A technocratic fantasy of an ideal, AI-assisted world that’s playful, meditative, and poignant, by turns.
An 82-year-old man awakens from “hibernation” to a world governed primarily by an artificial intelligence named Gaïa in Ravasco’s philosophical SF novel about death, technology, and immortality.
Shortly after Leandro Andore began his hibernation (roughly around our present time), AI surpassed human abilities of reasoning and decision-making, and humans gradually ceded authority to Gaïa. After Leandro wakes up, 132 years in the future, his mind is transferred to a 3D-printed body with an embedded, personal AI, which he names Aliana. Aliana guides Leandro around his new world, in which AI has eliminated the need for work, mood-altering substances, and human conflict in general. People spend their days in blissful leisure, making art, enjoying synthetic but delicious food, and having adventures facilitated by highly personalized technology. To some people, this would seem like a utopia, but Leandro has left behind the virtual world of his hibernation—a paradisiacal island that he designed himself, where he lived with avatars of his wife, son, and cats. The tension between the two worlds is further complicated by brief conversations that open each chapter, which suggest that Leandro is being manipulated by an unknown figure. The last act of Ravasco’s novel boasts a couple well-earned plot twists. However, overall, the plotting is rather slow and mostly consists of the protagonist having new experiences that inspire reflections on the 21st century. If a reader isn’t interested in such lengthy excursions, then they may feel the novel drags at times, but others may find it fun and affecting. Leandro is portrayed as an enthusiastic advocate for AI, and the novel mostly explores his perspective on a range of complex issues without admitting AI alternatives. As the author’s note indicates, even the novel itself heavily relies on AI—both for generating the whimsical art at the beginning of each chapter and for the English translation of the text from the French language.
A technocratic fantasy of an ideal, AI-assisted world that’s playful, meditative, and poignant, by turns.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 239
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.
Some people are born supervillains, and others have supervillainy thrust upon them.
Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along with his uncle. With the aid of his uncle’s No. 1, Mathilda Morrison, and his cat, Hera (who turns out to be an intelligent and typing-capable spy for his uncle’s organization), Charlie must sort out whom he can trust before he gets blackmailed, blown up, or both. This book serves as a follow-up of sorts to Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022) in that both are riffs on genre film tropes. The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi’s other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering. This is one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn’t go anywhere that will surprise you.
Fun while it lasts but not one of Scalzi’s stronger books.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780765389220
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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