The Meridian-born author of a futuristic novel in which artificial intelligence outpaces human intelligence will discuss the book and its general theme July 2 at Mississippi State University.
Bill Buchanan, a Mississippi State engineering graduate whose novel "Virus" was released earlier this year, speaks at 3:30 p.m. in the third-floor alcove of Mitchell Memorial Library. His campus visit is sponsored by the College of Engineering.
Buchanan is an engineer with Bell Laboratories in Hampstead, N.H. Earlier, as an officer in the U.S. Air Force's Electronic Systems Division, the 1975 electrical engineering graduate helped develop a side-looking prototype radar designed to penetrate foliage.
"Virus" is Buchanan's first novel. Published by the Berkeley Publishing Group, it has been compared to the 1962 antinuclear thriller "Fail Safe."
In Buchanan's vision of the future, lasers of the U.S. space-based missile defense system go awry and begin destroying commercial aircraft.
He has said the idea for an XR-30 reconnaissance plane that appears in the book was derived from a special 1992 project by College of Engineering students. In the project, a student team competed nationally and earned the chance to build a 50-foot mock-up of the National Aero-Space Plane, a proposed National Aeronautics and Space Administration craft that would be a successor to the Space Shuttle.
Buchanan currently is working on a second novel.
For more information about his campus visit, contact Keith Gaskin at (601) 325-3815.
