Rosebud (SF) - Paul Cornell ***

Paul Cornell is probably now best known as the author of excellent urban fantasies such as London Falling, but he is well grounded in writing science fiction and in this novella demonstrates the impressive range of his imagination. I need to say up front that Rosebud is a really interesting piece of writing, and the reason I've only given it three stars is that I am not sure that it works.

Rosebud is a tiny spacecraft, less than a millimetre across, crewed by five AI entities that we first meet in a range of forms from a goth to a sweary balloon to a creature constructed only of hands. These entities are already in an uncertain relationship with the distant Earth – now, more concerns are thrown their way by the arrival of what appears to be another tiny spaceship, perhaps of alien origin.

Over the years, very few SF books have successfully tackled truly alien protagonists. Here we have the alien but (to some extent) anthropomorphic AI entities plus that initially inscrutable new arrival. In tackling a topic like this, Cornell has really tried something extraordinary, which must be lauded. Sadly, though, for me the experiment didn’t work. Perhaps the reason that we don’t usually get truly alien protagonists is that they are difficult to identify with. I couldn’t engage with the AI characters – in fact I nearly gave up reading half way though. I’m glad I persevered, but for me the process of working through this novella was more an intellectual reward than true enjoyment.

It probably doesn’t help that, presumably as part of underlining that alien feel, we are thrown in at the deep end at the start, and in the interaction with the new micro-ship, it’s quite difficult to follow what is happening. Another potential issue is the use of the easily misunderstood physics concept of time crystals, which are nowhere near as impressive as they sound, as a MacGuffin. I don’t require totally solid science in SF – it’s the ‘fiction’ part that’s key, but this is a topic where the science itself is extremely obscure, so it piles on extra potential for a lack of engagement. (It was also somewhat eyebrow raising that somehow the AI’s were able to assume nano-scale human bodies – biological organisms simply can’t physically scale to that degree – but that’s more the traditionally acceptable face of unlikely science in science fiction.)

I don’t want to put anyone off trying Rosebud. It’s daring and original. But it wasn’t for me.

Paperback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Comments

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader. We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard. This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here. We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...

Einstein's Fridge - Paul Sen ****

In Einstein's Fridge (interesting factoid: this is at least the third popular science book to be named after Einstein's not particularly exciting refrigerator), Paul Sen has taken on a scary challenge. As Jim Al-Khalili made clear in his excellent The World According to Physics , our physical understanding of reality rests on three pillars: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. But there is no doubt that the third of these, the topic of Sen's book, is a hard sell. While it's true that these are the three pillars of physics, from the point of view of making interesting popular science, the first two might be considered pillars of gold and platinum, while the third is a pillar of salt. Relativity and quantum theory are very much of the twentieth century. They are exciting and sometimes downright weird and wonderful. Thermodynamics, by contrast, has a very Victorian feel and, well, is uninspiring. Luckily, though, thermodynamics is important enough, lying behind ...

Search This Blog