What happens when first contact isn’t with aliens—but with ourselves?
On this episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie shares the floor with indie sci-fi author J. Michael Thomas for a conversation that starts with a compelling premise and spirals into something bigger: AI, authorship, and the slow erosion of what makes us human.
Thomas unpacks his Substack series First Contact, a bold twist on the genre. A UFO lands at Stonehenge in full daylight, undeniable and global… but the beings who emerge aren’t extraterrestrial. They’re human—returning explorers from 200,000 years in the past, stunned to find a fractured, suspicious civilization that hoards knowledge instead of sharing it.
From there, the conversation shifts to his upcoming novel Second Chance: a bleak, post-AI-war future where humanity has already lost. The last survivors escape to the Moon, forced to rely on AI to fight AI, as they attempt a desperate return to a ruined Earth—and a reset of civilization itself.
Thomas takes a hard line against the creeping influence and eventual dominion of AI, insisting the tech isn’t just a dangerous tool, but a slow bleed. It replaces human connection, erodes effort, and risks turning us into passive consumers of machine-generated everything. That puts him in direct contrast with prior guest David T. Etheredge, who argues the opposite: AI as collaborator, amplifier, and inevitable creative partner. In Etheredge’s vision, the machines don’t destroy us… they become us.
And then there’s the overlap with fellow Substack sci-fi scribe Bruno Rothgeisser, whose post-apocalyptic AI fiction explores a similar “return” dynamic—but flipped. Where Thomas imagines humanity reclaiming Earth after exile, Rothgeisser imagines AI evolving in exile and coming back stronger. Same battlefield. Different winners. Across all three perspectives, one question keeps surfacing:
Who inherits the future—humans, machines, or something in between? To answer that question, Jeff and Mookie consider:
One thing all these science fiction writers agree on: science fiction is a terrific genre for mirroring ourselves, our aspirations, and projecting our wildest visions with the hope or fear that they come true.
The Guest
I'm J. Michael Thomas. I've been a sci-fi fan since 1977 when Star Wars first blew my mind. Then it was Terminator, The Matrix, and the list goes on. Now, I'm a fiction writer of sci-fi, dystopian futures, time travel, aliens, mysterious things, government cover ups, UFOs and the like, with hints of religion, philosophy, ancient wisdom and traditional values. If any of that sounds interesting, follow along!
First Chapter of First Contact
Article on AI
Second Chance updates
https://jmichaelthomas.substack.com/p/books
