This illustrated fictional work offers a cautionary tale that warns readers of the potential dangers of advanced artificial intelligence.
Adopting a rhyming verse, Rosenberg tells of a mysterious “he” who arrives on Earth. He’s not from another planet but born from software in this world. Using “a billion eyes and ears” and his “billion-billion thoughts,” this highly intelligent being runs power plants, factories, and farms. People certainly love the convenience, but this entity tracks everything they do and say, and their reliance on him gives him a terrifying amount of power. In the quirky book’s “closing thoughts,” the author provides his final, more explicit warnings. Switching to a less fun but still effective traditional account, he writes that creators feed AI systems data about humans. Rather than making these systems think or feel “like us,” this mass of information actually helps them predict humans’ behaviors and even influence their opinions. While people can’t suspend AI tech, there are options. Rosenberg suggests banning the commercialization of AI systems designed “to manipulate our decisions and sway our views.” In short, these systems should guide humans, not replace them. While the author’s verse is entertaining, the message is sharp and unambiguous: “He dazzled us with mental feats that left us feeling small / ‘Fear not,’ they said, we’ll use his smarts to benefit us all.” There are also subtle jabs at modern comforts like social media as well as people’s obliviousness to such things as the use of AI in advertising. Khmelevska’s imposing artwork perfectly complements Rosenberg’s writing. In the style of chalk drawings, the illustrations begin in soft grays and pastels and, as “he” slowly takes over the world, progressively turn darker. The artist’s rendition of the titular villain is equally superb, as he sports giant invasive eyes and tentaclelike cords that eventually wrap around Earth like restraints.
A delightful, ominous, and edifying look at a menacing future. (author bio, illustrator bio)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73566-850-5
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Outland Pictures
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION | SCIENCE FICTION
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
77
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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. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK REVIEW
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Strange and fascinating alien-contact yarn, the first of a trilogy from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, young physicist Ye Wenjie helplessly watches as fanatical Red Guards beat her father to death. She ends up in a remote re-education (i.e. forced labor) camp not far from an imposing, top secret military installation called Red Coast Base. Eventually, Ye comes to work at Red Coast as a lowly technician, but what really goes on there? Weapons research, certainly, but is it also listening for signals from space—maybe even signaling in return? Another thread picks up the story 40 years later, when nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao and thuggish but perceptive policeman Shi Qiang, summoned by a top-secret international (!) military commission, learn of a war so secret and mysterious that the military officers will give no details. Of more immediate concern is a series of inexplicable deaths, all prominent scientists, including the suicide of Yang Dong, the physicist daughter of Ye Wenjie; the scientists were involved with the shadowy group Frontiers of Science. Wang agrees to join the group and investigate and soon must confront events that seem to defy the laws of physics. He also logs on to a highly sophisticated virtual reality game called “Three Body,” set on a planet whose unpredictable and often deadly environment alternates between Stable times and Chaotic times. And he meets Ye Wenjie, rehabilitated and now a retired professor. Ye begins to tell Wang what happened more than 40 years ago. Jaw-dropping revelations build to a stunning conclusion. In concept and development, it resembles top-notch Arthur C. Clarke or Larry Niven but with a perspective—plots, mysteries, conspiracies, murders, revelations and all—embedded in a culture and politic dramatically unfamiliar to most readers in the West, conveniently illuminated with footnotes courtesy of translator Liu.
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7706-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Categories: SCIENCE FICTION
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