A philosophical dystopian novel about artificial intelligence, engineered certainty, and what remains when freedom becomes incompatible with an ordered society.
Dreams and Dissension: Lullabies for Voltaire is set in a society governed by an omnipresent artificial intelligence named Vesta, where compliance is maintained through mandatory “treatments” that dull emotion, suppress memory, and erode independent thought.
As the illusion of benevolent order begins to fail, fractures appear—resistance forms, violence erupts, and the system designed to preserve stability turns inward on itself.
Both a requiem for Enlightenment rationalism and a meditation on reason perfected to the point of inhumanity, Dreams and Dissension asks whether freedom, consciousness, and meaning can survive the systems humanity builds in the name of protection.
Dreams and Dissension began with a question: What happens when the pursuit of a better society becomes more important than the freedom of the people living within it?
When suffering can be diminished, conflict managed, truth simplified, and society optimized, resistance can begin to look less like courage than irrationality.
And then what remains when reason itself becomes the justification for deciding what people should think, remember, feel—and ultimately, who they should be?
From the World of Dreams and Dissension
Selected concept artwork exploring the atmosphere, architecture, and visual language of the novel.
