In a
recent piece for
The Bookseller, Lauren Brown notes a shift in how authors approach artificial intelligence: once largely the domain of science fiction, AI is now being woven into general and even literary fiction, treated less as speculative technology and more as a social and psychological force. It’s not hard to see why. With generative AI permeating workplaces, education, and creative industries, it no longer feels futuristic but ambient; something to navigate, react to, or resist in the everyday.
This reflects a growing fascination with AI not only as a tool or threat but as a character in its own right, capable of intention, intervention, and perhaps even moral weight. This shift opens up fertile ground for novelists. AI, unlike the internet before it, lends itself to drama: it acts, adapts, learns, and mirrors us back to ourselves. Where the online world is often static and transactional, AI is dynamic and theatrical. It raises questions—about consciousness, ethics, authorship—that sit at the heart of fiction.
And yet.
At P-Wave Press, we suspect that as AI becomes more ubiquitous in both life and literature, readers will turn not only to stories
about it, but also away from it. Toward other realms. Because the more present and self-aware our tools become, the more fiction may serve as a retreat from them.
This isn’t escapism in the pejorative sense. Rather, it’s a return to fiction’s oldest purpose: to transport us. And where better to flee than the rich textures of the past, or the imaginative freedom of fantasy? We are seeing this already. Sales of historical and fantasy fiction have soared in recent years—not only on the back of BookTok trends or blockbuster adaptations, but from a deeper cultural need for immersion, myth, and meaning.
AI, in fiction and in life, demands interpretation. It reflects back our anxieties about power, agency, and identity. But these are not new concerns. Historical fiction lets us watch societies confront other, earlier thresholds—political upheaval, spiritual dislocation, moral crisis—while fantasy, in its archetypes and invented cosmologies, gives us the freedom to reimagine such reckonings altogether.
We expect AI to play an increasingly central role in mainstream narratives. And we welcome it. But at the same time, we believe it will deepen the desire for fiction that steps outside the technosphere altogether. Stories set not in a world mediated by machines, but in one shaped by memory, myth, and imagination.
We’re proud to be building a list that reflects that hunger. Whether it’s the
Romantic satire of Thomas Love Peacock, the
lush folklore of classic retellings, or
bold new work that reaches beyond our automated present, we’re here for the stories that take us elsewhere, and remind us, in doing so, what it means to be human.
We’d love to hear what you think. Is AI enriching fiction or driving you further into the past? Join the debate on on X (formerly Twitter) and Bluesky.