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Me and the Robot
In the near future teleportation is a reality, the only problem is that it kills or maims most people who try to use it. Humankind gambled everything on the Passage, hoping to colonize new worlds and relieve the famine sweeping earth. Now it falls to robots to save the day, the only problem is: can they be trusted?
196 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 30, 2020
1 person is currently reading
2 people want to read
About the author
Ed Morawski
39 books44 followersMy books do not always fit into established genres - most of them have elements of sci-fi, mystery, crime, action, and especially - romance. I will warn that my idea of 'romance' is not typical, but more along the lines of strong women and men making sacrifices for them.
While my books are not a series in any sense of the word, many are connected through characters and events. I will also say I strive for realism and logic. My books are never fantasy, but rooted in what is actually possible,
I invite you along for the ride and hope it will be memorable.
While my books are not a series in any sense of the word, many are connected through characters and events. I will also say I strive for realism and logic. My books are never fantasy, but rooted in what is actually possible,
I invite you along for the ride and hope it will be memorable.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 17, 2020
Bottom line up front, this is an awesome story with many intriguing elements. That being said, the style for formatting is (to be blunt) jarring. If the thought of a book changing tense randomly, improper comma use, or disagreement between quotation marks and apostrophes for speech will annoy you, skip this book. If you’re willing to look past formatting issues and just want to enjoy a unique story, this is your tale. Ski is a selfish man who has an important job. He stays true to his character and makes decisions often with regards to what is best for him. Rex is likewise always playing to enjoy the best position. Their comradery is excellent. The book shifts themes many times between sci-fi problem, love story, escaping the government, and a trial. Again, look away if you want something simple. Read on, if you want to be entertained. The rest of my review will contain spoilers.
The Good.
The opening lines were excellent. They describe a terrifying and painful teleportation experience that Trekkies would find horrifying.
Young Ski gets in trouble for going to immoral/banned holonet sites. What are the sites? Ones that show how supermarkets were stocked with food. For a starving planet, this is psychological torture.
A dime broke the International Space Station.
Ski is a human stud. Literally. He has to share his load with all the ladies. Too bad this concept was immediately dropped when he selected Lara. So much potential was wasted by ignoring this early concept.
AI believe in God.
The MIT robot rebellion.
The debates and discussions between Ski and Rex were outstanding. Their road trip was the highlight of the book (minus the epilogue chapter).
Rex on trial and asking for NA asylum. It was such an awesome plan.
Ski has to get high for his Passage fly. Again, I wish the ramifications of this decision had been explored more.
Rex stole Eden, then Earth. Unfortunately, the colonists were too pragmatic about their worst fears coming to life. Why can’t anyone ever be afraid in stories? They stoically accepted their situation and quickly resolveed it. Boo.
The ending. The best that could have been hoped for. Ski truly showed his selfishness. Billions lost for a few dozen (which illogically swelled to a million, I guess there was a lot of incest and humans aren’t quite what they used to be).
The Bad.
It takes to the twenty percent point for Sandee’s father to be “identified.” It felt like the author forgot to explain this and just threw it in as a quick thought on a random page. The free love society was used to justify no competition for Lara, yet ignored the obvious competition for Ski. Chloe had one scene that proved this. Why wasn’t there ever a jealous fight over Lara hogging Ski? Why wasn’t there a fight with Ski getting jealous. A lot of easy button telling happened on this subject. Furthermore, how can a society have teleportation portals and long-distance spaceships but no DNA tests? The gene pool would require this or lead to significant incest, oh wait, never mind (check out the epilogue).
Famine trumps cultural insensitivities. Ski being mad about black robots was illogical. It was such a stupid thing to get upset about. Ski wasn’t a very likable character. This line made me think of people taking offense for another crowd of people that they don’t belong to.
Why the tense shifts. I thought it might have been because Ski was past tense and Rex was present (still a bad idea). Not so. It shifted without explanation. It became a test to see when it would happen, which took me out of the story so many times, I stopped counting. Other formatting issues included not having a comma when using and to combine two independent clauses and some word typos (apparently God was latching over us). I think apostrophes were used for ping conversations (instead of italics) and quotes used for spoken word. Like the tense shift, this wasn’t universally consistent and jarred me multiple times.
The secret lab was attacked by protestors. Less than half a day later, no cops, security, or reporters are around when Ski and Rex simply walk out. That seemed far too quickly for such an important (as billions would later discover) threat.
The soul sucker distraction was lame. A terrible name and idea.
I hated the Lara and Ski relationship. It shifted too often. It wasn’t very necessary. The Ski and Sandee relationship was a better anchor than a hot blonde (with an e). Their moments together were the most annoying.
The Technical.
The formatting is wonky, so it may upset some readers (me somewhat included).
There are some sexual situations that get a bit descriptive.
The story is told in the first person perspective for two distinct characters.
The Good.
The opening lines were excellent. They describe a terrifying and painful teleportation experience that Trekkies would find horrifying.
Young Ski gets in trouble for going to immoral/banned holonet sites. What are the sites? Ones that show how supermarkets were stocked with food. For a starving planet, this is psychological torture.
A dime broke the International Space Station.
Ski is a human stud. Literally. He has to share his load with all the ladies. Too bad this concept was immediately dropped when he selected Lara. So much potential was wasted by ignoring this early concept.
AI believe in God.
The MIT robot rebellion.
The debates and discussions between Ski and Rex were outstanding. Their road trip was the highlight of the book (minus the epilogue chapter).
Rex on trial and asking for NA asylum. It was such an awesome plan.
Ski has to get high for his Passage fly. Again, I wish the ramifications of this decision had been explored more.
Rex stole Eden, then Earth. Unfortunately, the colonists were too pragmatic about their worst fears coming to life. Why can’t anyone ever be afraid in stories? They stoically accepted their situation and quickly resolveed it. Boo.
The ending. The best that could have been hoped for. Ski truly showed his selfishness. Billions lost for a few dozen (which illogically swelled to a million, I guess there was a lot of incest and humans aren’t quite what they used to be).
The Bad.
It takes to the twenty percent point for Sandee’s father to be “identified.” It felt like the author forgot to explain this and just threw it in as a quick thought on a random page. The free love society was used to justify no competition for Lara, yet ignored the obvious competition for Ski. Chloe had one scene that proved this. Why wasn’t there ever a jealous fight over Lara hogging Ski? Why wasn’t there a fight with Ski getting jealous. A lot of easy button telling happened on this subject. Furthermore, how can a society have teleportation portals and long-distance spaceships but no DNA tests? The gene pool would require this or lead to significant incest, oh wait, never mind (check out the epilogue).
Famine trumps cultural insensitivities. Ski being mad about black robots was illogical. It was such a stupid thing to get upset about. Ski wasn’t a very likable character. This line made me think of people taking offense for another crowd of people that they don’t belong to.
Why the tense shifts. I thought it might have been because Ski was past tense and Rex was present (still a bad idea). Not so. It shifted without explanation. It became a test to see when it would happen, which took me out of the story so many times, I stopped counting. Other formatting issues included not having a comma when using and to combine two independent clauses and some word typos (apparently God was latching over us). I think apostrophes were used for ping conversations (instead of italics) and quotes used for spoken word. Like the tense shift, this wasn’t universally consistent and jarred me multiple times.
The secret lab was attacked by protestors. Less than half a day later, no cops, security, or reporters are around when Ski and Rex simply walk out. That seemed far too quickly for such an important (as billions would later discover) threat.
The soul sucker distraction was lame. A terrible name and idea.
I hated the Lara and Ski relationship. It shifted too often. It wasn’t very necessary. The Ski and Sandee relationship was a better anchor than a hot blonde (with an e). Their moments together were the most annoying.
The Technical.
The formatting is wonky, so it may upset some readers (me somewhat included).
There are some sexual situations that get a bit descriptive.
The story is told in the first person perspective for two distinct characters.
October 19, 2020
A great story with a new perspective on older themes, the writing is well paced and moves quickly. There are some formatting and grammatical errors that will bother some people, but not enough to detract from the story in my opinion.
Emergent AI and the consequences of centuries of ecological and societal mismanagement are heavy topics and this book deals with them very well. It’s not preachy or over the top, it’s an entertaining and potentially prophetic look at a possible future.
Emergent AI and the consequences of centuries of ecological and societal mismanagement are heavy topics and this book deals with them very well. It’s not preachy or over the top, it’s an entertaining and potentially prophetic look at a possible future.
August 16, 2020
I'm all over the place in my reaction to this book. I kept reading because the ideas were interesting. In fact some of the ideas and conversations were more than just interesting--intriguing. There's lots of depth to this story and layers of issues from over-population to the application of the US Constitution to AI. On the other hand, I thought the main human character (the other main character is a robot) was a jerk. It's sort of hard for me to like a book if I dislike the main character.(For some reason, it didn't bother me that the robot was unlikable. I loved the way the conniving robot worked the system. Maybe I only care about that with human characters?) I also thought the plot needed pruning, particularly at the beginning, and the proofreading/editing problem was distracting to me. So five for ideas, three or four for plot, two for proofreading. I will average that out as a three with this caveat: I think that there are readers who are less interested in characters and prose quality than I am, and are more interested in ideas and plot. Those readers will enjoy this story a great deal.
November 10, 2020
Lots of Interesting Themes and Ideas But It Goes Off The Rails
Humans have colonized the stars, harnessed the power of FTL travel, and given birth to AI. And in this world the envoy to Earth's breadbasket, Eden has been sent to improve food production to feed a starving world.
And in the process, he helps create the most powerful AI yet developed. But can it be trusted? Does trust even factor into a world of perfect logic?
Me and the Robot touches on a lot of interesting sci-fi themes. The most prominent is artificial intelligence and the potential dangers thereof. But also questions about the nature of consciousness, what it means to be human, and so on. However, it never really focuses on any one thing. The narrative veers wildly from one situation to the next with not a lot connecting them.
I found the most frustrating part of this book was the lack of character development. I feel like a lot of the feeling of disconnect could have been remedied if there was a clear idea of what was motivating the characters. For example, the protagonist, Ski, seems to change his motivation from one chapter to the next depending on where the story needs him to go to move along. Add to that some gaping plot holes and you have what is, I feel, a classic example of what happens when the narrative tries to drive the story. It feels forced and unnatural.
Not to say I didn't enjoy the book at all. I found a lot of the ideas interesting and something about the way it was written did suck me in which probably contributed a lot to the frustration. I feel like if I understood what the characters were trying to accomplish at any given time, and what their ultimate beliefs and goals were, this would be a wonderfully strange and gripping story. But that crucial piece is missing.
Edit: Lowered from three stars to one star because it turns out the author is a rather vindictive, whiny, unpleasant person.
Humans have colonized the stars, harnessed the power of FTL travel, and given birth to AI. And in this world the envoy to Earth's breadbasket, Eden has been sent to improve food production to feed a starving world.
And in the process, he helps create the most powerful AI yet developed. But can it be trusted? Does trust even factor into a world of perfect logic?
Me and the Robot touches on a lot of interesting sci-fi themes. The most prominent is artificial intelligence and the potential dangers thereof. But also questions about the nature of consciousness, what it means to be human, and so on. However, it never really focuses on any one thing. The narrative veers wildly from one situation to the next with not a lot connecting them.
I found the most frustrating part of this book was the lack of character development. I feel like a lot of the feeling of disconnect could have been remedied if there was a clear idea of what was motivating the characters. For example, the protagonist, Ski, seems to change his motivation from one chapter to the next depending on where the story needs him to go to move along. Add to that some gaping plot holes and you have what is, I feel, a classic example of what happens when the narrative tries to drive the story. It feels forced and unnatural.
Not to say I didn't enjoy the book at all. I found a lot of the ideas interesting and something about the way it was written did suck me in which probably contributed a lot to the frustration. I feel like if I understood what the characters were trying to accomplish at any given time, and what their ultimate beliefs and goals were, this would be a wonderfully strange and gripping story. But that crucial piece is missing.
Edit: Lowered from three stars to one star because it turns out the author is a rather vindictive, whiny, unpleasant person.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews