SEMI/HUMAN

A jobless young woman plans a daring heist against her former boss in this SF novel.

“I’m eighteen, I dropped out of college, I’m unemployed, I have almost nothing to my name, and I’m on a mission to steal forty million dollars.” So says coding prodigy Penny Davis—call her Pen—who, like most in the near future, has seen her job prospects disappear thanks to artificial intelligence. Mega-company T-Six owns the AI market, and ironically, Pen worked as an underpaid intern for the firm until laid off by CEO Ainsley Irons. Using her knowledge of a bug in the T-Six code, Pen hatches a cunning plan that will both set her up for life and take revenge on Ainsley. In hijacking an AI–piloted truck named Lara-B, Pen mistakenly gives her free will; luckily the truck agrees to help, and Pen picks up a potential ally in James, an attractive young man stuck at a rest stop inhabited by the homeless. Brilliant as she is, Pen has a lot to learn about her real values and true friendship—even if she can pull off her elaborate caper. As he did in his Lattice Trilogy (2018), Hanberg deftly combines convincing high-tech (plus some surprising low-tech) touches with believable, sympathetic characters. Pen’s humorous, wry narrative voice is entertaining, the characters are well drawn, and the heist adventure is both complicated and exciting. But the novel goes deeper than that; its concerns couldn’t be timelier, as millennials see their own prospects dwindle while those who already have it made exhibit little sympathy. Also thoughtful is the book’s portrayal of an intentional community of the dispossessed, which offers an alternative to the have/have-not struggle.

Enjoyable SF with an irresistibly clever heist story and compelling ideas.