Reality 36 - Guy Haley

Here's another Post-Collapse story of a sort from Angry Robot.

A little different though in that the protagonists in this novel are a cyborg and an AI. The latter likes to run around physically in a robot body, too.

Apart from having come through wars and conflicts, the human race has also had to deal with the rise of artificial intelligences - some of whom went crazy. There are different designations - some smart enough to be toasters or shoot things, past those that can be pathologists and right up to the Fives. These are sophisticated enough to run governments if they are so inclined.

Along with the recovery came virtual worlds and uploading technology. Of the kind that you need IV and support technology to exist in such as in Tad Williams' Otherworld series. Complete with the baroque fantastical environments, too.

Thanks to the work of an academic and some activists, AI have some civil rights brokered in uneasy compromise. Therefore there are anti-AI fanatics, fanatic AI who want to use technology to control things for themselves, and everything in between.

This is where our heroes come in. An ex-military cyborg and his Five partner do troubleshooting and detective work. They become involved with the death of the leader of the AI rights movement - but he seems to have died multiple times. His best student is on the run and Richards and Klein have to find her before bad things happen to her, too.

A really interesting future setting with realigned political power. Not your overt dystopia or utopia anything, but more along the lines of this is just where we got to in this future. Something that takes a bit more invention and thought in general, I think.

Had no idea who Guy Haley was - but from this book, he is very good.

However, it appears he has committed duology or trilogy or something. As in, cliffhanger! You bastard! So not a completely self-contained story serial as murder investigation type novels usually are, although that part does get solved.

Very good.


4 out of 5