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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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BOOK REVIEW
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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