PROLIFERATION

A sequel describes a future Pacific Northwest splintered into competing nation-states where the emergence of automated artificial intelligence city states from hibernation threatens to do more than just shift the balance of power.

SF author Otto focuses on the intricate dystopian realm he created in his novel Detonation (2018) but mostly with another set of characters. Prolonged conflict has broken out over advanced AI, reminiscent of (but a bit more thoughtful than) Daniel Wilson’s Robopacalypse franchise. In the process, major cities are destroyed. Human society continues in diminished, Balkanized form, with a major force being the “Essentialists,” a caste trying to persevere without high technology. The Pacific Northwest and coastal waters of the former United States and Canada are now varied seagoing nation-states technologically regressed to something approximating the age of fighting sail. There, a ticking time bomb of advanced AI exists: several regional “Independent City States of Morganis,”built 80 years ago. Meant as utopian havens of automation and protection, the idealistic city states turned dangerously against humans and one another. Now, after a ruinous clash and generations dormant, these city states—each more sophisticated than the last—have been somehow triggered to gradually come back online. To competing expansionist forces—especially an opportunist “Prefecture,” a throwback to imperial Japan—the power and potential weaponry embodied by the city states are an irresistible lure. Dryden Quintain, an anthropologist disgraced by his alcoholism, studies ICSM history as an intellectual pursuit, but he soon finds himself a pawn in the intrigues. So does Lexie, a spirited female pirate who becomes a prisoner of the “Observers,” a monkish group that keeps watch over the dangerous tech. Ironically, to do so, the Observers resort to neural implants and connections that have made them somehow inhuman. Via these characters, the author skillfully invokes principles such as “value-loading” and other logic paradoxes that strive to explain how machines designed to be humankind’s faithful servants can become the masters (or exterminators) instead. While not short of striking combat scenes and violence, as war droids and drones fill the landscape, this tale is also SF with major ideas, as much so as Isaac Asimov’s iconic “Three Laws of Robotics.” Otto’s bio notes that he runs a nonprofit that promotes the ethical use of AI.

Impressive AI mayhem and thematic parsing for SF fans.