Here is a finalist review for a full read 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.

Our Simulated Selves by Nikki Null

Who came first, the chick or the egg?

Our Simulated Selves is a masterful science fiction tale about a very unhappy man who is trying to figure out what is wrong with himself. The book starts off with a bang that hooks you in and then peppers in what at first appears to be a romance. What you get in the end is a totally mind bending para/meta-reality journey about self actualization. The author takes you from a pretty basic romance with glib dialogue and innocuous plot details and walks you along into an earth shattering resolution about self identity where everything matters. The characters, pacing, resolution and point of the whole story was stunning and I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this book. I just kept being shocked at each twist that keeps getting layered on and how the twists relate to the main character. The heart of this story is a transgender journey but make no mistake—this is not a book that exploits tokenism. This is a thoughtful and well told story and just a damn good science fiction novel all around. It has so much heart and it gave me chills to finish. This book is for anyone.

The biggest threat to myself was myself.

The self loathing of the main character and all his vulnerabilities are really fleshed out to the point that the reader also gets annoyed with how dumb he is. And that’s the point. Ren is a man in deep dispossession of self identity and you join him as he spins his wheels trying to court a young woman.

It wasn’t that I hated myself. It was that I didn’t even know who I was.

But then the world falls apart and Ren is stuck with his dream girl. Just when I think he’s going to keep doing the same dumb things the story slowly walks you down a different path and you start to understand what the book is really about. And then the story expands into all the possibilities of what can happen to a single person and the potentials of who they can become.

My life was never a romance. It was sci-fi.

The real relationship that Ren and Jeanne form is truly something beautiful.

In lieu of cracking my egg, Jeanne had been building a nest.

I suspect that, aside from this being a genuinely great sci-fi book, that this book could legitimately help a lot of people understand themselves. Based on the author’s notes, it seems semi-autobiographical and I greatly appreciate the thought and clear love they put into the work. This book is ultimately about choosing happiness through authenticity and I highly recommend it.

I received a free copy as a judge for the SPSFC5 competition. This review has no bearing on the book’s standing in the competition.

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This review is also posted on Wick’s Goodreads profile. Wick’s website is here.

Here is a finalist review for a full read 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.

Artificial Selection by Marianna Pickles

Cozy, character driven mystery.

Artificial Selection starts out a bit quirky and with a somewhat dull mystery: who’s been stealing pages from a library book? The MC Charlotte and her side-kick AI assistant, named Ben, are on the case as they represent the Department of Awkward Questions for the corporatocracy that has subsumed power over post-melt Britain. The beginning was slow and with a dynamic between these two characters I found to be a bit dull. However as the book went on, I realized this was more of a cozy character driven story. Flashbacks of Charlotte were at first obtrusive but then I realized they were weaving into the main story line and everything was related. It takes time, but Charlotte does get the fleshing out she deserves and by the end of the story I was really sympathetic toward her and why she had such an attached relationship to Ben.

This isn’t a murder mystery but that doesn’t mean the stakes aren’t high. Beneath the plot is a story about class struggle in a corporate authoritarian society. The corporation has a tight grip on immigration and uses an algorithmic standard for who comes and who goes. Charlotte navigates the depths of the ruling class’s dependence on an algorithm they don’t really understand and how she herself found favor in the algorithm for reasons she doesn’t quite know. What I enjoyed about this social arrangement is that it’s not that different from modern ones today. It’s not overtly totalitarian but it is inherently unjust and full of bias where the responsibility is off loaded to a third party. There are cautionary tales in the book that are very relevant for the present moment without being heavy handed.

Overall, this was a slow but enjoyable read that sticks the landing in a character driven narrative.

I received a free copy as a judge for the SPSFC5 competition. This review has no bearing on the book’s standing in the competition.A slick cyberpunk identity crisis.

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This review is also posted on Wick’s Goodreads profile. Wick’s website is here.

Here is a finalist review for a full read 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.

FrostByte by N.S. Chaudhury

A slick cyberpunk identity crisis.

Frostbyte is a well written tale about a young woman who loses her identity (or her body?) and is reincorporated into a new illegal body to uncover the mystery surrounding her previous death. It turns into a found family story with a charming cast of characters that slowly burn their way into meaningful and complex relationships. The cyberpunk world strikes a great balance between being derivative of other cyberpunk worlds but it certainly creates its own tech ecosystem that has excellent continuity and impact on the characters and the plot. To me the crowning achievement of the work is the thoughtful world building and social stratifications that surrounds the story.

The prose is really quite economic as well with a driving mystery that keeps the momentum going. For me the front end of the book was a tad too top heavy and it took a bit before the overall thrust got going. The layered world building at times was also overwhelming but these were minor issues. It was overall an enjoyable and engaging read.

I received a free copy as a judge for the SPSFC5 competition and this review has no bearing on the book’s standing in the competition.

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This review is also posted on Wick’s Goodreads profile. Wick’s website is here.

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.

Cold Blooded by Rohan O’Duill

Mech corporate warfare.

This is a military sci-fi action story that takes place at the rim of the solar system where the social structure has degenerated into corporate rivalry over scarce resources. The economic interests of the corporate entities are defended by mech warriors. This book is full of war games, raiding parties and salty characters. The narrative is tight and the writing was fun. It’s a story that doesn’t take itself too seriously and because of that, the serious parts work really well. While the settings and elements were a tad derivative, the crown jewel of the book are the characters and their relationships. Mint is a middle aged mech marine with plenty of attitude but of course an endearing heart of gold that comes out later in the story with a surprising gesture she makes to someone with whom she has a complicated past. The action was solid and the violence gratuitous. If you’re a fan of military sci-fi, this is a home run.

Time Traitors by Eli Donovan

Time Traitors is a fun adventure book focusing on a team of scientists that go into the past to study dinosaurs, their rival poachers, and the history between them. The writing is clean and economical and the story doesn’t get lost in the weeds of exposition or over-explaining. When we’re talking about a time traveling industry that gets almost on the same level as civilian air travel, I don’t really need too much explaining about how this works because I’m already showing up with my disbelief suspended and the author does a good job of laying down the necessary but scarce details. All I needed is that “time tubes” are doing the time traveling heavy lifting and that’s what I got. The author moves along quickly with two POVs: one a PhD who is trying her best to study dinosaurs and a poacher. These two characters are deeply connected and their relationship is one of the main drivers of the story. There is a dash of budding romance which is welcomed alongside the action that bursts out about halfway through the book. The storytelling is tight and no energy is wasted. The tension, characterization and pacing were all very well done and I was never bored. This is a thriller that I found worthwhile to read although I don’t think it offers much profundity beyond the action. At any rate, I recommend it for fans of thrillers and romance and a dash of dinosaurs.

ab initio by Jacob Terracina

A brilliant book about the humanity and morality of AI

I’ve got a lot to say about this book but my take home is that this is an impressive science fiction novel by any standard. The fact that it is self-pub and a debut novel only adds the accomplishment of Ab Initio. If you had told me Neal Stephenson wrote this book I wouldn’t have doubted it for a moment. This book does everything right and I immensely enjoyed it. Make no mistake: Jacob Terracina is a talented author and knows exactly what he’s doing.

This book is about a group of tech researchers who develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the social and philosophical implications. So what? Aren’t books like that a dime a dozen? Yes, but rarely do they succeed with such engrossing story telling, characterization, tension and impact on not only the reader but that real life implications of such a technology being unleashed. The story is told through several POVs but only two timelines: the events leading up to AGI being developed and the inevitable court aftermath of the social implications of the AGI, namely the AGI’s question of civil liberties. These two timelines were a great choice to explore AGI from two ends of this spectrum.

The characters are the crowning achievement of the book. Every character matters, has depth, personality and actually drives the plot. Raz, the evolutionary biologist turned engineer, is an endearing and inviting character and I loved his relationship with Mei—there was some serious and thoughtful development that went into the complex relationship between these two characters. Getting to know Mei and Markus (wow what a character) through the eyes of Raz was also a delight. The dynamic developed between these developers, their achievements and neurosis was all masterfully done. And then the other POVs—the dueling lawyers of the prosecution and defence—were also such a treat to read. A lazier author would’ve made these characters little more than plot devices. But not Terracina. He fleshed out the lawyers and even more—he made their personalities and struggles a major factor in the climax and resolution of the book. I can’t stress it enough: this is a character driven plot.

This book is also funny.

Work Chat was for communication. Speaking was apparently just an audio alert signal for the chat.

Chemistry existed well before you Plancks and your Bohrs and your Heisenbergs and you Schrodinger’s dropped a heavy quantum turd on the party.

Every page seethes with a dry and self-deprecating humor. The humor brings the characters to life and makes the reader sympathetic. This is particularly well done with Raz who steals the show with his neurosis.

The plot is compelling. You want to know how the AGI is being developed and it’s just so cool how quantum computing paired with the ab initio development of a real simulated brain is laid out here. The suspension of disbelief was very well done and the thrust of the book is always moving with wit, tragedy and complexity on every page. Not only do you get great science fiction writing from someone who understands science and engineering but you get great storytelling as well. If all of that weren’t satisfying enough, the climax and ending were profound

SPOILIES:

The main conflict of the book is if the AGI, a little girl named Abbi, should have autonomous rights. The matter is handled in a trial of the century. The prosecution is about to win at the end but the lawyer grows a conscience and realizes that if the AGI loses civil rights, it will be subsumed but a tech overlord company and she will be copied and enslaved for eternity.

Immortality minus the protections we seek here today will be a living, truly inescapable hell.

The dubious solution? The AGI must have mortality. Programmed death is the only way for the AGI to obtain the same rights as a human being and I got to say: WOW. What an incredible conclusion. It was a great resolution that also felt right. How could a sentient being expect the same human rights when they live forever? So the trade off is the AGI is either an eternal slave or lives a fleeting but free existence. Really awesome stuff. The thought that went into the morality of AGI is astounding. Bravo.

Like the author says in his afterward: It takes guts to read a self-published debut from some no-name dipshit I would say the gamble here paid off. I highly recommend this book.

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

For more team updates, check out our team page here.

The process

We began the competition with 25 books.

At least two judges sampled each of these, often three or all four of us. We conferred and discussed, and we settled on six Quarterfinalists.

The Final Season, by Andrew Gillsmith

Gamer, by Belinda Crawford

Who Nuked Silicon Valley?, by Mike Donoghue

The Warm Machine, by Aimee Cozza

The Triangle Age, by David Aumelas

Black Sails to Sunward, by Sheila Jenné

At least three of us read each of these books and posted individual reviews, which you can find linked from our team page here.

We enjoyed each of these books and the wonderful creativity and imagination that each contained, and each book was absolutely worthy of its progress in the competition. However, we have to pick two semifinalists. Each judge rated the quarterfinalists they read on a 1-10 scale, and we ranked them by their average rating by all judges who read each book. Our rating process led us to a very close finish between three books:

Our two semifinalists ended up with an average rating of 8.0, while our third-place book was just a hair behind at a 7.875. With sincere appreciation to the twenty-five authors who shared their books, their worlds, and their imagination with us, we are ready to announce our two semifinalists, each of which will go into the next round (and beyond, if they make it to the finals) with an 8.0 rating from our team.

Our Semifinalists Are:

Congratulations to the semifinalists, the quarterfinalists, and to all our authors for sharing your work and putting your cool, imaginative ideas out there into the world. We’re all the better for it.

Here is a quarterfinalist review for a full read for Team 1.21 Gigawatts for the first round of SPSFC#5 by team judge Archie Kregear. For more information about the team and our progress, please go to the team update page here.

Blurb

When a robot built for construction work first sees an angular, sleek prototype military robot slink onto the base he’s working outside of, he immediately falls in love. The problem is, only anomalous bots understand the concept of love, and the lowly laborbot has not deviated from his default programming once. So he thinks, anyway. When the laborbot is scheduled for decommission, the military bot cannot possibly live without him, and the two bots set out on a path to find the fabled anomalous robot utopia Root.

My Review

Well, what’s not to love about a two robots, one built for construction and the other for military, becoming self aware and forming a relationship? The story is told from the POV of the laborbot, Sterling, as it is upgraded and nurtured by the military bot, Zev. The plot is driven by the search for parts, avoiding surveillance of those looking for rogue robots, and searching for robot utopia. In some sense the book is similar to any coming of age, or self awareness journey where the characters acquire more things and knowledge. The story often took me back to the late 1980’s and 1990’s when I worked in the computer industry and was constantly searching for parts and software to upgrade computer systems. The endless swapping of chips, boards, and disks then as in this story consumes time. What my background did allow me to see is the author’s extensive knowledge of computing. She put it all on display and thus the details tended to dominate the narrative while the plot took a while to develop and get to the end.

Plot and Characters

There are only two characters that matter, Sterling and Zev. A third character is introduced late in the book in what I feel was a introduction to another story. Zev comes in as the advanced prototype and it takes Sterling as a friend when it discovers the laborbot is self aware. There are parallels to Don Quixote and his relationship to Dulcinea, and others of this trope, as Sterling is greatly improved during the story. Sterling accepts nearly all the upgrades as it lacks the programming to really know what an upgrade will do. What the reader does get to see are the thoughts of Sterling through the upgrade process, which at times I felt were beyond what a laborbot should be able to think/feel. In the end, the character arc for Sterling is complete. Zev, also undergoes some deep introspection and a revelation about who/what he really is.

My thoughts

As the second book I am writing a full review for in SPSFC #5, I found the book well written. There is too much detail about all the upgrades, searching for parts, and explaining what software will do. The plethora of insights on the affects of the upgrades slowed the story down and this took away my enjoyment of the book. There was little tension to make me want to read the next chapter. The revelation of what allowed Zev to be sentient, left me disappointed as it wasn’t as miraculous as I had hoped or expected.

Summation:

The Warm Machine is an excellent dive into what a sentient robot might think and feel. The psychology and philosophy of the robots is explained thoroughly by this unique story and the parallels of how a human might find self-awareness under a mentor are well done. The author shows her mastery of language and does a great job getting into the processor of Sterling to reveal the innerworkings of what life is about.

Here is a quarterfinalist review for a full read for Team 1.21 Gigawatts for the first round of SPSFC#5 by team judge Archie Kregear. For more information about the team and our progress, please go to the team update page here.

Blurb

It’s one thing to know that the End is coming, quite another to know the exact date and time right down to the nanosecond.

Such is the unhappy fate of the inhabitants of Rexos-4, a once-thriving planet that has lived under the doom of an inevitable apocalypse for millennia. Their entire philosophy of life may be summed up by the phrase “Mxtlpicam’ bnak ooligapn,” which in most languages translates to something along the lines of “What’s the bloody point?”

Unbeknownst to the poor Rexans, their predicament has also been the subject of the longest-running and most successful reality television series in galactic history, now translated into over 200 million languages, with closed captioning. With the end of the world just around the corner, the show is entering its all-important final season. Everyone knows how difficult it is to pull off a satisfying finale–such stakes fill even the most hard-boiled Gallywood executives with fear and trembling.

Join Gumpilos Tfliximop, Elvie Renfro, Rufus Camford and a cast of colorful characters as they battle the notorious showrunner (and subverter of expectations) Betty Neezquaff, all while tackling the big questions of life’s meaning and purpose with wit, warmth, and–dare I say–optimism.

The Final Season is The Truman Show meets the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with just a dash of PG Wodehouse.

My review

The premise of The Final Season is simple. The galaxy has been watching a reality show, life on Rexos-4, for thousands of years and the planet is now faced with total extinction. What could be better for the corporation that produces the show than to get a last final season. Then, having two residents of Rexos-4 fall in love, get married, and have a child in spite of the impending doom. Add in lots of corporate drama with colorful characters and present them to the reader with a
writing style similar to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the book is highly enjoyable. The Hitchhiker’s Guide style isn’t maintained throughout as the story winds its way through the drama to the impending doom, which is a pity. The aliens, while not looking like humans, act like humans and left me with the feeling that the story was a familiar plotline set somewhere else in the galaxy. Overall, a well written fun read that lacks meaningful depth of plot.

This is the fourth review of a 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.

Black Sails to Sunward by Sheila Jenné

Swashbuckling Space Adventure

Black Sails is a well-paced, well written space adventure where the author drops a high sea pirate adventure into an geopolitical space opera. This is a fun read driven over a complex romance that is intertwined with the political brinksmanship that bubbles up over the length of the story. There is always a bit of contrivance when an author tries to hammer well worn tropes into a science fiction setting involving a terraformed Mars at war with Earth and the author rides close to that line but I found it to be quite successful.

There were immersion challenges as I first started reading the book. I found an equine Victorian social structure on a terraformed Mars to be a tad too demanding of suspended belief. My initial misgivings gave way as the story picked up with the aristocratic protagonist suddenly thrust into a war in which she must sail on solar wind space ships that function and are crewed remarkably like deep sea ships. Again, this demands a lot of the reader up front but then you realize the author has actually done quite a bit of work in working out the technology and science in which they are trying to immerse the reader. In other words, the author does get the pirate space ship thing to work and to be quite enjoyable. Once that’s out of the way, you get a story full of political and romantic tension which are most definitely related.

I enjoyed that the protagonist has quite the arc by the end which greatly impacts the wider conflicts of the story. And as I approached the end, the author provides more details about why the socio-political structure is the way it is which I found satisfying. The only thing missing for me was a more explicit backstory of the protagonist. The romance and the protagonist’s arc would’ve had more of an impact if an emotional connection was established first with those elements.

Overall, this is a fun and smartly written adventure that I found satisfying.

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

Here is a quarterfinalist reviews for a full read for Team 1.21 Gigawatts for the first round of SPSFC#5 by team judge Archie Kregear. For more information about the team and our progress, please go to the team update page here.

Gamer by Belinda Crawford

Blurb

Vlad – gamer, hacker, scourge… Angel of Death.

Vlad’s parents died in a car accident; she can still feel the flames licking her skin, smell the burning batteries and fire-retardant. Except it wasn’t an accident, someone made it happen.

She’s has spent the last nine years tracking those responsible; planning, plotting. 

She’s almost done.

When the last move is over, her opponent will wish they never played with the Angel of Death.

Get ready to jack in and play along as Crawford masterfully weaves a complex, action-packed tale of virtual reality and revenge.

My Review

I was skeptical as I first started reading Gamer. A young woman, traumatized by an accident that killed her parents and left her physically and emotionally scared. Her pursuit to find the person responsible takes her into the world of her mother, a gamer and her grandmother, an owner of a gaming corporation and player of corporate games. My initial take was this would go along the plot lines of Ready Player One, and there are similarities. I wondered if the book would fit into LitRPG, but after a few chapters that idea was erased and put it into GameLit and could be a techno-thriller but I am not familiar with that genre. If I had read this as a sample in the early rounds, I might not have given it a passing grade. However, once the author has established the characters and world, the book takes off and maintains a fast pace to the end. Then as the blurb says, “Crawford masterfully weaves a complex, action-packed tale of virtual reality and revenge.”

Plot and Characters

Note: Spoilers follow.

The book is in third person following the Vladana Tong whose parents were killed in a car accident. Vlad was seriously injured and traumatized by the accident. The author excellently describes the scenes through Vlad’s flashes back to the accident multiple times. To cope she has taken up gaming and become a hacker and notable character within the gaming world. A world with high end computers running hacked code and players jacking up on high performance drugs. In the real world she is obsessed with finding out who is responsible for her parents death. It is this obsession that drives the plot.

The corporate and family intrigue is dominated by Vlad’s grandmother who plays the stereotypical roles of demanding family matriarch and win at all costs corporate head. She works well in the story as the antagonist and Vlad’s initial suspect. 

On the gaming side of the plot is the team Vlad is recruited onto. Initially the others on the team think she is only an excellent player and it isn’t until late in the book where they find she is a hacker. Vlad, being a loner most of her life, finds it difficult to accept being part of the team while the team slowly considers her a valuable member. In the end they are an integral part to discovering the answers Vlad is looking for. 

As for the science of gaming the author did not stretch my imagination all that much. The world is futuristic but not so much as to provide new ideas or concepts. Jacking up a player’s performance using drugs and the use of player pods or game cubes are not new. With that said, the book is not about the hardware or software. They are part of the world and have been expertly woven into the plot. A reader who is a high-tech gamer would find this acceptable while a non-gamer I do not feel would be overwhelmed. 

My thoughts

As the first book I am writing a full review for in SPSFC #5, I found it well written and enjoyable to read. The writing is excellent, but for my tastes somewhat wordy in defining environments as they slow the pace down. However, there are descriptions which are worth reading just for the excellent wordsmithing. At times the word crafting was worth a double or triple read which slowed down the pace. The wordiness did decrease as the story progressed and did not slow the pace in the last half of the book.

The main character, Vlad, starts off as a highly damaged person. Throughout the book, she suffers more damage and by the end, has not healed. She does find out who is responsible for her mother’s death and gets her revenge, but she remains a person who needs healing. There are hints that she is on the way.

Summation

For the gamer who has mounds of hurt inside, this is a book you will relate to. For the sci-fi fan who is looking for a book based on a leap in science, this will not satisfy your need. For me I can’t recall a book where the MC is so obsessed that they neglect the pain they suffer. It was trough for me to identify with someone who suffers to that extent and neglects their health. Overall, Gamer was exciting to read, fast paced and written well.

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.

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