How have I missed reading Sawyer all these years? The man has won so many awards for his writing, and based on my first reading I can see why. Although not all the multiple storylines are left in a satisfactory state (in my opinion) in this first volume of the trilogy, they are all nonetheless peopled with well-fleshed characters. The pacing is good, the details (both technical and cultural) are plentiful. Best of all, Sawyer uses the story to examine questions on the nature of intelligence/consciousness: human, primate, and computer. This is one of the best examinations of the emergence of artificial intelligence I have read. I look very much forward to reading the next 2 volumes.

[UPDATE: Still enjoyable the second time around. And the multi-reader audiobook is excellent.] ( )

A story of a blind girl into whose life a miracle comes, sight, but with sight comes a vision of the internet and also a vision of something else in the corners, a glitch that may not be a glitch but something growing, a possible inhuman friend.

Part of the start of this story involves an highly transmissible H1N1 flu variant that starts in rural China... written in 2008/9; this edition published in 2019. Honestly that part and how the Chinese government handled it made the hackles rise on the back of my neck. There are parts that are a bit outdated (like hardly anyone outside of Russia uses LiveJournal -moment of silence - anymore) but glossing over that I can see how this handles a lot of the issues and is quite prescient. I'm curious where things are going to go from here. How Caitlin is going to survive, what's going to happen to Webmind, Hobo and in China. ( )

Robert J Sawyers latest novel reads like the novelization of a film. Quick paced, but without a lot of meat. It seems like he just takes snippets from the latest scientific discoveries and wraps a story around them. ( )

Meh. Not really horrible but stunningly tone-deaf to the inner mind of a teenage girl in this information age.
The back stories of bird flu in China and the painting hybrid chimp were never properly completed or set up for the next book.
Why do I keep on reading this guy's books? ( )

It's been a while since a book brought me to tears. It's been a while since a book brought me to tears out of joy and optimism.

This one did. It wasn't earth-shattering, but it was absolutely joyous.

Why?

Well, the main reason is that I absolutely love stories of emergent AIs. And when Sawyer applies a lot of very well-researched speculations based on only the technology we have now, building a beautiful picture of waking up from first principles?

I have nothing but respect for this.

And yet, this is hardly the only thing this book is good at. The main story is gorgeous as well. Young Caitlin has grown up blind but thanks to some equally interesting sight-restoring techniques, she discovers she can see the World Wide Web as colorful geometry.

Between her own life and discoveries, some very nice parallels with the overall story-structure with a team of scientists and a half-Bonobo monkey and a quasi-revolutionary hacker on the other side of China's Firewall, we've got a huge, beautiful setup and the first very careful steps of a new consciousness.

I can't stress how well this was accomplished. This isn't a fly-by-night story with the same elements but with a tenth the research, care, or intelligence. This is a direct commentary on our current science and it actually gave me a sense of real wonder. Awe.

It also helps that it accurately describes just about all its foundations in not just a clear way, but in an ACCURATE way. :)

But what did I love most?

Okay. I'm weird. I loved the Shannon Entropy Function. I want someone to run a plot on me, please. :)


Let me sum up something:

This book ought to be well-known. It ought to be discussed and enjoyed and in the common zeitgeist of modern SF. It isn't a throwaway title meant to pass an afternoon away. It's a complex and stand-up commentary on what we could all BE, in all the best ways that SF can function.

Of course, if I might get to the point sooner, I should refer back to my first statement. The book made me cry from joy. It OUGHT to be enough to encourage anyone to read it. :) ( )