🤖🛸🐷🚀🧑‍🚀👯AI Friend or Foe? Two Books Explore

 

    I enjoy Adrian Tchaikovsky's science fiction and have read several of his books, like his Children of Time series. Service Model takes place on Earth. The protagonist is a valet robot named Charles whose days are an endless repetition of caring for his master, the only human in the house, that is run and maintained by robots. One day, Charles does something he'd never done before, changing everything for him, for robots, and for the world. This started slowly, but I persevered and was captivated by the ideas, the mysterious plot, and by Charles. It reminded me of Pinocchio. Charles goes through different places and experiences, meeting big, exploitative characters with his sidekick that doubles as the voice in his head that leads him toward his big moment.

 Here are reviews of other Adrian Tchaikovsky books: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Adrian

🤖🦾🦿

    Come & Get It by Kiley Reid has a cast of eight women. Their backstories have similarities, but differ in how family and authorities respond. Once, a character, when she was sixteen, almost hit a man with her car, and he had a heart attack and died. She receives support, counseling, and understanding. Another character accidentally kills a dog, and she is shamed and shunned. Reid weaves these experiences into the choices they make in the book. As someone who frequently wonders what causes someone to do, say, or act in unwise ways, I found this book fascinating. It has a large build-up to a critical moment. The aftermath is surprising to me. Reid's writing is tight and suspenseful. 

🐷📚💵🐖

   I have recently discovered the writer Mur Lafferty, a Hugo Award Finalist. She writes Sci-Fi that reminds me of Connie Willis, my favorite author. When I visited her website (https://murverse.com/about/), I saw that Connie Willis is one of her influential authors. This week, I listened to Six Wakes. A spaceship carries six crew members to a planet to colonize life. Cloning technology has been established, and many people use it to extend their lives. Maria Arena awakens in a clone vat without memories of her time on the ship save for her orientation: meaning she has died and the last mind map available for her clone is the start of the voyage. Around her are her fellow crew members also emerging from clone vats, plus several dead bodies. It is a locked room mystery. One of the crew members killed the others and then died as well. But no one has memories of their last days, which makes it difficult to know who to trust. Maria, the lowliest member of the crew, races to solve the mystery before the killer remembers and seeks to accomplish their mission. A great book from a sci-fi perspective, not only predicting cloning but also many of the problems surrounding clones. The book is a tantalizing mystery. So good!

🛸🐷🚀🧑‍🚀👯