Brief Synopsis John is on a business trip to a remote island country, the Republic of New People, to sell the Red Hat system, a system that could help the ruler of that country to monitor the mind of his people. He is shocked by the biogenetically engineered half humans manufactured in a factory operated by BMA, a powerful global secret society. John is punished by BMA for his stand against its operation. After he comes back to his home country, John joined BHA, a society that fights BMA for the sake of humanity. John is shot by a bullet on the Big Action Day when protesting against BMA, and rescued by BHA members. After he barely recovers from his wound, John manages to escape to a rendezvous point to meet with Jessica, who is John’s kid friend and a leader of BHA. Many years later, they come back with their children when the old plot of BMA has failed. The world is then facing some new challenges. Outline of the Book There are two hard science-fiction threads, one about the mind-reading machinery that could be used to directly record the thoughts in a person’s mind, and the other about the replacement of humans with AH (stands for artificial humans) that are mass-produced in workshops through some biogenetical engineering technology. The culprit behind those two threads is a global secret society BMA (stands for Brilliant Machine Association), which has the power to control world politics. In “The Red Hat”, the BMA's push for mind-reading machinery is, of course, aimed at controlling the minds of people outside the top pyramid, while one of the reasons for their push for AH is the breakthrough in the longevity medicine made by a pharmaceutical company under their control. They reckon that it would be disastrous for the planet if the new lives continue to be born while old ones live forever; so they decide to do something to manipulate the reproductive rights so that only the most privileged class can have the rights of reproduction. The best option to them is to use the AH with controllable lifespans, which are manufactured in the workshop and thus no need to reproduce naturally, to replace the ordinary human beings that are called by them as "useless people". The mind-reading machinery can be used to monitor not only normal people, but also the Artificial Humans, the AH. The book consists of 17 chapters including the prologue and epilogue. The prologue is short and mainly introduces the historical background of the writing of the novel and the historical background of the story. Chapter One introduces the setting of one of the main plots of the story, an island country in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as the identity of the protagonist, John. Two main threads (as mentioned above) that would run through the book begin to loom in the first chapter. Chapter Two is a flashback to the first day of John's career job after college. The key point of this chapter is to introduce how BMA tricks new employees who are ignorant of the mind-reading mechanism to sign an agreement contract to wear the machinery voluntarily as a cutting-edge BCI (brain-computer interface) apparatus for interacting with the corporate computer system, with the a penalty clause on the contract for breaking the agreement. As part of the hard science fiction feature, this chapter introduces how the mind-reading machinery would be used for its operation. The mechanism of the machinery would be described in later chapters. Chapter Three is about the gathering of John with his old classmates visiting him from another city. The scientifically fictitious feature of this chapter focuses on some absurd situations in society at that time due to the replacement of humans by robots. Chapter Four continues the plot of Chapter Three with John’s scientifically fictitious encounters after he saw off his classmates at the train station, supplemented by a gathering in his company during which a rumor that might impact their future was spread. This chapter also depicts from a side that humans began to resist being replaced by machines. Chapter Five is one of the most important parts of the novel, which not only introduces the mechanism of the mind-reading machinery and illustrates its effectiveness, but also lays out the relevant philosophy. Chapter Six, while showing how the social pyramid uses traditional means to monitor people's movements, introduces another model for implementing the mind-reading machinery around the world: forcing prison inmates to wear them. Chapter Seven takes the audience back to the scene of Chapter One. Two highlights for this chapter are: 1) For the so-called "useless people", their existence itself becomes a crime, so they are being forcibly removed from the civilized society; 2) The looming AH in Chapter One are becoming more visible, but John and his team still don't know the truth. Chapter Eight is a chapter in which John, the protagonist of the novel, is shocked and disgusted when he finally learns the truth that BMA has replaced human beings with AH’s. This chapter briefly describes the basic characteristics of AH’s: they are produced in a workshop so that they do not need sexual reproduction, and they are already young adults when they leave the production line. Chapter Nine is a chapter in which the meeting between John with another BMA member, the head of the island country, serves as another important part for literally laying out the philosophical insight about the social dynamics behind the dystopian scenes, and also further complements the description of the mechanism of the mind-reading machinery. It is in this chapter that John, a fellow BMA member, revolts against the BMA for the first time, thus setting the stage for his subsequent disposal by the BMA. Chapter 10 is the story of how John was framed, kidnapped and then released back home. This event completely changes his life view and worldview, as well as his relationship with people around him. After he returned to his home country, he met with his childhood friend Bob, a private physician, to discuss how to deal with BMA. Chapter 11 introduces another secret society that fights against the BMA, a righteous one, the BHA (Brilliant Human Association). John's childhood friend Jessica is one of its leaders. The development of their relationship brings the novel to another climax. Chapter 12 introduces the head of BHA, George, and brings out another hard science fiction prop in the novel, the cloaking technology, which is used by BHA to combat BMA. In this chapter George tells the members of BHA in the sector of Jessica how the BMA uses the AH to intermarry unknowing humans so that they could effectively block the reproduction of normal people through the fake marriages with substantially sterile AH’s, in the same way as we eliminate some pests through the so-called sterile insect technique. In this chapter, George also tells John, based on the intelligence of BHA, the real reason why BMA sent him to the island nation in the first place. Chapter 13 is the preparation of both BHA and BMA before the decisive day of general conflict between them. It's a prelude to the coming storm. Chapter 14 is a climax of the novel. BHA took to the streets to protest BMA around the world, accusing BMA's crime of monitoring human mind with the Red Hat and replacing humans with AH’s. BMA also uses their power to launch a full-scale crackdown on BHA, and brings in heavily armed AH’s from the island nation where they are producing them. John fell flat on his back after being shot by an AH soldier during the protest, blood spurting from his mouth into the air. In Chapter 15, after being rescued and having recovered, John and his BHA comrade Peter, use the cloaking technology to start a daunting run off in order to escape the chase of BMA. They receive the information about the rendezvous location through a secret channel, and on a luxury yacht in the center of the ocean, they finally reunite with Jessica, who led other members of BHA to escape BMA when John was still in the coma due to his injury. John learns from Jessica that George has been arrested and also learns that BMA has an important motive for manufacturing the AH. The Epilogue is not a quick coda, but another important chapter of the book. In this chapter, the love relationship between John and Jessica develops fruitfully; huge changes happen within both BHA and BMA after the big conflict in Chapter 15, especially after the deaths of the heads of both organizations, which force them to go back to shake hands with each other; AH’s succeed in a military coup on that island country, which triggers the all around revolt of AH’s against BMA worldwide; the robots sent by humans to Mars also successfully disarm humans on Mars and openly rebel against the earthlings. The whole book ends with the attack to Earth by robots in flying saucers from Mars. The story of the book takes place from the mid-2030s to the mid-2060s. Therefore, John, the protagonist of the book, should be a preschool kid at this very moment (a toddler when I completed the book more than two years ago)... After the Writing When I finished the book in 2019, I wasn't so sure that the novel was a true reflection of the direction of human civilization in the near future. But, during this past two years, the recent fast development in the brain-computer interfacing technology, bioengineering and clone technology, longevity technology, plus the trend of a full range of automation in daily life, as well as the fervid and forceful pushes of the products of all these technologies by the scientific and industrial communities into real life without much philosophical scrutiny of their social impacts and logical entailments, has made me more and more confident that "The Red Hat" indeed reflects a real direction that this civilization is sadly heading to. Furthermore, the surprising change of tone by the US government and NASA concerning the UFO and aliens after the mid of 2019 (my book was completed in early 2019), makes the originally surreal depressing ambience or even seemingly paranoid vigilance against those apparent human but actually AH beings mixed among humans, as delineated in Chapter 11, becomes more realistic. This is because: if there is legitimate reason behind the change of tone by the US government and NASA and one day we might be informed that aliens have been living with us for quite a while on this globe, then a very realistic question would be “who might be aliens among all those around us?” Even if it might sound to be overkill to imagine aliens that take human looks around us, it would be logically realistic to assume that there might be some aliens among all the online authors who write, comment, promote, and attack. The logic is simple: if we have highly intelligent aliens living on this globe for decades, it would not be unreasonable to assume that they would have been able to learn how to read, write and type, or even speak English or any other language, and able to learn how to use our computers to get onto our internet. If they could not do those things, we might not even need to worry a bit about them at all. But if they could do those things well, then it would not be unreasonable for us to look around on the internet to wonder who might be actually aliens. All these recent developments that have made the originally surreal plots in “The Red Hat” sound more realistic make me feel the compelling pressure to get it available to readers around the world as soon as possible……