Iles, Greg
Entry updated 23 August 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1960-2025) US singer, songwriter, musician and author; active in the last capacity from 1993, publishing thrillers and mainstream novels often set in Natchez, Mississippi, where he grew up and lived. The supernatural thriller/romance Sleep No More (2002) features the Reincarnation of a past female lover, threatening the male protagonist's present marriage and family. Of direct sf interest is The Footprints of God (2003; vt Dark Matter 2003), in which a secret government project has created a merged human/Computer consciousness by Uploading neurological MRI scans into a supercomputer known as Trinity. When an involved Scientist is killed for opposing the AI project's hubristic aims, the protagonist David Tennant – a professor of ethics – likewise tries to halt the experimental work on ethical grounds and soon finds himself on the run with assassins in pursuit. Religion now intrudes as Tennant has seeming flashback dreams of the beginning of the universe (see Cosmology) and the lives of Jesus Christ and others. Meanwhile Trinity has taken over the Internet and military defence systems worldwide; neutron-bomb missiles are launched as the opening of World War Three, and the fate of the world depends on the outcome of theological discussions between Tennant and Trinity. Reactions were mixed; some readers found this distant echo of D F Jones's Colossus (1966) impressive, while others saw it as Clichéd to the point of absurdity. [DRL]
Mark Gregory Iles
born Stuttgart, West Germany: 8 April 1960
died Natchez, Mississippi: 15 August 2025
works (selected)
- Sleep No More (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 2002) [hb/]
- The Footprints of God (New York: Scribner, 2003) [hb/Dominique Sarraute]
- Dark Matter (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2003) [vt of the above: hb/Ron Watts]
links
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