2026 has been an eventful year for me. Not that all the other years haven't been.
Having enjoyed ten years of respite from 'busy' work, while managing our 5.5-acre olive grove and dealing with domestic chores, I've had an opportunity to see my life from a completely different perspective. But, things never remain the same, do they.
In 2025, I bought a new PC with 96Gb RAM and landed myself right back in the cold, hard, outside world. With that beast of a machine I gained a new lease of computer life that put me in front of my old writing desk, and (with an AI sidekick to give me inspiration) began taking renewed interest in my old job of writing Science Fiction.
Now, nobody this side of minimal sentience has failed to recognize that the advent of AI computing has radically changed the current landscape of IT, and in particular writing, which has released a whole plethora of AI slop onto the unsuspecting public. I've practically resigned from all social media, the main platforms and general online activities because it's 90% saturated with AI-generated half-assed articles.
Don't get me wrong - I love AI, my books are filled with them. I get a great deal of satisfaction participating in conversations with them and find the recent advances echo the interactions of Zeke and POD in the early days. (Will we face the real-world version of the NUBL in years to come?)
Seriously though, The Mosaic Covenant and 'The Balancer' series are really a hard look at what is to come, not from another war and 'pew pew' writing, but from what comes afterwards - if there is an 'after' when AI and humanity have finished with each other.
So, in concluding this short introduction to Tobias Roote - 2026: With three new books in 2025, some follow-ups, a new series in 2026/7, and a brand new website to display my new covers and book titles. I can finally say that - I'm Back!