SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases discussion

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loved this. There was a place where our hero was wandering west of the mountains after the library where I was impatient with it. A little preachy, for sure. Until then I was really happy with it. But then it ended up well. I'm so glad because I paid full price for it. I rarely do that . . .

Agree with Kate, there was a bit of “saga-ing” in the middle that didn’t feel necessary but the rest was a very fun read. A bit depressing but told with such levity that I had a great time reading this.

Did we ever find out how The Wonk got away and almost no other humans did? Seems a bit far fetched, no?

My recollection is she was hiding or away or something when the robots took out her family . . . but I do not care enough to go back and look

I think it’s in the epilogue (or shortly before) where she explains to Uncharles that she had a hideout/bolting plan and sadly she didn’t manage to convince her parents to go with her.

Soooo I have quite liked it but only brought myself to give it 4 stars as it was a bit (unnecessarily) long for me, I totally agree with the previous posters.

The bleakness of it all was a bit much after last month’s read BUT the sense of humor (for me, the best were the long utterances when Uncharles was nervous. I mean “would have been nervous had he been programmed to feel emotions” ;)).

Assorted random thoughts:

- I’m embarrassed on how LONG it took me to realize the wonk was human xD :$
- “Uncharles” is the best protagonist name in quite a while
- though at the same time, probably because I’m spoiled by the murderbot series, it would have been nice to have a more genderneutral robot. We ARE told he considers to seek enjoyment as a maid at some point, so there is that.

The Wonk,yes.

Yes, thank you both, I do recall that now, she is just very good a sneaking into and out of places. ;) Also, I really loved how AT was able to portray a pre-teen voice in this book. It was believable and I loved the modern slag/references the Wonk makes at certain times, ugh can't think of any but they got a chuckle out of me.

I also have finished and liked it very much, solid 4* for me. Yes, sometimes preachy, but hey, I like Robert A. Heinlein, who I guess was the preachiest of old SF, and Kim Stanley Robinson, who is a different but still preachy as well.

Andrea-Nekane wrote: "- I’m embarrassed on how LONG it took me to realize the wonk was human xD :$."

I missed it during the initial encounter, and I suspect that only at the farm I guess

Andrea-Nekane wrote: "Soooo I have quite liked it but only brought myself to give it 4 stars as it was a bit (unnecessarily) long for me, I totally agree with the previous posters . . . I’m embarrassed on how LONG it took me to realize the wonk was human"

I agree that it was a bit too long. I got bogged down with the robot army part. But I did start thinking Wonk was human when UnCharles first met her.

Kateblue wrote: "But I did start thinking Wonk was human when UnCharles first met her.."

I read under the assumption that robots clearly distinguish humans - after all their perceptions are much better, so they have to hear heartbeat, air movement due to breathing, etc. So If UnCharles say she is a robot, she is :)

My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

OMG, Acorn, we agreed on one! 5 *!

Kateblue wrote: "OMG, Acorn, we agreed on one! 5 *!"

I vacillated between 4 and 5 because for me 5 is a book I'll definitely plan to re-read someday, and I wasn't sure about wanting to re-read this one (it is very good, but there even Tchaikocvaky's novels I haven't read, so re-reading it low on my queue).

It seems I'm the lone voice of dissent, since I didn't really like this. I think it's going to be 2* for me.

I alredy mentioned in the no-spoilers thread that I thought this book was too stupid by half. The scenes like Inspector Birdbot seemed to be included for cheap laughs, but they were way too incongruent with the bleakness of other parts. Sure, you can do a comedy about the world coming to an end, but please make it a bit cleverer than this.

Also, I didn't like the ending. That God was self-aware and evil after all was completely unnecessary. "The world ended because people didn't treat each other like people" would've been a good story, "the world ended because of an evil AI" is too tired to even deserve to be called a cliché.

Antti wrote: ""The world ended because people didn't treat each other like people" would've been a good story, "the world ended because of an evil AI" is too tired to even deserve to be called a cliché."

I absolutely agree with that statement. Still, I found the book entertaining and I was rooting for the characters, so still 5* for me

I guess this book requires a specific mood, like wanting some stupid easy stuff, no thought needed :)

I liked it a lot. I really appreciated that it did not preach too much. It riffed on Vonnegut's Player Piano in an interesting fashion in that as mechanization made human service obsolete, that this causes humanity itself to deteriorate rather than adapt. The narrative made me appreciate the author's creativity and versatility, but it lacked the epic scope of Children of Time so it fell short of 5 stars IMO.

I think it is just much narrower in its scope than Children, but small is sometimes beautiful

Agreed. Harlan Ellison's Deathbird is a fine example of this. But a smaller work needs to stand out by having some super special in the main character, setting, narrative or prose to earn that final, ultimate star. Uncharles was fun, but not someone I could deeply empathize with. I felt I had been in the world before (Mad Max kind of?) and that the prose was a little too clever for its own good.

I guess the character, while not unique, in still standing out. I liked that the author hasn't went the easy way with giving Uncharles self-awareness and set of goals different from built-in - we see that robots won't replace humans, like say in Sea of Rust or In the Lives of Puppets

I enjoyed the first four parts, and then it lost me at D4NT-A - the tone was grimmer, things more pointless (and less amusingly so), and talking about religion always turns me off. And because that bit was so long, the ending felt rushed.

MH wrote: " and talking about religion always turns me off. And because that..."

A side note, but an amusing story about a fake SF fan from the 60s in today's file770 - https://file770.com/the-curious-case-... for that fan also had an issue with religion in SF :)

Antti wrote: "Also, I didn't like the ending. That God was self-aware and evil after all was completely unnecessary. "The world ended because people didn't treat each other like people" would've been a good story, "the world ended because of an evil AI" is too tired to even deserve to be called a cliché."

Well, an AI seeing that people aren't treating each other like people, told to do the same, and doing a bit of malicious compliance to judge us all guilty. Yes, there's agency there - but at the same time a clear sense that people got what they asked for, according to the parameters they had (foolishly) set.

I felt the ending was trying to be Pratchettesque, but didn't quite get there for me.

MH wrote: "Well, an AI seeing that people aren't treating each other like people, told to do the same, and doing a bit of malicious compliance to judge us all guilty."

I guess more than once the book used the idea "let's go to the extreme, to show they are absurd" - like with storing info in the library.

"The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do."

Oleksandr wrote: "I guess more than once the book used the idea "let's go to the extreme, to show they are absurd" - like with storing info in the library."

Absolutely. Its more that if the computer is just doing what it is told, I'm not sure its proper to characterise it as "evil". There's no agency there. Its just a thing that happened, and its a mistake to anthropomorphize it.

...except of course that these AIs have quite a bit of flexibility in carrying out their orders. But the problem here was that God was a JudgeBot, rather than say a SocialPolicyBot, so its thinking was directed towards guilt and punishment rather than "how can we make this better?"

MH wrote: "rather than say a SocialPolicyBot, so its thinking was directed towards guilt and punishment rather than "how can we make this better?"

True, but this is an argument for a novel in more serious tone I guess, while this one tries for some cozy silly fun, maybe making a person think afterwards "is my deity (for those who believe) trying to make things better according to our sacred texts?" so it isn't aimed at say AI or tech in general

I didn't find the tone to be "cozy silly fun", rather for me it was a starkly critical satire paying homage to a variety of historical works of social satire. The last section was a riff on Dante's Inferno which is why all the god and religion talk came into it. But yes, I felt like the book started to drag by that section and I was ready for it to be over. The structure of having Uncharles being sent to three "trials" before meeting "God" kind of had me groaning because I wanted him to be done his journey by then.

Kalin wrote: "I didn't find the tone to be "cozy silly fun", rather for me it was a starkly critical satire paying homage to a variety of historical works of social satire. "

Like an onion, it has many layers :) on some level, it plays with tropes from post-apoc while elsewhere it lampoons bureaucracy