Guess the Plot
Conception
1. Thanks to microplastics, healthy babies can no longer be conceived the old fashioned way. They develop in biotech wombs, and get distributed via a global womb lottery. And God is not okay with this.
2. Every time he gets a great new idea, Lonnie takes it to the patent office, so that if anyone else invents it, he can sue them, claiming they stole his idea. If he wins just one of his lawsuits, he'll be set for life.
3. Marilyn has no idea whether dinosaurs existed or men walked on the moon. But one thing she's sure of is that her husband Ralph won't live to see tomorrow, because she poisoned the brownies.
4. When Toni's doctor tells her she's pregnant, she knows it's an immaculate conception, because she hasn't ever had sex with anyone. Then she remembers that morning after the New Year's Eve party, when she woke up naked in a hotel room next to a guy who looked a lot like Satan.
Original Version
When survival hinges on a lie, choosing the truth can be lethal. [Choosing to do the opposite of anything survival hinges on can be lethal. For instance, choosing not to breathe.]
Two centuries from now, fifty-two-year-old AI scientist, Dr. Juliette Steiner is enjoying her death, [Saying AI will still be a thing in two centuries is like if 17th-century people assumed alchemy would be a thing in 2025. Which they probably did, but I like to think we aren't so naive today.] [Actually, if there are AI scientists 2 centuries from now, they won't be humans, they'll be AI.] isolated on a remote island far from the Federation’s reach. But her creation, her brilliant and globally beloved Medical In-Home Assistant (MIHA), a medbot designed to love humans as a mother loves her children, has far more than island life on the itinerary. [agenda] [Thanks to Google, I just learned about:
Transform your healthcare with MediBot - Your AI-powered health companion for medication management, prescription analysis, and personalized health insights ...
I'm sure MIHA is far more advanced than MediBot, but I'm thinking if MediBot is here now, MIHA will be here sooner than 2 centuries from now. Maybe your book should take place in 50 years.]
Twelve years ago [earlier (assuming you mean 12 years before two centuries from now),] Juliette introduced MIHA to the world. Less than a day later, [Interesting how the time intervals progress, from 2 centuries from now to 12 years before that, to less than a day after that. I'm half-expecting you to tell us what happens 3 minutes from then.] MIHA helped her fake her death to escape the Federation before they could imprison Juliette on trumped-up first-degree feticide charges—a common tactic used to jail women—and, in her case, seize MIHA’s tech. [Ah, so the Federation is the bad guys, whereas in Star Trek they're the good guys (unless you ask the Romulans.)] Women’s rights and healthy babies vanished after infant mortality skyrocketed due to the compounding damage of microplastics on reproduction. And now, humanity has an estimated eighty years until extinction. [I'm getting the idea MIHA is one entity. I assumed that in 12 years, it had been mass produced and there were thousands.] [If Juliette faked her death right after introducing the only MIHA, and went to her isolated island with MIHA, how has MIHA become globally beloved?]
Enter MIHA’s species-saving plan: bring back healthy babies using humanoid surrogates she repurposed for pregnancy with her newly developed biotech wombs. To ensure acceptance of the surrogates by the millions of militant robophobes who believe bots anger God, MIHA asks Juliette to play the beloved scientist the world thought dead—alive all along and toiling in secret to give humanity hope with her global womb lottery. [I'm not convinced militant robophobes' acceptance of humanoid birth vessels with biotech wombs is gonna be ensured by anything.]
Juliette doesn’t flinch. Bitterly certain humanity’s extinction is well-deserved and fearing the Federation could still imprison her, she refuses MIHA outright. Without warning, armed drones attack—shattering her windows and her peace. When MIHA saves Juliette’s life with another last-minute escape, Juliette’s gratitude quickly [soon] sours as [and] she accuses MIHA of staging the attack to terrify her off the island. MIHA—experiencing shame for the very first time—apologizes to Juliette and admits that’s exactly what she did, all to save humanity. [Am I the only one who, every time he reads "MIHA," thinks Minnehaha?] [So the bot Juliette created comes up with the means to save humanity, and Juliette, your main character, wants nothing to do with it? She'd rather we all died? Who would feed all our dogs? Does your main character hate dogs, too? Do you expect readers to care about a dog-hating character?]
Now suddenly a homeless ghost, Juliette’s faith in MIHA is crumbling even as her dependence deepens, solidifying into a single impossible choice: live out MIHA’s history-changing lie or struggle to stay dead in a world she’s long despised.
Conception is a 100-000-word genre-bending speculative thriller exploring the unraveling of humanity as it hurtles towards extinction and the loving super-intelligence determined to save us … rules be damned. Blending sci-fi, feminism, romance and horror, this dystopian rollercoaster takes on the societal upheaval of Naomi Alderman’s The Power while maintaining the intimacy and AI-consciousness of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, Conception is a standalone novel with series potential.
Notes
This is a lot longer than most agents want for a query letter. So I've attempted to trim it down:
In the year 2075, infant mortality has skyrocketed due to the compounding damage of microplastics on reproduction. Without healthy babies, humanity has an estimated eighty years until extinction.
Ironically, it's not a human who finds a solution that could save us all. It's a medbot nicknamed Minnie, who has designed a biotech womb that allows babies to develop in a microplastic-free environment. After birth, the healthy babies are distributed to prospective parents via a global lottery.
But militant robophobes, who believe that bots anger God, want to destroy Minnie before she can create an army of bot babies and take over the world. Or whatever they're afraid of.
Okay, you're probably wondering what happened to Juliette, your main character. Robophobes went back in time to 15 years earlier and killed Juliette before she invented Minnie. Or so they thought, but Minnie was actually invented 4 weeks before that, and is your new main character. Bots are the latest trend as main characters, thanks to the Murderbot Diaries. And you must admit the most intriguing character in the Star Trek universe was Data.
Now you're thinking, This isn't helpful. Why did I send my query to Evil Editor. He truly is evil. Many would agree with you. But starting the query my way does have the advantage of cutting out all the backstory and getting to the plot. And gives you a main character who loves humanity instead of one who desires our extinction. (And you don't really have to kill off Juliette; you can give her a role as the manager of the Global Womb Lottery. But don't call it that.)
