Hernando
The Gone World is an insteresting thriller with time travel elements and some bits of horror.
What is not is the marketing's salad combination of Inception, True Detective, 12 Monkeys, Interstellar, and The Silence of the Lambs.
I see how this book can appeal to those who enjoy the aforementioned movies, but it is definitely not all those things combined or even separated. It has nothing remotely close to Interestellar or Inception. Probably some bits of True Detective, but that's it. It also does a disservice to the book because I think it can stand by itself without being hyped with those blurbs.
Anyway, the story here is that of an officer from the NCIS who is sent to solve a case that involves murder and dissapearance. In the process, she finds herself traveling to the past and to many futures, trying to find answers to unraveling mysteries. This includes the end of the world, a different version of herself, etc.
An intriguing sense of gloom and doom is present throughout the whole story, captivating the reader with what could possibly be the resolution.
The book does a good job wiring paradoxes and blending thriller with Science Fiction elements.
Definitely one of the best surprises of the year. A year full of dull SF stories.
Just a few annotations:
“A big breakthrough in artificial intelligence. It seems somewhat likely that it will happen sometime in this century, but we don't know for sure”.
-I don't think so, but I truly hope to see that with my eyes.
“The idea of a coming technological singularity has been popularized, starting with Vernor Vinge's seminal essay and continuing with the writings of Ray Kurzweil and others. The term ‘Singularity,' however, has been used confusedly in many disparate senses and has accreted an unholy aura of techno-utopian connotations”.
-Agree.
“Machines matching humans in general intelligence have been expected since the invention of computers in the 1940s”
-Add another century to it.
“The fact that the best performance at one time is attained through a complicated mechanism does not mean that no simple mechanism could do the job as well or better. It might simply be that nobody has yet found the simpler alternative”.
-That's my bet for developing a SI.
“How far are we currently from achieving a human whole brain emulation?. One recent assesment presented a technical roadmap and concluded that the prerequisite capabilities might be available around mid-century, though with a large uncertainty level”.
- I also doubt a WBE in the near future. Probably in 2120?.
“Final goal: ‘make us smile'.
Perverse instantiation: ‘paralyze human facial musculatures into constant beaming smiles”.
- I laughed on this because it makes sense.
“...These observations make it plausible that any type of entity that developed a much greater than human level intelligence would be potentially extremely powerful. Such entities could accumulate content much faster than us and invent new technologies on a much shorter timescale. They could also use their intelligence to strategize more effectively than we can”.
- I liked this book a lot specially because of the Realistic Pessimism about an SI. I consider there must be a real concern to think about that level of intelligence.
I often find myself going back to the old classics, specially when I am busy and without enough time to read or when I am stressed and can not focus, just to find this. A fast paced, straight to the point and amazing ideas wisely packed in a short book.
The last 50p were absolutely great, everything was happening as if it were literally jaunting. Also all the crazy stuff with time-bending, elsewhere-elsewhen-NOW-etc were nicely done.
Indeed a very entertaining reading.
This was a light , fun and quick read.
A robot that gains total control of its own systems and start going deep into existentialism while at the same time keeping the humans of a scientific Spedition on a distant planet safe.
Nothing else really and waiting for the next novella to come out just killed any bit of enthusiasm I had at the time.
I sort of liked this book, but it was too short on each topic that by the end it barely made sense to me reading it when most of the things are 2 seconds away on a web search. Actually, that was what I did for basically every chapter, as a way to know what else is missing and also explains why it took me longer to finish it. It does not go deep on anything and give you a very surface level understanding of the universe.
I guess that was the point of the book at the end, and I am being too picky here. Despise my rating, it was entertaining and enjoyable, just that I was expecting a bit more substance.
I've been wanting to dig into the Revelation Space for a while so I finally did it with this first installment. This is truly a great book with extremely good ideas.
I really dig it but somehow I had the feeling that some of the characters were painfully annoying (Volyova specially) and were almost ruining the satisfying atmosphere set in the story.
First half of the book is pure gold in an epic scale but I somehow did not like when the handwavium Extra Super FTL hyperdrive appeared, it wasn't that bad to compromise the whole book but I was not expecting that at all. Probably it made sense in some way for the plot but It also made the universe looks like a small city and it sort of broke that sense of wonder you got when you reading about the Ring, super strings, etc.
Apart from that, it could be a full 5 star book.
I almost DNF'd this book.
It relates a story of post humanism where things like communication by thoughts, mind copies, AGI and Singularity are very real. All this is thrown at the reader without any bit of explanation, which makes the book interesting initially.
By the time you know how all things really work and were supposed to be "fun", it felt quite plain and boring.
I did not mind the device the author used to tell the story at all, which I can understand why some people hate it, but by the end of the book I think it was not even worth the struggle.
I might be judging this book too harshly, but I am still interested in giving it a revisit and see if my opinion changes.