20 Great Books for Summer 2026

It may feel like AI has seeped deep into our lives, but compared to the world within “Certainty,” a new dystopian novel by best-selling author John Twelve Hawks, we’re practically in the Flintstones era. In Twelve Hawks’ realm, self-driving tractor-trailers dominate the highways. Parents delegate child-rearing to AI-powered stuffed animals—all-knowing, well-mannered versions of “Ted,” essentially. The authorities make aggressive use of a predictive-policing algorithm built atop an aged AI no one fully understands, which I see as a real warning about AI wrapper startups.

So when government goons show up for 10-year-old Kate, an orphan living with neglectful adoptive parents, she flees, accompanied by her faithful companion, Zeno, a seal stuffie. They depart from Maine, hoping to reach New York. If only Zeno’s battery didn’t need such continual recharging.

“It’s sorta the same plot as ‘Huckleberry Finn’: Kate is Huck, and her AI companion is Jim, and instead of rafts going down the Mississippi, they’re in autonomous trucks going down the interstate,” Twelve Hawks said in an interview.

Twelve Hawks doesn’t see “Certainty,” his first release in almost a decade and one of our seasonal reading picks, as a shrill cry against AI. (“There are no long lectures in it,” he said.) But he acknowledges his hope that it will prompt greater reflection among the people developing the real-life versions of his fictional tech. “I partly wrote it for the tech elite,” said Twelve Hawks, a former foreign correspondent who has maintained a pseudonym since releasing his initial hit, “The Traveler,” a 2005 techno-thriller. “I think technology is wonderful, and while we can see the power of AI, we don’t see the implications of it yet.”