Solid State - a new novel by Tim Knight
In the year 2032, humanity has achieved a nearly perfect digitally based society, except in the eyes of Aegis, a terrorist group bent on "freeing” humanity from the shackles of social media.
Aided by 45-year-old Kevin Toffler, a rogue tech billionaire, Aegis detonates a nuclear device over the heart of the tech world—the San Francisco Bay Area. This instantly turns back the clock two hundred years for the eight million people living there, leading to chaos and death.
In the aftermath of the attack, an ambitious young Senate candidate, 40-year-old Wesley Williams, rescues his family from the horror as more attacks threaten parts of the United States. Meanwhile, the man behind the attack learns he has been a pawn in this global game in which China and the U.S. are going to be pushed into a global showdown. Only through an encounter with a mysterious stranger named Mac (who seems to have extraordinary powers of prescience) does he find a pathway to redeem himself and quite literally save the world.
Solid State is a standalone adult thriller. I was inspired to write the book because I, as a reader, am hungry for the kind of topics that this novel explores: digital currency, self-driving cars, EMP attacks, tension between China and the U.S., the domination of social media over our lives, and domestic political discord.
My experience with writing goes far beyond the 25 books I’ve written, since I’ve spent the past twenty years writing on my popular website slopeofhope.com. Many of the ideas in Solid State have been drawn from my experiences in the high-tech and financial world.
I will be publishing the novel in serial form here on Substack, with a chapter released every weekday from September 16th until the end of 2024. There will be no charge for the book, as my only goal is to get it out there so people can read and enjoy it!
About the Author
Tim Knight has been charting and trading since 1987. His first stock trade was, in fact, on October 19, 1987 – the day of the crash – which perhaps goes a long way explaining his disposition toward bearishness.
He has been involved in personal computers since late 1979 and, starting at age 16, began writing a couple dozen books about using and programming computers. His most recent writing has been focused on charting and the history of financial markets, including his newest books, Panic, Prosperity, and Progress, and, more recently, Silicon Valley Babble On and Solid State, his first novel.
He has been running Slope since March 29 2005 and has, during that time, written more than 30,000 posts on the site.
In 1992 Knight founded Prophet, a web-based technical analysis company that was acquired by Investools (and, later, Ameritrade) in January 2005. Tim served as Senior Vice President of Technology for Investools from 2005 through 2010. Both Barron’s & Forbes consistently named Prophet the #1 website for technical analysis.
Besides running the Slope of Hope, Tim also hosts a daily show on the tastylive network, Trading Charts with Tim Knight. Long starting Prophet, Tim was Vice President of Technology Products at Montgomery Securities in San Francisco, where he led the development of an institutional online-trading platform. Additionally, he has held various positions in marketing management at Technical Tools and Apple Computer.
Tim lives in Palo Alto with his wife, their children, a bevy of egg-laying hens, a pond full of fish, nine thousand honeybees, and a trio of dogs which occupy whatever free time may be available. He has also been known to burst into song from a wide repertoire of Broadway musicals, irrespective of the preference of those around him at any given moment.
