13 reviews found
The promise of an epistolary novel about AI intrigued me. It has been a long time since I read a good, contemporary epistolary novel! Your Behavior Will Be Monitored attempts to tell a unique and moving story about the boundaries between artificial intelligence and personhood. However, I’m not sure Justin Feinstein has said anything new here, and the impersonal nature of much of the “letters” belie the usual warmth found in epistolary novels. I received…
Nearly four years since my last Murderbot review, I have finally read the first complete novel in the series. Fortunately, this is the kind of series where you can go years in between books and pick up where you left off. Martha Wells delights with a full-length action mystery that has the same intensity as the novellas yet benefits from more room to breathe.
I’m reviewing this novel with spoilers because otherwise it’s tough…
Last year I took a chance on reading Devil’s Gun, the sequel to You Sexy Thing, even though I hadn’t read the first book. This was a big chance, for Cat Rambo’s fiction up to that point hadn’t worked for me. Fortunately, I loved Devil’s Gun enough to accept the offer of an eARC of the first book as well, and now I’ve read it too. With the amount of time that has…
The system doesn’t care. This is a lesson some of us learn sooner than others—and a few don’t ever have to learn it at all. In this timely novelette, Ai Jiang looks down the uncaring maw of capitalism in the form of the exploitation of workers “competing” with artificial intelligence. I AM AI rides the echoes of cyberpunk decades past into a future that is not far off, in many ways, from our distinctly dystopian…
Many a moon ago I read a duology (plus inciting novella) from Guy Haley called Reality 36 and Omega Point. It features, among other things, a dynamic duo of an AI and a cyborg as private investigators. I predictably loved it. I thought Emergent Properties, by Aimee Ogden, might give me some of the same flavour—and I was partly right. Thank you to NetGalley and publisher Tor for the eARC.
Scorn is one…
This is the year I finish the Murderbot Diaries! Well, sort of. This is the year I finish the original novellas, but I know I have a whole novel to dive into at some point in the future. Exit Strategy has left me more excited for that prospect than I might have been previously—with each new novella, Martha Wells has improved my opinion of this series.
Shortly after the events of Rogue Protocol,…
After reading Artificial Condition earlier this year I decided that I shouldn’t wait too long before reading the next Murderbot novella. This is my first time reading one of these books in hard copy as opposed to an ebook!
Murderbot has decided to travel to a remote planet where GrayCris claimed a terraforming operation failed. This is likely a cover story for something more sinister, such as research into alien synthetics! If Murderbot can find…
A little over a year ago, I curtailed my review of Embers of War because of my broken elbow. I have now returned, stronger than ever, to review this sequel, Fleet of Knives. I finished this book in a single day, taking a break only to make dinner and watch Mean Girls (because it was October 3). This book is like candy to me. It is an invigorating space opera that balances grand, epic…
As with The Fifth Season I’m very late to the party with this one. So many more books in this series! But I finally got around to All Systems Red, and it was every bit as enjoyable as I was led to believe it was, even if it wasn’t quite as memorable as I’d like. Then again, considering this is a novella, I will cut Martha Wells some slack. Indeed, I appreciate how skilfully…
Why does AI always end up being the bad guy? Because we love to explore evil in the form of the Other. Also, it usually turns out that the bad guy was us, the creators of the AI, all along! Anastasia Slabucho’s Waterdown retreads these ideas but within the context of the climate change crisis we currently face. She posits that someone might have the right combination of drive, ingenuity, and wherewithal to create an…
Yes, Gnomon is a behemoth of a book, one I am glad I saved for the beginning of March Break. Even then it took me several days to get through it. Nick Harkaway’s story is intricately layered and nested, and while I wasn’t sure about it at first, the more time I spent with it, the more I came to appreciate and enjoy its construction. Gnomon is a lot of things, and a simple summary…
Finally, the
Excession reminds me of children’s…
I have an itch when it comes to artificial intelligence. Guy Haley scratches that itch, and then some. My hang-up on AI probably has to do with my interest in the philosophy of mind, the nature of consciousness itself. Will we ever be able to model human consciousness? Will we ever be able to create sentient AI? (These questions are related but not necessarily equivalent.) AI brings with it difficult issues that we will have…