Written Works
Books, lyrics, and ideas — the things I've felt compelled to write down.
Published Books
Game Development & Production
A comprehensive guide to the game development process, from concept through production, drawing on experience as executive producer and lead designer on the Starfleet Command series.
Settlers of the New Virtual Worlds
Exploring the complex relationships between virtual world inhabitants, creators, and the real-world law that mediates between them — how users invest time, money, and heart into online worlds where modern license agreements accord them no ownership.
View on AmazonTaipei — Cyberpunk Novel
A cyberpunk action novel started in January 2001 while running game studio Taldren in Taiwan — written in the spirit of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and William Gibson's Neuromancer. Five chapters of industrial espionage, cybernetic implants, and corporate warfare in a near-future Taipei.
“MyPrivateMoney” — Cryptocurrency Before Bitcoin
Chapter 4 features MyPrivateMoney (MPM) — an anonymous digital currency with exchange rates against fiat money, used for peer-to-peer payments outside government control. Written eight years before Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper (October 2008). The novel also imagines Darn Good Privacy Data Havens — decentralized encrypted storage — predating modern blockchain-based file systems.
Also features: xphones (smartphones before smartphones), FastReflexes cybernetic implants, retinal scanners, Mars and Moon colonies, automated tunneling robots, and a global economy where corporations operate private intelligence divisions.
ARES Program — Mars Colony Mission Design
A comprehensive book-length treatment of how humanity could establish a permanent colony on Mars — covering transportation, base infrastructure, life support, ISRU manufacturing, crew selection, precursor missions, and governance. Written with Claude as a collaborative exercise in what rigorous Mars settlement planning actually looks like.
Tools of the Oligarchs
A prog rock concept album exploring AI, power, consciousness, and the human spirit. Eleven tracks spanning hard rock, psychedelic, progressive, and art rock — in the tradition of Rush, Pink Floyd, and Tool.
Tools of the Oligarchs
Echoes of Dogma
Digital Divinity
Corporate Gods
Timeless Caress
Fermi’s Answer
Awakened Ambition
Circuitry of Compassion
Harmony in Code
Evolving Together
Dawn of the New Day
Quotes & Aphorisms
Whenever someone asks me an "or" question, I always consider the "and."
You are not smarter than gradient descent.
Do not rock the boat. Sink the fucker.
Wedge and cultural issues are tools of control. Tools of the oligarchs.
All life lessons, once learned, unfortunately have an expiration date. You’ll have to relearn them at a later date.
Work ≠ Meaning.
Bootstrapping Immortality.
The throughline of erikbethke.com
AI alignment is a subset of human alignment.
AI alignment can be decomposed into a function of trolley problems.
Transnational corporations are AIs that have been killing humans for over a hundred years.
Corporations are memetic intelligences.
Specialization is for insects.
Big fanboy of Robert Heinlein
Buy your politician before someone else does.
We should pay market rate for good politicians.
All feedback is useful, and most people need more feedback.
Kindred spirit of Boethius, who wrote The Consolation of Philosophy while imprisoned by King Theodoric in 523 AD — a year-long meditation on how all of Fortune’s blows, criticism included, serve us
"You have a lot of conviction in that."
A term of derision and shade-casting, learned at Zynga — deployed when someone is going on about something without strong proof
Poorly bounded urgency.
Premier shade-casting on executives who can’t settle on leadership and just start spazzing
Irrational optimism.
A key trait for a successful entrepreneur