An unusually rosy, if rather talky, take on the relationship between humans and robots.
In this sci-fi tale, the destiny of mankind is drastically altered after new technology allows the copying of human minds into robotic chassis—and ultimately, the resulting beings must save the last Homo sapiens.
Snyder’s debut saga opens in 2014 with Graham Gordon, a Canadian youth, reading a Popular Science article about new advances in interfacing animal brains with computers. Later, the adult Graham does robotic research as scientists in a ruthlessly ambitious China and in a corporate-corrupted United States race to develop artificial, humanoid soldiers. He figures out how to copy human minds (with all their useful job skills, experiences, and interpersonal nuance) into software, but instead of creating marching automaton armies, a Sino-American cooperative effort mass-manufactures a nicer breed of robots with the ability to think. These durable, tireless, guileless “Machines” go on to replace the human labor force entirely. However, “Malaise,” a fatal torpor typified by suicide and addiction, levels humanity. The ultrasensible Machines have personalities, opinions, and quirks—all cut and pasted from real people—but they lack the incentive for evil. So, as mankind languishes on the edge of extinction, Machines conclude that it’s only fair to rescue their inventors. Leading the effort is Keisha, a Machine copied from long-dead novelist Amelia Dixon; Bill Weinberg, copied from Dixon’s money-manager husband; and other roboticized VIPs from an earlier era. The style of this seven century–spanning chronicle of robotic evolution (and human devolution), told largely in anecdotal fashion, sometimes verges on reportage. At times, it recalls Isaac Asimov’s iconic, linked short story cycle I, Robot (1950), although nobody mentions “positronic brains” here. Snyder’s story indulges in the utopian speculation of early sci-fi works, as the wise, verbose Machines implement programs for restoring “biological” civilization to its glory, while also sidestepping its socio-economic pitfalls and pathologies. This optimistic novel does lack the slam-bang robot action of a Terminator movie, but the Machines make charming company as they engage in lengthy discussions about how and why biological culture went buggy—and about ways to put it right.
An unusually rosy, if rather talky, take on the relationship between humans and robots.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68433-153-6
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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