Estimated reading time: 4 minutes It’s 2075, and the human race is in the earliest stages of colonizing the solar system. A trillion-dollar high tech company named Maverick Enterprises has built Elderon, Earth’s first space colony in Low Earth Orbit. It’s designed to house five...
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A review of Robopocalypse, by Daniel H. Wilson. @@@@ (4 out of 5). This is a science fiction novel, to be sure, and as the title suggests it depicts an apocalyptic future, but it’s a future with a difference. This is a treatment of robots and automation from an entirely different perspective. It’s engaging. And it’s very, very scary.
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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Don’t be misled by the book’s title. The “daemon” of Daniel Suarez’s novel isn’t an evil spirit. That evil-sounding word is a term of art in computer science and not at all diabolical. Wikipedia defines it as...
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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced he will split the company in two. This will leave Facebook itself to throw off a gusher of cash dividends every year while he funds Meta Platforms out of the disproportionate share he receives. Meta Platforms, of course, is...
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Consider what possibilities might open up—for good or ill—if programmers could code artificial intelligence into nano-scale robots. Just imagine robots so small and so capable that they could burrow into virtually any microscopically small space, operate individually or as a swarm, and broadcast...
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From the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, men have struggled against the forces of automation. In English history, the first widespread outbreak of rage in the contest known as man vs. machine was the Luddite Rebellion (1811-16). For Americans, the iconic manifestation of that conflict...
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Something happened on April 17, 2120. Something so big that now, a century later, it’s still referred to as 4-17. Whatever it was, it’s somehow connected to the brain implants that have been universally required for decades. But what exactly happened, and why, isn’t at all clear....
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We can’t look back at our time from the perspective of the 22nd century. But if we were able to do so, it seems likely that one of the dominant phenomena we would observe in our era is the emergence of artificial intelligence. Few developments in science and technology have caused both more...
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As a teenager, I devoured science fiction, and my addiction resumed for extended periods later in life. I was attracted above all by the sheer creativity the writers demonstrated in speculating about life and reality from new perspectives. And I must admit I was a bit of a nut about space...
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In the debut of Susan Kaye Quinn’s series of four novels about life after the Singularity, Elijah Brighton and two teenage Frenchwomen won gold medals in the Olympics. The awards made them eligible to transition from legacy humans to ascenders, the god-like immortals who now reign over the...
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The singularity is history. Afterwards, centuries ago, the superhuman intelligence gained by machines enabled humans to “ascend,” leaving their frail bodies of flesh and bone and uploading into what today we call the cloud. They’re “vastly more intelligent, compassionate,...
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A closely-linked network of several score brilliant men and a few women are pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence research. You’ll meet many of these high-achieving and sometimes eccentric individuals in the pages of Genius Makers. You’ll get a glimpse inside Google,...
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Martha Wells has been writing science fiction since 1995 and was nominated for major awards in the field on several occasions. But her breakthrough came in 2018 when she won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and the American Library Association’s Alex Award for All Systems Red. That book kicked off...
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Prominent and knowledgeable people including Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking have been warning us for years about the danger of artificial general intelligence. They envision a point at which AI will surpass the cognitive abilities of the smartest human and start becoming even smarter at an...
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Most of the books about artificial intelligence highlight such things as self-driving cars and facial recognition—the brilliant innovations in hardware and software by the engineers and coders who build the stuff and make it work. They dwell variously on the field’s potential and its impact...
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Today some observers of artificial intelligence believe the singularity is near—the point at which machine intelligence will exceed that of the most brilliant humans. The concept seems as though it comes straight out of Silicon Valley. But it originated many decades ago with the legendary...
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In university and corporate laboratories both in China and the US, as well as many other countries, computer scientists are struggling to advance artificial intelligence. Again and again, we learn about big improvements in the field. However, many informed observers seem to think that what is...
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Let’s recognize something at the outset. Neither I, nor anyone, not even the New York Times Book Review, could possibly identify the best books of any decade, let alone the last one. During the period 2010 through 2019, an estimated total of some 30 million books were published. Now, I read a...
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In most dystopian fiction, the story highlights how a single current trend might play out if its logic unfolded in a straight line into the future. For example, Kurt Vonnegut explores the absurdity of automation run wild in Player Piano. Margaret Atwood reveals the corruption at the heart of...
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You’ll recognize Google in the eponymous company, Avogadro Corp, which is at the center of this disturbing science fiction novel. The range of products is similar. The company’s cofounder is Sean Leonov and is the son of Russian immigrants. It’s an obvious reference to...
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Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.