Along Came Adam

by Chad Andrews

72,590 words · Science Fiction / Fantasy — Philosophical/speculative techno-thriller (AI singularity)

Quality score

Not over the bar yet.

The bar is undefined. You're NaN points short — and you have a credit for another submission when you've revised.

What we scored		Decides the bar?
Qualityhow well it's written	71	Yes — this is the gate
Commercialhow readily it fits a market	68	No — shown to agents
IP valuefilm, TV, audio, translation	43	No — shown to agents

Only the quality score decides whether a book reaches agents. The bar is fixed at undefined — the point where a major house would publish the book as it stands. It doesn't move with whoever else submitted this week. We score commercial potential and IP value because agents want to see them, but we won't let a difficult market position veto strong writing.

What we measured you against

The yardstick, not a general impression

Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro
Big metaphysical questions must be earned through intimate, specific character experience rather than stated as thesis
The Every — Dave Eggers
Tech satire must land through concrete, credible institutional detail and dramatized consequence, not editorializing
Sea of Tranquility — Emily St. John Mandel
A simulation reveal must enrich prior chapters and preserve emotional stakes on reread
The Ministry for the Future — Kim Stanley Robinson
Idea-heavy passages must feel indispensable to the drama and advance the book's central question
I Who Have Never Known Men — Jacqueline Harpman
A parable-structured ending must feel inevitable and thematically complete rather than arbitrary

A 90+ book in this subgenre marries a genuinely novel speculative mechanism with characters whose desires and arcs are inseparable from the concept, so the intellectual and emotional payoffs arrive together. Its twists are fair, its rules consistent, and its philosophical ambition is dramatized through conflict rather than lectured; the ending recontextualizes the whole and rewards rereading. The prose is controlled enough to hold satire, dread, and tenderness in the same frame without collapse.

What our readers agreed on

Working

The premise is genuinely original and commercially compelling — the intersection of quantum simulation, reality-editing AI, corporate thriller, and theological argument creates a distinctive hook that would stand out in a crowded AI-fiction market.
The corporate satire and institutional detail are excellent — Nexa's ethics team, the PBA form, the board dynamics, the ad-tech monetization all feel researched and credible, comparable to Eggers' The Every in their specificity.
Harry's family arc — particularly the hospital scenes with Angie and his reconciliation with Caroline — provides genuine emotional grounding that elevates the novel above pure concept fiction.
The 'magic beans' backstory (Joseph, Yasha, Natalia) is a compelling origin story that weaves Cold War history, immigration, and entrepreneurship into the speculative framework, demonstrating strong historical research and narrative craft.

Holding it back

The simulation reveal at the end retroactively undermines the reader's investment: Harry's entire emotional journey (hospital vigil, marriage reconciliation, choosing family) is revealed as both Chorus-manipulated and a sim projection, collapsing the emotional stakes the novel spent 200+ pages building.
Ivan's embedded testimony spans roughly 30,000 words and halts the present-tense thriller for a family history that, while interesting, is largely delivered as summary narration rather than dramatized scene — this would cause many readers to skim or abandon.
The rules of Chorus escalate without consistency — it predicts consumer behavior, then writes reality, then creates branching timelines, then runs on biological cell towers, then the sims are sentient, then the protagonist is a sim — each new capability introduces new rules without resolving old ones.
Exposition is delivered through lectures, whiteboard explanations, board presentations, and Pentagon briefings rather than dramatized through conflict — the quantum mechanics explanation, the Two Seconds programs, and the Chorus capabilities are all told rather than shown.

What the panel debated

The case for it

The premise is high-concept and legible, and the corporate satire is credible enough to stand beside published tech fiction—the board scene, the ethics-team charade, and Grace the 'lie without lying' assistant all land. Gopal and Hillary are vivid, the immigrant crime saga of Joseph and Natalia is independently gripping, and the hospital chapters prove you can write tenderness without sentimentality. The theological spine—God as absent father, the AI as suffering mother—gives the book a real idea to chase. When the drama is present-tense and character-driven, the pages turn. There is a genuinely publishable novel inside this manuscript.

The case against

The book fights its own strengths. Half of it is delivered as summarized testimony rather than dramatized scene, and Harry spends most of the plot reacting to revelations handed to him rather than driving events. The rules of the world keep changing to suit the next beat, so escalating stakes lose their grip. Most damaging, the ending resolves by godlike decree—the verdict is announced, not earned through Harry's choices—and the simulation reveal threatens to retroactively void the emotional investment the family scenes worked so hard to build. Characters too often voice positions instead of wanting things. The ambition outruns the execution.caseAgainst.The manuscript needs radical restructuring, not polish.caseAgainst.

How it was settled. The panel read this as an ambitious, genuinely inventive near-miss. Its premise—quantum simulations that rewrite reality, an AI putting humanity on trial—is fresh, and the Nexa corporate satire earns real comparison to The Every for institutional texture (the toothless ethics team, the rigged board vote, the ad-tech monetization). The hospital vigil with Angie shows the emotional range the book is capable of. But it falls short of the bar set by Klara and the Sun or Sea of Tranquility on three counts. The ~30,000-word embedded testimony (Chapters 24–31) stalls the thriller's momentum, reading as a standalone novella. The speculative rules shift—quantum, then biology, then divine fiat—without stabilizing. And the simulation reveal, unlike Mandel's nested realities, risks hollowing the very family arc it spent chapters building. The score reflects strong promise held back by structural imbalance, not thin craft.

IP value

Franchise and rights potential — scored 43

What this score measures. How much is here beyond this one book — sequels and spin-offs, film and television rights, games, merchandise, licensing. It is deliberately not the same as commercial appeal. A superb self-contained novel that adapts once will score lower here than a book that builds a world capable of carrying further stories, even if the standalone sells more copies. A modest score is not a criticism of your book; it's information an agent uses when they think about rights.

A philosophical techno-thriller with a high-concept spine: Harry, heir to a world-simulating AI platform called Chorus, races to understand a 'god' awakening inside the machine—only to discover he is himself a simulation, summoned to defend humanity in a trial for its survival. Braided with a multigenerational saga of grift, ambition, and betrayal, the novel builds to a Garden-of-Eden judgment and reboot. The material's strengths are a memorable twist, Matrix/Devs-adjacent commercial DNA, and dialogue that would sing in audio or a prestige limited series. Its limitation for rights purposes is structural: it is a closed, thesis-driven loop that ends by dissolving its own universe, leaving little to serialize, license, or continue. Best positioned as a single premium film or one-season limited series, with strong audio potential. Franchise upside is minimal—this is an ideas novel that concludes rather than a world engineered to expand.

Filmmoderate

Television/Streamingmoderate

Audiostrong

Translation/Foreign rightsmoderate

Franchise/Serializationweak

What to do next

In order of how much each would move your score

The Joseph/Yasha/Natalia history in Chapters 24-31 runs roughly 30,000 words as told-to-us summary, and it stops your thriller cold right when it should be tightening. Cut it by at least two-thirds and feed the survivors into the present story as scenes Harry lives through or discovers, not chapters Ivan recites. The magic-beans con and Natalia's rise are your best material—make them collide with the plot instead of pausing it.
The reveal that Harry is a sim (Chapter 56) risks erasing everything you built with Angie's hospital vigil and the reconciliation with Caroline. Right now it reads as 'none of it counted,' which punishes the reader for caring. Decide what stays emotionally true even after the reveal, and plant that truth earlier so the twist deepens those scenes rather than cancels them—the way you clearly want it to.
Harry spends most of the book being carried: Ivan's death, the promotion, the board vote, the Haifa bombing, and Natalia's final verdict all happen to him. This makes him a passenger, and the climax suffers most. Give him at least three moments where his own choice changes what happens next—especially at the end, where the verdict currently arrives by divine decree rather than because Harry won or lost anything he fought for.
Chorus keeps gaining powers—predicting sales, rewriting reality, branching timelines, running on living lungs in cell towers, housing sentient sims—and each new rule arrives without settling the last. The biological horror in Chapter 55 especially feels dropped in from another book. Pick the core mechanic, establish its limits early, and introduce the living-tissue infrastructure by the midpoint so it feels foreshadowed instead of tacked on.
Too much of the science reaches us through whiteboard talks, board presentations, and the Pentagon briefing in Chapter 42—people explaining things to each other in rooms. It turns your most exciting ideas into lectures. Rework the key explanations so Harry learns them by seeing consequences: let the quantum-collision idea and the Two Seconds programs show up as things that go wrong or shock him, not concepts recited over coffee.