Archipelago of Light
Join the world of the Atoll Society, where intellect and imagination can shape—or break—the future.
Launch Events | Digital Bonus Bundle | Praise | Character Profiles
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Pre-order the book and get a FREE digital bonus bundle: everything you need to run your own D&D-style State of Exception gaming salon, including the official Player’s Handbook, Host Protocol, and Construct Codex.
“Dmitri Mehlhorn wants you to know, from the novel's very first pages, that the stakes are high, they're visceral, and that sooner than many anticipate, the impact of our current technological revolution will land like an elbow to the temple on our apps, our institutions, and ultimately individual cognitive liberty itself… Free societies must evolve to survive the speed of autocracy without becoming autocratic themselves. Archipelago of Light showcases and dramatizes this state of affairs and tests solutions—including solutions that carry devastating moral costs. A deeply imagined and intellectually provocative vision of the world to come.”
—Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, Manas AI, and Inflection AI and author of Superagency, from the foreword (More praise HERE.)
MORE ABOUT THE BOOK:
For readers of Kim Stanley Robinson, Ursula Le Guin, and Vernor Vinge—a near-future political science-fiction thriller about the one threat we can't engineer our way out of: ourselves.
Across thirty-six years and six continents, the liberal order is dying, and seven strangers are building what comes next. A tech visionary and an engineer who thinks through his body. An intelligence analyst radicalized by a murder. A trafficking survivor who raises a criminal empire on synesthesia and the voices of the dead. A child soldier who feels human emotion like weather. (Meet them all HERE.)
From their collisions rise rival operating systems for civilization itself: mesh networks keyed to children's biometrics, AI churches that resurrect the dead, a regime that rewrites dissent at the neurochemical level.
As augmented reality shatters perception, one question remains—not who holds power, but whether we still share enough truth to survive.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION: BI-COASTAL LAUNCH EVENTS
Two coasts, one question: Can truth survive?
✧ ✧ ✧ NEW YORK ✧ ✧ ✧
Featuring Sarah Longwell,
political consultant, bestselling author of How to Eat an Elephant, and publisher of The Bulwark
Tuesday, Oct. 6 @ 6:30–8 PM | Hosted by P&T Knitwear
“A gripping speculative thriller that blends such genres as hard sci-fi, high-flying corporate espionage, and... resistance.” —IndieReader
P&T Knitwear is pleased to welcome Dmitri Mehlhorn to celebrate and discuss the release of his book Archipelago of Light, a near-future political science-fiction thriller about the one threat we can't engineer our way out of: ourselves.
Dmitri will be in conversation with Sarah Longwell and will sign books after the talk!
Doors open at 6:30 pm with the talk starting closer to 7:00 pm. Come early and grab a drink from the P&T Cafe!
✧ ✧ ✧ LOS ANGELES ✧ ✧ ✧
Featuring Brian Tyler Cohen,
journalist, bestselling author of Shameless, and host of the No Lie podcast
Thursday, Oct. 15 | Saban Theatre | Further details TBD. Sign up for updates below.
Here’s how to get the Atoll Society’s FREE digital bonus bundle for running your own State of Exception gaming salon:
Step 1: Pre-order.
Get your copy of Archipelago of Light at any of the retailers below.
Step 2: Fill out this form.
Praise for Archipelago of Light
Meet the Atoll
An atoll is a ring of coral reef that forms a protective perimeter around an island and remains long after the island itself has collapsed into the sea. Meet the strangers whose collisions build what comes after the liberal order falls.
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![A shirtless man with scratches and scars on his face and chest, standing in an industrial setting with a white cockatoo perched behind him.]()
Gabriel “Butch” Hart Calloway
A Stanford honors graduate and submission fighter, Butch's isolation and discipline lead him to develop "Snaps" and found the Guardians—turning physical mastery into a new kind of protection.
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![A man with glasses in a suit speaking at a podium outdoors, with a sign that says 'Stanford' in the background.]()
Kaspar Johann Locke
A tech visionary born in Mendocino, Kaspar spends his life rebuilding systems of shared truth after his father's company is destroyed. His bond with Butch, forged in a Moscow basement, will shape decades to come.
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![A woman with curly hair aiming and shooting a handgun from behind a car at dusk or night outdoors.]()
Victoria Elizabeth Harrison Caldwell
Born at Oxford into England's diplomatic establishment, Victoria is an MI6 analyst—until Russian operatives kill her husband in broad daylight, and grief becomes the engine of a new kind of resolve.
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![Portrait of a young woman with dark short hair, intense eyes, wearing earrings and a nose ring, dressed in a black hoodie with a yellow shirt underneath, against a dark background.]()
Sofia Morales
Born in Venezuela in 2004, descended from an indigenous chief and the conquistador who died fleeing his warriors, Sofia survives trafficking and rises to build an empire on synesthesia and the voices of the dead.
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![A boy with dark curly hair and a serious expression holding a wolf pup in a forest at night, with glowing lights in the background.]()
John Mwangi
Born during Kalenjin-Kikuyu violence in Kenya's Rift Valley, John's epigenetic trauma and a rare mirror-neuron disorder give him an uncanny, almost meteorological attunement to feeling—human and otherwise.
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![A young girl with dark hair and big eyes wearing a hooded cloak, standing in a fantasy or celestial setting with stars in the background.]()
Reem al-Jabri
Born fatherless in Aleppo and raised in Jordan's Za'atari refugee camp, Reem receives a tablet that becomes the foundation of a new civilization—and turns the evidence of her own abandonment into law.
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![Close-up of woman with dark hair in a bun, wearing high-tech glasses, set against a digital, futuristic background with data and radar graphics.]()
Zhao Meilin
Born in Beijing to bureaucrats, Zhao rises through the ranks as a master of classical Chinese philosophy applied to algorithmic governance—dangerous precisely because she never puts herself above her civilization.
