Gregg Nicholas
Action, excitement, mystery, artificial intelligence, and space travel. What more could you want?
A fine adventure for any fan of D&D. Many of the plot ‘twists' are telegraphed far in advance to the reader.
Just because a story includes things that sound like technology, it doesn't qualify as science fiction when it also includes magic and a total lack of rules about what is possible in the world. This story reads like a comic book for kids. Lots of swearing - but all with phony words like ‘shizz'. The humor is also geared to a kid's mentality, largely involving bodily functions.
Definitely a children's story. Has some similarities to Alice in Wonderland, in that there isn't much logic to it. Wouldn't recommend this book to any teenager or older.
I'll admit that I liked this story, which was split into 3 books, because I felt that, in some small way, I could relate to the main character. It would be great if we really could digitize the human brain and personality.
It's hard to recommend this fantasy series. At times the story paints men and women almost as if they are natural enemies. At other times, the story dips uncomfortably far into the romance category. On top of that confusion, we have a huge cast of characters to remember.
In my opinion, the story didn't live up to my expectations. In many ways, the key technology of turning human consciousness into an algorithm, and the changes that might evoke in society, was lost in a bog of words that could have apeared in any fantasy novel.
This book almost screams for a sequel, but then again, the next part of the story might be difficult to write.
In the near future, the world's foremost genius makes astonishing new advances in science - and destroys a city and murders his family. I enjoy the afterword, where the author discusses how the science-fiction of the novel was based on fact.
Andy Weir knows how to write an enthralling tale. Got to give the guy credit for having the guts to use a female protagonist. A couple things bother me about the story, but the author is well-known for getting his science facts correct - so I won't question that part. The leading character has some very strange morals.
Some parts of this book get bogged down in the minutiae of Silicon Valley start-up culture, but overall it's an interesting yarn about the first Artificial Intelligence.
Very short story that helps illustrate some of the different viewpoints of the colonists and the soldiers.
This science fiction story was written more than 20 years ago. In my opinion, it didn't age well. Some of the predictions made by the author just don't fit with what we've learned since then. The author's view of a ‘utopia' sounds more like dystopia to me. He envisions a world without a 5th amendment protection against self incrimination - a world where every deception is immediately discovered - a world where you don't dare answer your wife's question about whether her new jeans make her look fat. The invention of a 100% accurate lie detector is unbelievable, as are several of the other inventions in this story. I'm appalled by the suggestion that one world government would be a good thing.
This series is really a single story. It has been arbitrarily split across 3 books, probably for marketing reasons. The chapters are helpfully titled with the year (within the story timeline) and the name of the person who is relating that chapter. Normally, I'd be distracted by the fact that we jump back and forth in the timeline, but the reader can mostly ignore the date and just enjoy the story. And there's a lot to enjoy about this story. The ‘science' in this fiction story isn't believable - but it is consistent in following the rules of the story. The author adds a sprinkling of humor and references to geek culture that helped me identify with the main character.
What if artificial intelligence could be achieved by modelling a child's brain and then ‘raising' it? In this story, the author tries that approach. The result is a mildly humorous tale that doesn't pay much attention to accuracy or how authorities would actually respond.
I'm ashamed to say that it took me more than 2 years to finish this book. However, I think it is significant that even a fiction reader, like me, can enjoy this book. In my opinion, the book is losing relevance because even this second edition is now 7 years old. While reading it, there were many times that I wondered what the author would say about more recent developments.
This is a collection of unmemorable short stories. It would be more accurate to say that some are mere sketches, not actual stories. They have no entertainment value, no ‘moral', no purpose except as an attempt to illustrate a trope. I had textbooks in high school literature class that contained more interesting stories than this anthology. The last hundred pages or so, aren't even stories, but lectures and diatribes - mostly from people who feel that their particular subset of humanity has been slighted in most common books and movies. Don't even try to wade through these lectures unless you're familiar with some very old and obscure movies and books.
Suppose that we actually develop Artificial Intelligence for robots. This novel describes a possible future that is all too likely.
This is an entertaining story, despite the fact that the main characters are assassins, thugs, prostitutes, and leaders in the criminal underworld.
What if we could digitize a person's brain, turning their thoughts into a dataset and program that could be backed up and duplicated and effectively immortal? This is the first book in a series that doesn't limit itself to imagining science that can actually happen. If you can ignore the bad science, and just enjoy the story, you'll find that the author has created an interesting tale with a liberal sprinkling of humor.
The science imagined in this near-future story is incredible. In addition to the imagined technology advances, the environmental, social and political changes are thought provoking. The biggest problem that I had with the story is that I couldn't believe the way that Otto affected the people he met.
This book has very little science in the fiction. Too much mysticism and religion. When space travel works by wishing, how is that different than myths and magic?
This story imagines a near future when there is a greater disparity between the very rich, and everyone else. Advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and recycling with magic ‘fabber' printers have put most people out of work. A growing number of the debt-ridden poor decide to walk away from civilization and live on the fringe of society. Their lifestyle is only possible to the highly improbable technological advances that enable them to print just about anything they need by recycling junk they can scrounge up. For some reason, these refugees decide to gather in what I'd call ‘pacifist hippie communes' - where people only do what they choose to do, including recreational drugs and non-hetero, casual sex.