became yet another bludgeon to beat the riprider with. Tim heard more than felt the gathering of a crowd of onlookers at his back… witnesses, but never obstacles, to Sven and Edgar’s wrath.

By the time that Edgar released the titanium pipe with a huff, the riprider’s ruins were a scattered mess of glittering metal. Tim collapsed to his knees in front of the wreck of his father’s riprider, feeling a piece of himself blow away into whirling white with the rising, whining wind.

He wept, for there was little else he could do, and the swirling eddies of blowing ice and snow carried his cries through the town. They carried past the once-hospital that was now the off-road excursion booking agent; they droned over the loose scattering of portables meant to become a school but was now a trendy restaurant that served Earth-imported fish; they echoed across the fields cleared for intercity roadways, only to become the racetrack where plats could rent luxury cars and race on snow treads among the geysers.

But Tim wept for none of those things; he wept for the man who, despite his shared genes and name, had never felt further away, as though he still lived on the blue marble itself.

Tim wept alone.

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Interested?

Find Early Adopter on Goodreads, Storygraph, IndieStoryGeek and Amazon.

Thanks for taking the time to join us for this interview!

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