Date Published: October 24, 2025
Publisher: Manhattan Book Group
Superstorms flatten cities. Coastlines collapse. Climate change is no longer theoretical—it is lethal. When a near-apocalyptic storm nearly kills their family, teenage siblings Jimmy and Lizzie Marshall urge their brilliant but reluctant father, nanoscientist Greg Marshall, to deploy a technology before he’s brave enough to release it.
WhiteGrass—a self-replicating nanotechnology capable of removing carbon from the atmosphere is the parent technology. It saves golf courses and ski resorts and the towns they serve. Icarus could reverse climate change on a global scale. It could also reshape global power forever.
To protect the technology, Greg and his wife Ginny, an elite AI expert, reprogram the world’s most advanced humanoid android, Valada. Designed as property—an object without rights—Valada begins to evolve, developing emotional awareness, moral judgment, and something disturbingly close to humanity.
As governments unravel and climate disasters accelerate, a covert alliance of oligarchs, corporations, and political power brokers moves to seize WhiteGrass/Icarus for themselves. Led by the President of the United States, the syndicate will stop at nothing—surveillance, blackmail, assassination—to control the technology that could save the world or enslave it.
They deploy their own deadly android.
Now the Marshalls are trapped in a global sci-fi political conspiracy, hunted by forces with unlimited resources, as skyscrapers fall, cities burn, and artificial intelligence begins to ask questions no human is prepared to answer.
At its core, WhiteGrass is a gripping near-future climate change thriller about family survival, technological power, and the terrifying moment when artificial intelligence stops serving humanity—and starts judging it.
Blending nanotechnology science fiction, AI humanoid emotional evolution, and hard-science realism, WhiteGrass delivers relentless pacing, cinematic stakes, and deeply human emotion. It is a story about parents willing to risk everything to protect their children—and a world forced to confront whether it deserves saving at all.
Perfect for fans of near-future disaster thrillers, technothrillers with political intrigue, and science fiction where artificial intelligence becomes human, WhiteGrass is a powerful warning—and an unforgettable ride.
Richard H. Smith, MSc., is a futurist, technologist, and climate policy expert whose career has placed him at the intersection of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, healthcare innovation, and climate change foresight for more than three decades. Drawing on real-world experience working alongside scientists, engineers, Fortune 50 companies, and Ohgovernment agencies, Smith writes hard science fiction grounded in plausible futures, where technology collides with political power, ethics, and human survival.
Smith’s professional background spans leadership roles in nanotechnology R&D, AI-based medical diagnostics, strategic technology forecasting, and science policy, including serving as research director at a major university medical center and founding multiple technology ventures. He has advised U.S. and international governments on emerging technologies and was formally trained on climate change science by Al Gore, giving him a rare combination of technical depth and policy insight.
Raised in Virginia, Smith built his career while raising a family—an experience that deeply informs the emotional core of his fiction. Today, he lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, a coastal community already facing the realities of sea-level rise. He teaches courses on climate change and coastal vulnerability, witnessing firsthand how future scenarios are rapidly becoming present-day realities.
WhiteGrass is Smith’s first full-length novel and the culmination of a lifetime spent studying how advanced technologies shape—and endanger—civilization. The novel explores nanotechnology, climate collapse, political conspiracy, and artificial intelligence becoming human, all through the lens of family survival in a destabilized near-future world. A prequel, The Iliad Virus, is available now, with the sequel Icarus Rising currently in development.
Smith writes with one driving purpose: to expose uncomfortable truths about climate change, technological power, and political control—while telling a story compelling enough to feel like a blockbuster movie unfolding on the page.
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