Tann, it's got the code it's going to launch.

It's a unit system.

I know this.

It's how all the files of the whole park.

It tells her everything.

Sir, he's uploading the virus.

The Eagle One.

The package is being delivered.

We grew up watching movies about the robot uprising.

Science fiction warned us for decades that the robots were coming and that they'd be smarter,

stronger, and faster.

Burnin, a novel of The Real Robot Revolution, is a book about the social upheaval that'll come when automation finally takes over.

Set in the near future, Burnin depicts a world where FBI agents work with robot partners,

algorithms have replaced lawyers, and terrorists meet up inside a video game to discuss their next target.

Burnin looks like a light summer read, but it's filled with footnotes and references

like a non-fiction book.

Authors August Cole and P.W. Singer call this thick-int, and see it as a way to envision

the future using both fiction and well-researched fact.

Cole is a journalist who's covered the defense industry for everyone from NPR to the Wall Street Journal.

Singer has worked for the Brookings Institute, the Barack Obama presidential campaign, and more Pentagon-connected think tanks than I can name.

Ficcant is Cole and Singer's latest attempt to communicate the challenges of the future to both the general public and America's policymakers. Singer is with

us today to talk about what it's like to write about the future when you have to cite your sources.

...