There are traces of AI and a number of other applied sciences in the narrative. What was your analysis like?
The problem was to put Artificial Intelligence in a world set in 70,000 BC with out turning it into fantasy. To do this, I needed to analysis not solely present AI programs but additionally the philosophical questions they elevate — about autonomy, creation, ethics and the risk that intelligence can emerge in layers, whether or not organic or digital.
Simultaneously, I delved deeply into historic Indian cosmology. The Upanishads converse of the self observing itself by means of layers of actuality. The puranas describe universes created and dissolved in cycles, like simulations, re-run endlessly. When I studied simulation theorists and quantum physicists, I discovered an uncanny resonance with these historic concepts.
Researching Kumarikandam was equally vital. While not accepted as historic reality, it survives vividly in Tamil folklore, in Sangam literature, and in the collective consciousness of south Indian coastal communities. These sources describe a sophisticated maritime tradition, a complicated society of students, astronomers, and seafarers. This gave me a framework inside which superior applied sciences might exist — not as anachronisms, however as the remnants of a forgotten age.
By merging these analysis threads, the AI in my novel turns into neither magic nor science fiction in the Western sense. Instead, it turns into a continuity of our cultural creativeness, the place expertise, delusion, and philosophy are completely different names for the identical human longing to know creation.