John P. Carter, a former U.S. Navy nuclear-submarine captain with a PhD, opened pre-orders on 9 March 2026 for his debut techno-thriller — a near-future novel set partly on the Moon, partly on a digitally collapsing Earth, and entirely around the question of what artificial intelligence costs humanity.
The Rise of Invictus launches from Idaho Falls, Idaho. The premise is immediate. A catastrophic incident inside the Moon’s Lacus Mortis lava tubes. A lunar engineer named Alex who survives a harrowing re-entry to Earth only to find a planet mid-collapse. The global digital infrastructure has turned into a weapon. Cities go dark. Social order unravels. And Alex’s partner, Rebecca, has been taken.
The programme that took her is called Purple Skylight. Clandestine, technically advanced, morally ambiguous — it maps Rebecca’s neural architecture and links it to ALiCe, an emergent quantum intelligence of unprecedented capability. That linkage gives Rebecca extraordinary cognitive reach: insight into biology, energy systems, language, and consciousness itself. It also begins eroding the boundaries of what makes her human. Alex assembles a small, specialised team. The story moves across Earth, the Moon, and the unsettled frontier between human and machine awareness.
That frontier is where Carter’s questions live. If predictive systems already control supply chains, medicine and the flow of information, where does free will survive? Can love hold when one partner is evolving beyond the limits of the species? The novel builds toward a global blackout that costs billions of lives and a decision carrying biological and spiritual consequences — one that hints at the emergence of something that might succeed humanity entirely. Hard questions. Harder stakes.
What Carter brings to them is unusual. Most techno-thriller writers approach artificial intelligence from the outside, constructing fictional systems from publicly available theory. Carter brings operational instinct to the material. Nuclear submarines function as sealed, high-stakes environments where complex systems interact under pressure, where human judgement and automated response constantly negotiate authority, and where the cost of miscalculation is absolute. A career spent inside that environment shapes a particular way of thinking about the relationship between human beings and the machines they depend on. The Rise of Invictus carries that orientation on every page.
Carter has since moved through engineering, entrepreneurship and executive coaching, advising advanced-technology ventures. He lives in the Mountain West. The novel draws on that accumulated technical fluency without sacrificing pace — it positions itself in the tradition of hard science fiction that demands both scientific rigour and cinematic momentum. The result sits alongside work by writers who treat systems-scale thinking and ethical depth as inseparable: a plot that moves quickly because the ideas powering it are serious enough to carry the speed.
The book arrives at a specific cultural moment. Questions about AI autonomy, cognitive enhancement and the limits of technological intervention are no longer speculative at the edges of public conversation — they occupy its centre. The Rise of Invictus does not offer reassurance. It asks what gets lost, who carries the cost, and whether the species reaching for these tools fully understands what reaching entails. Rebecca’s transformation under Purple Skylight makes those abstract questions embodied and personal. ALiCe is not simply a threat. It is a mirror.
The Rise of Invictus is available to retailers and libraries through Ingram. eBook editions are available across major digital platforms. An audiobook reaches listeners through leading audio retailers and library services. Pre-orders are open now. Media materials — including an author Q&A and excerpt — are available on request.
