The Geomancer

4/2/07

The Age-Old Question of Artificial Life

Tomas L. Martin reviews Joel Shepherd's Breakaway: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel for SF Crowsnest.

Tomas nails what I love about these books when he says, "It is this extremely nuanced political spectrum that truly brings Breakaway to life. That and the explosions. The superb set pieces featuring SWAT teams against extremists are matched in excitement by the battles on the floors of government. The debates between Callay's representatives are as exciting as the running gun battles in its streets."

My initial reaction was to smile when Tomas talks about "the age-old question of how an artificial human would feel," since I think of age-old as referring to something with a timeless, centuries-old history to it and A.I. isn't that old of a concept, but then, SF has been dealing with this question for over a century now, and I suspect we can find corollaries in ancient myths as well, and certainly a certain work by Mary Shelley applies to... so I guess it is a age-old question after all. Fortunately, the consensus is that Joel Shepherd puts a new spin on it. And an exciting one at that.

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