Here are three quarterfinalist reviews for full reads for Team 1.21 Gigawatts for the first round of SPSFC#5 by team judge Wick Welker. For more information about the team and our progress, please go to the team update page here.

Who Nuked Silicon Valley? by Michael Donoghue

Finely crafted cyberpunk realism with heart.

I’m a sucker for stories about amnestic self aware robots, so I was the target audience right away for Who Nuked Silicon Valley. What started out with somewhat vague plot points with very little exposition turned into a well crafted story involving a rag tag found family, a shadow AI super intelligence as well as a satisfying delivery of the cyberpunk premise.

This book was very Neal Stephenson-esque, and it’s not just because this is a cyberpunk book. This is like the updated cyberpunk novel for the 2020s. What I mean is, books like Snow Crash or works by PKD, which helped pioneer the genre, had to create anarcho-capitalist cyberpunk worlds whole clothe out of thin air because when those books were written modern society wasn’t even close to cyberpunk. But now? Our reality is unfortunately approximating much closer to actual cyberpunk fiction and that’s where Who Nuked comes into play.

Michael Donoghue is able to seamlessly take our current techno-corporatocracy, multiply by maybe only two decades, and drop us into his story. The world he creates here is unique not only because it’s immersive, but because it starts looking eerily what our own modern world probably will look like very soon. Instead of PKD inventing funny future brand names like “Ubik” or “Substance D” which separate the reader from the cyberpunk world, Donoghue just uses “Amazon” or “Facebook” without needing to contrive a new cyberpunk world. Because… why? Our real world is just right there to use and he makes it work really well. And that’s what takes this book out of the cyberpunk speculative fiction and brings it to cyberpunk realism.

The prose was economical and compelling. The premise was mysterious but not enough to turn you away. The storytelling is opaque and without heavy-handed narration. The characters Katie and the self-aware bot Livingstone really start to shine by the middle of the book and you begin to see how things connect. Donoghue makes the characters matter and this is clearly a character-driven story. Half way through, I was enjoying the book but felt like it lacked one thing: heart. But then… Donoghue pulls some stuff on you and you realize that he was making things matter in a very emotional way, relevant to all the characters’ backstory, and it lands very well in the feelies department. I’m not even mentioning the most impressive thing about this book: the techno babble. Wow, the author really knows his stuff when it comes to tech, computers and robotics. The author is clearly knowledgeable and it serves the story well. Overall I found this to be a well executed “modern” cyberpunk novel that cuts all the fat and makes the fiction matter. Lots of philosophy about personhood is all over this story.

Triangle Age by David Aumelas

When the future becomes the myth.

The Triangle Age is an unconventional science fiction book. It blends several elements like a far-future arkship premise with a post-cataclysmic vibe. I was very intrigued by the hook of the book and the writing is diminutive, understated and very inviting. The chief characteristic of this book is that it is weird. It starts a little weird, enough to compel you forward and then it gets more weird. In science fiction, weird is good and if you want weird, then this book will check all your boxes. An interesting thing happens as you read along this book and it’s that the literal plot and the main character become more myth than anything else. What I mean is, something has happened to this world and this people in a literal sense but we only get the POV of the main character who doesn’t understand things literally but only within the mythic reality within which he lives. So what we get is a mythic context of what is happening and I think a lot of the weirdness is borne from that POV. This is almost a blend of Piranesi and something Ursula K LeGuin would’ve written. This book does what it sets out to do and it is executed well for what it is. The author clearly has a lot of skill.

The Warm Machine by Aimee Cozza

Emergence through Struggle.

I’m a huge sucker for self aware robot stories so I bought in immediately with this one. The tight prose and smart writing certainly made this an easy and inviting read as well. This is a story about Zev and Sterling, two self aware bots who discover their identities not only through the process of emerging consciousness but through the relationship they have with one another. And that’s what made The Warm Machine unique in this niche was that the characters discover who they are because of their struggle together. Zev and Sterling would be different without one another and most likely worse off. Their relationship did not feel token but organic and I found it well done.

This was a mostly character driven work but with enough plot advancements and action to really keep you going. The two protagonists are seeking a fabled asylum for self aware bots and I got to say I really loved how this worked out and how the story turns out for them. It was both melancholy but inspiring. Reading about two characters eeking out their existence and independence alone and against all odds was deeply inspiring. The technical aspects of the book were really well done and the author is clearly knowledgeable about lots of things. There’s a lot to think about with this story that goes beyond the pages but you can also just enjoy the story for what it is at face value. The author has skill and it really shines. I overall really enjoyed this brief read and highly recommend it.

These reviews are also all posted on Wick’s Goodreads profile. Wick’s website is here.