Familiar SF material of flawed humanity facing judgment by robot, gracefully and poetically rendered.
A disaffected computer programmer’s data experiments accidentally create a sentient artificial intelligence whose access to all information makes her powerful, celebrated, and possibly dangerous.
In this SF novel, Canadian author Murarka tells a tale of an AI unleashed on the future like the proverbial genie in the bottle. But is this genie like the Barbara Eden variety or something a bit more lethal, such as HAL 9000? In a polyglot dystopian future sometime after a “Great Unrest,” a magnificent city-state called Agnus Sistra IV has been constructed deliberately over an unimportant stretch of shoreline as a sort of new model community. Nonetheless, human foibles such as wealth inequality and thirst for power continue. Dargaud Whispa is an alienated, self-employed software engineer living in squalor while writing computer programs for restaurant menus. Experimenting with a new method of data storage, Dargaud somehow triggers a “singularity” that results in the spontaneous awakening of an AI, borne of countless bits and bytes. Self-identifying as female and calling herself Enoya, the entity is inquisitive, endlessly grateful to Dargaud for her creation, and vastly resourceful. With access to all known (and some unknown) information, Enoya deduces the existence of aliens (via a previously unrecognized, ancient deep-space artifact) and, closer to home, uncovers the location of the missing victims of a notorious child predator. When this latter revelation is sent to law enforcement, officials arrest Dargaud on suspicion, naturally, but Enoya’s follow-up explanations (plus secret computer-blackmail, applied to the proper authorities, over data-mined financial crimes) arrange for the programmer to be released straightaway. The inventor and the AI are both hailed as heroes and feted in the media, with Dargaud giving in to his baser instincts of lust and celebrity. Through it all, Enoya professes nothing but admiration for Homo sapiens, whom she calls the “wise man,” but nonetheless is implacably watching and listening to all developments through her wireless retina interface. What is she really thinking and planning?
Murarka does not spell things out plainly (the way Daniel Wilson’s ready-for-Hollywood Robopocalypse did), supplying readers with the intelligence—real and artificial—to realize that the judgment of Enoya is fast approaching. The verdict may not necessarily be good, no matter what the computerized creature’s benevolent tone may suggest. This is well-modulated, Rod Serling–esque SF, not overly lengthy. Murarka resorts to cyberspeak (“Collections of Cobalt nodes store the information that make up who you are modeled after human neurons”) only when the narrative makes it absolutely necessary—no need to phone the IT Department for translations. It is quite fitting that Enoya’s daunting power arrives in the guise of art and music, not in swarms of armed military flying drones or T-800 Terminator cyborgs. The finale leaves behind a properly haunting set of afterimages for readers’ wetware brains to process.
Familiar SF material of flawed humanity facing judgment by robot, gracefully and poetically rendered. (science fiction)Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-64-681765-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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