Hopkinton resident Feyzi Celik wrote and published a three-part book series called “Guardian Missions” earlier this year. PHOTO/COURTESY FEYZI CELIK

There are two Feyzi Celiks.

Both are Turkish-American, CEOs of a technology company, live in Hopkinton and are married with children. But one is real, and the other is a fictional agent on a quest to save the world.

The real Celik is the founder, president and CEO of OnePIN in Westborough and has been a Hopkinton resident since 2001. He lives in town with his wife and children. Over the past year, he has added a new accomplishment to his life: becoming a published author.

Celik has self-published three books in what he has called the “Guardian Missions” series. He outlined and wrote all three books within the span of a year. The books follow the fictional version of the CEO as he grapples with the fallout of technology he has built being implemented into artificial intelligence (AI) systems and what happens when the technology gets into the wrong hands.

“The book[s] talk about AI, autonomous systems, drones, genetic engineering [and] space exploration,” said Celik. “These are all tomorrows, but very near-future technologies.” He characterized the series as “genre-bending” and noted the books include elements of action/adventure, techno thrillers, and science fiction.

The first book in the series, “Guardian: Mission Northern Atlantic,“ sees fictional Celik team up with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to stop a “rogue alliance” of Russia, China and North Korea from winning an underwater war. By the second book, the hero’s own company gets attacked, and he is tasked with providing AI defense and support to NATO.

According to Celik, the last book in the series centers around a “machine versus man battle and saving the human race.”

Dream inspires book series

Celik is not a writer by trade. He earned a master’s in engineering from Boston University and an MBA from Babson College. Although he said he wrote some stories while growing up in Turkey, he never really thought much about writing as a career.

“My purpose was building a company — building a business,” Celik explained.

He set off to do just that. Celik founded onePIN in 1998 and built the company to be a leader in mobile marketplaces. “My technology is distributed to over 1 billion mobile devices around the world,” he explained. “We’ve grown to be a big player in the telecom space.”

Celik also holds over 60 global patents related to OnePIN’s technologies.

The CEO travels a lot for his work, and it was one flight in July 2025 that spawned the idea for the “Guardian Missions” series. 

Two days before a scheduled flight to Ankara, Turkey, Celik recalled having a vivid dream in which he was sitting in his assigned seat on that flight. Disturbed by how vivid the dream was, he considered canceling the trip. Instead, he decided to capture the dream onto the page.

“[At] 4 in the morning, I come downstairs and start taking notes of the whole dream,” Celik said.

From there, the outlines of three books were born. “I realized how … that couple minutes of dream time can become your story,” said Celik.

Caution raised about technology

While Celik is an engineer and technology professional, his concerns over the development of things like AI inspired the development of his book series.

“I was able to put together how these systems can become our biggest enemy and how our future can shape up in the next 25-50 years,” he said.

He raised concerns about AI systems becoming free from human control once they are mobile and have independent access to energy. In particular, he worried about the integration of AI into drones and robots.

“The change is very fast, and it’s evolving beyond our control right now,” he said.

Added Celik: “I call this all near-term technologies. That’s the scary part of it.”

He shared a belief that in less than 100 years humans would “face all those things we’ve seen in sci-fi movies and books.” 

While the themes of the books are big, Celik noted the genesis of his series is much smaller. In an email, he stated that “Guardian Missions” is about “how the world we are building is being shaped by individuals, decisions and moments that often begin at home.”

An image shared from the “Guardian Missions” website shows renderings of some of the characters in Feyzi Celik’s three-part techno thriller series.

Family, team help develop series

“I never dreamt in my life to put together a book, let alone three books, in one year,” said Celik.

It took Celik nine months to write all three books. He said he would write from 6 p.m.-1 a.m. every night, putting extra effort in to finish as quickly as possible. “I was able to write fast and put these things together,” he said.

That work would not have been possible without his family’s support — particularly his wife, Jill. He said taking the time he needed to work on the series changed the dynamics of their household. “I put an enormous amount of time [in] … and without my wife’s support, this would not happen,” admitted Celik. 

He said his daughter has read some of the books, and his son plans to read the series as well. He added that his wife, who has her own character in the series, has enjoyed reading his work so far.

Celik has gotten additional support from a team of editors and other creatives he knows through professional networks. With their help, he created a website for the “Guardian Missions” series, detailed pages for nearly 50 characters in the series and put together audiobooks with a professional voice artist.

“There are very talented people that are involved with this,” said Celik. 

He said that the plan is to treat the “Guardian Missions” series as a business of its own, with a long-term goal of getting the books made into films in the near future. 

Celik shared hopes that a film adaptation would provide entertainment that was intellectually challenging to audiences. He also hoped they would “enjoy something unique and creative and something unexpected.”