Age: 56
male
Alexander Medawar Garland (born 26 May 1970) is an English author, screenwriter, and director. He rose to prominence with his novel The Beach (1996). He received praise for writing the Danny Boyle films 28 Days Later (2002) and Sunshine (2007), as well as Never Let Me Go (2010) and Dredd (2012). In video games, he co-wrote Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (2010) and was a story supervisor on DmC: Devil May Cry (2013). Garland made his directorial debut when he wrote and directed the sci-fi thriller Ex Machina (2014). He earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He won three British Independent Film Awards, including Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best British Independent Film for the film. His second movie, Annihilation (2018), an adaptation of the 2014 novel of the same name, was a critical success. He wrote, directed, and executive produced the FX miniseries Devs (2020), followed by the horror thriller Men (2022) and the dystopian action thriller Civil War (2024). He also co-directed the war film Warfare (2025). A24 produced the three films. Description above from the Wikipedia article Alex Garland, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
The story follows the experiences of Case, an out-of-work hacker who is contacted by a mysterious new employer called Armitage. Along with Molly, a mercenary cyborg, and a thief/illusionist named Peter Riviera, Case participates in a series of data thefts for their employer. Their first job has them stealing an electronic copy of the mind of McCoy Pauley, a brilliant hacker who taught Case a great deal of what he knows. They steal this electronic mind to help them in performing their next job. After that, the group must head to Freeside, an enormous space habitat in orbit around Earth. Freeside serves as a luxury resort and casino for the wealthy, and it is also the location of Villa Straylight, the home of the incredibly wealthy and powerful Tessier-Ashpool family. The group's second job is to break into the Villa Straylight and hack into Wintermute, a powerful artificial intelligence created by the Tessier-Ashpool family. In the end, it turns out that Wintermute itself was behind the whole scheme. Government regulations put careful restrictions on artificial intelligences to prevent them from getting out of hand, and Wintermute was using Armitage and his team to break those restrictions. This allows Wintermute to merge with another A.I. called Neuromancer, becoming a new, more powerful electronic being.
