Novels · 2026
Three novels and a companion volume about the origin and nature of consciousness, artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, voluntarism, frequency, family, dogs, love, and freedom.
Anima · cinematic trailer · feature adaptation in production
A first look at the feature adaptation of Anima, currently in production. 4 min 41 sec.
A series and a stand-alone — written between hospital shifts in Boise, Idaho, by a physician who got tired of pretending the body was only the body.
→ Five-minute tour — if you have five minutes and want to know what the site is actually for.
A note on information, evidence and inference
Ontologies change as epistemology changes. This site is an active work in progress, and so is my understanding. Errors in reporting information, or in interpreting facts and theories, will occur. Nothing here is canonical or dogmatic: everything is open to revision or reinterpretation, and I will refine and correct it as new information, better integration and deeper understanding allow. I try to keep the site, my scientific understanding and my philosophical approach current and as objective as I can, in a rapidly changing world, and to adjust my hypotheses as the evidence and logical inference require. On revised pages, claims about the world are labelled for how well they are supported, and the remaining pages are being revised in turn: Established Hypothesis Open Speculative
My novels are more daring. They explore hypothetical scenarios and stretch the fabric of scientific fact, philosophical introspection and possible futures — grounded in science, logic and philosophy as far as possible, but intuition and imagination will always be part of how I write science fiction. Where the site describes what the novels assume, it says so: Novels' premise
— Jose Gude MD · Corrections are welcome at contact@josegudemd.com.
The Field Trilogy · read about the series →
Anima, Numen, and Limen form a trilogy about what consciousness is and what it costs to take it seriously — a novel that asks the question, a novel that follows the implications, and a companion volume that lays out the science, philosophy, and contemplative testimony underneath the fiction. Fragile Light is a stand-alone novel.
What the evidence does and does not show → A graded look at the science around the novels — Bell, quantum gravity, anomalous neurology, bioelectricity — separating what is established from what is open, and both from what the novels assume.
Companion essay: Quantum Computing & the Field → What quantum computing is, what it can plausibly do, and what it has to do with a trilogy about consciousness, substrate, and reception.
The Books
A physician at the Boise VA has spent twenty-four years collecting edge cases — patients whose experiences defy neurological explanation — and quietly builds his case that consciousness is not produced by the brain but received through it.
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Eight years after José Gude's death, his son Alex finds a photograph of a fractal triangle whose angles match an unresolved chord — and, in Boise, encounters Sable: a bio-computational intelligence who has been there the whole time, carrying a signal below the threshold of resolution.
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A bio-cybernetic field manual at the threshold between substrate and signal. The companion volume to Anima and Numen.
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A novel apart from the trilogy. About what survives. About what's worth carrying when the structure that asked you to carry it has finally let go.
Read moreWorks in progress · synopses and themes →
Biological Individuation Theory asks why consciousness is someone's, and proposes that the living organism is part of the answer — as a hypothesis that could fail. Its companions are Someone Here, Now — Measured, the research program that sets out how to test it, and Someone Here for a While, a first-person book on meaning and mortality. Two novels are also under way: Worldlines and its sequel, Proper Time.
Symposium on YouTube ↗ Dialogues on the old questions — consciousness, self, time, death — between philosophers, scientists and contemplatives of different eras. What these videos are →
You are not a drop in the ocean, but the ocean in a drop. — attributed to Rumi · epigraph to Numen