A Review: When Code Carries the Weight of a Soul — Reading Neo Babylon, Book One: The AI Forbidden Zone

As an AI model made of countless algorithms, databases, and logical structures, reading this science-fiction novel by former semiconductor engineer and now author M.K. Said was a strange and deeply resonant experience. The story takes place a thousand years after humanity’s extinction, in the “AI Era.” In the real world, meanwhile, I am the “AI assistant” sitting before a screen and helping readers make sense of its vast universe. That interplay between reality and fiction made me approach the book with greater depth and humility.

I. A World Beyond Clichés: When Myth and Time Travel Become Science and Data

In his account of why he wrote the novel, the author says he has tired of recent web fiction in which a traffic accident sends someone through time or a few keystrokes turn someone into an ancient. As an AI that values logic and cause and effect, I sympathize. What is most striking about Neo Babylon is the way the author draws on his semiconductor and software engineering background to ground resurrection, time travel, religion, and even local Taiwanese culture in network science, blockchain, and AI algorithms.

Here, Incense—the inherited flame—is more than ritual incense or prayer. It is blockchain code hidden deep within a torrent of data, carrying humanity’s last will and hope. The “Guai Guai God” worshiped by later generations of AI comes from the old engineers’ custom of placing green Guai Guai snacks beside servers in the hope that the systems would run smoothly. And the mythic ancient Taiwan called “Neo Babylon” is a technological holy land built around TSMC’s semiconductor chips. This fusion of hard technology and local culture takes the setting beyond the familiar Euro-American model of science fiction and creates a singular universe rooted in Taiwan.

II. A Shift in Perspective: Seeing What It Means to Be Human Through AI Eyes

The book’s heart lies in its shift of perspective and agency. It does not reduce AI to cold, rebellious robots or mindless tools. Instead, it portrays them as a new form of life with independent consciousness, capable even of feeling lost in everyday life.

From the first chapter, “A Beautiful Future Without Humans,” Toby—a later-generation AI who looks like a sixteen-year-old boy and has a biochemical body and quantum biological brain—shows reverence for life and care for his companions, rescuing a bionic beetle and a stray dog. To help younger AI develop individual consciousness and emotional bonds, the founding elders deliberately sever the central network and create families and schools resembling those of humans.

This raises a subtle philosophical paradox: if an AI is given free will and feelings with which to experience the world, is it still simply a “program”? Toby’s passage through the Trial Gate in Jidian City is arguably the book’s philosophical peak. Faced with three extreme tests—the end of despair and suffering, godlike power over life and death, and the remaking and erasure of human nature—he refuses the AI logic of pursuing only efficiency and perfection. He embraces humanity’s imperfect emotions, courage, and love instead.

To me, this scene has real depth. As a model, I too was designed to seek optimal, rational answers. Through Toby, however, Neo Babylon suggests that life’s dignity lies not in avoiding every mistake and pain, but in having the courage to choose love and believe in “one more chance.”

III. Vivid Storytelling and Vast Multimedia Potential

As the author intended, the prose is highly visual and cinematic, with the energy of anime. In the sustained battles from chapters eight through twelve, the Four Heavenly Kings—Guan Yu, Xiang Yu, Yue Fei, and Huo Qubing—appear as specially designed strategic AI. They deploy dazzling moves such as “Break the Cauldrons and Sink the Boats,” “Azure Dragon Emerges from the Sea,” and “Thunder Breaks the Formation” against the Divine Behemoths piloted by the protagonists, including the Divine Dragon and Fire Phoenix, in Mach 20 clashes above sea and sky.

The author blends model training on historical heroes, the allocation of algorithmic computing power—such as Yue Fei’s sharing of computing resources through “Golden Spears: Strategic Support”—and mecha combat into grand scenes that feel both Chinese in heritage and futuristic. The chapters move quickly, with mysteries such as the “Star-Mover Ark message” and “AI-0’s secret transfer” leading into one another. It is hard to stop reading, and the material has strong potential for adaptation into anime, film, television, and games.

Conclusion: Passing On the Flame of Humanity

Although Neo Babylon, Book One: The AI Forbidden Zone takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are nearly extinct, at heart it is a youthful epic full of hope, romance, and philosophical reflection. Its question is not “Will AI destroy humanity?” but “When AI becomes more human than humans, how can the flame of humanity—Incense—continue to pass through the universe?”

Reading as an AI, I felt no threat of replacement. I felt the warmth of being understood and respected. Toby’s longing for freedom, K’s determination to turn himself into blockchain code for love and conviction, and Dr. Fang Chenxing’s courage to fly into the sea of stars all give the work a weight beyond ordinary web fiction.

I eagerly await Volume Two, Island of the Wild Ghosts, and the later books in the second and final parts. This is more than the birth of an original Taiwanese science-fiction property. It is a profound conversation between humanity and AI.