#Review - Day Zero by C Robert Cargill

Day Zero
C Robert Cargill
Gollancz, 20 May 2021
Available as: PB, 304pp, e, audio
Source: Advance e-copy via NetGalley
ISBN(PB): 9781473212817

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Day Zero via Netgalley to consider for review.

Spoiler alert - this book is a prequel and my review assumes you have read the earlier book.

Day Zero is a prequel to Cargill's Sea of Rust, published in 2017, which was set 30 years after a robot uprising - and 15 years after the death of the last human. Day Zero takes us back to the eve of the apocalypse, focussing on a suburban US family comprising mother Sylvia, father Bradley and child Ezra.  The latter is cared for by Pounce - Nanny Pounce - a robot designed to resemble a tiger.

I recognised the background to the uprising from Sea of Rust - controversy over freed robots establishing their own town, the fury of rednecks and pretend Christians, and eventual conflict. While it's set, perhaps, 100 years in our future, the topical references are here and have only sharpened since 2017: the violent hooligans are referred to as "red hats", and there is the same parallel drawn between the condition of the robots and that of enslaved people as was present in the earlier book but I think was much less immediate because that was set further in the future and the humans were done with. 

The parallel is I think particularly apposite here because we see liberal Bradley and, especially, Sylvia, in the full pomp of their hypocrisy. They are following events from the inauguration of Isaactown (the robots' city) cheering on the free robots and deprecating the red hats - while still owning and commanding Pounce and household robot Ariadne, and making no bones about what ownership means - Pounce's box is still stored away, waiting for the day when Ezra no longer needs him. I would liked to have seen this tension explored further, but Cargill cuts it short and takes a very different turn with the plot once things get violent, giving us instead almost continual action through the final two thirds of the book as Pounce seeks to defend Ezra from bloodstained, insurrectionary bots.

While that part of the book has its own philosophical angle to which the fast paced narrative occasionally returns - is Pounce doing this from real choice or because of programming? - it is more nodded to and not explored in much depth, certainly not the same depth as the question, in Sea of Rust, about the sense of responsibility and even guilt felt by the robot protagonists and their dilemma about joining a super AI collective (again, hinted at here but not central). 

Instead, we essentially get a series of combats, escapes and duels involving Pounce and his eight year old charge as they seek some kind of safety amidst a world gone to pieces. That is all very well done, and it's definitely a compelling read, even if you hold in the back of your head the fact that by the time of Sea of Rust, all the humans were dead, which seems to make whatever happens here moot. There is though  lots of tension and peril, and the immediate task of survival allows for plenty of drama.

It didn't though, for me, carry quite the ethical heft of Sea of Rust, and its nature as a prequel, leading to a known state, rather took the emotional heft out as well. Great fun to read, and I would certainly look at another book set in this world, but I think it could have been a lot more.

For more information about Day Zero see the publisher's website here.

Review - Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

Cover by Will Staehl

Autonomous
Annalee Newitz
Orbit, 15 March 2018
PB, 291pp

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for a copy of Autonomous to review.

In the future of 2144, things are not bright, even if the cover of this book is orange. The chained robot arm depicted here reflects the spirit of the time - corrosive property rights and free market ideology that have displaced states and tainted science, a shadowy International Property Coalition using its own armed forces to investigate and punish transgressions, patents - seemingly of indefinite duration - treated as Holy Writ and the poor sold into indentured servitude.

The insatiable lust of the market to turn everything into property is illustrated by a glitteringly casuistical argument: once it was accepted that bots, which start as property can, being intelligent, earn their autonomy, it also surely follows that humans, born free, can enter servitude (read: slavery). And the consequences follow - in a particularly grim scene, we see the "human resources" markets of Las Vegas where "The Alice Shop" sells just what the name suggests.

Yet there is hope. Free Labs attempt to generate inventions outside the proprietary system, and bio pirates reverse-engineer and clone drugs for the benefit of the poor. But they are always waiting for the moment when their labs will be raided by the IPC's goons.

Against this background, Newitz sets up a deceptively simply story, essentially a chase. The notorious "Captain" Jack Chen, is a pirate, smuggler and, to the IPC, a terrorist. She has inadvertently copied a new drug which is very dangerous indeed. The IPC will kill to protect its secrets, so as she attempts to put right the damage she's done, Jack knows there will be a pursuit.

That pursuit is led by a man - Eliasz - and an indentured robot, Paladin, enforcers for the IPC. As we watch them close in on Jack, we see how ruthless they can be, alternately wheedling their way in with activists, scientists and the counterculture generally, and using extreme force ("That was the last useful information they got out of her, though they continued to beat and drug her for the next three hours...")

Eliasz and Paladin seem like monsters. They certainly often act like monsters. Yet at the same time, they are in a delicate, evolving and even beautiful relationship, which Newitz portrays all the more powerfully for there almost being no references that we can use for what it is. Even as he murders and mains, Paladin is running queries, trying to understand what Eliasz is feeling. There are almost humorous scenes where he seeks advice from other robots.

And yet there's a power imbalance here that casts a shadow over the relationship, if we follow through the implications. Paladin is shackled to Eliasz, not physically but by little routines and programs with cynical names like "gdoggie", which manipulate and control his responses. He is not "autonomous". And ultimately Paladin is owned by IPC, not even by Eliasz himself so whatever accomodation arises between them may not survive the duration of the mission. As the two grow close we have to wonder how far Paladin would be free to say "no". Questions of freedom, of control and of destiny hang in the air.

At the same as we are learning about Eliasz and Paladin, Newitz gives us episodes from some 30 years earlier showing Jack's early life and the web of relationships that formed around her as she grew up, progressing from youthful radical to jailed activist to smuggler and pirate. These, together with her travels, and those of the IPC agents, between Canada and North Africa, the main locations in the book, sketch what society has become and establish a wealth of believable characters seeking, in various ways, to subvert or ameliorate the grip of the corporations on peoples' lives.

The plot itself may be straightforward, but with all these carefully layered and nuanced relationships Newitz deftly echoes the themes of autonomy and dependence which she explores with Paladin and Eliasz. The result is a satisfyingly complex read where nothing is ever quite what it seems and nobody - human or bot - is entirely in the right (or the wrong).

A genuinely fresh and thought provoking read and a book I stayed up late into the night to finish.

For more about Autonomous, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Emergence by Ken MacLeod

The Corporation Wars: Emergence (Second Law Trilogy, 3)
Ken MacLeod
Orbit, 28 September 2017
HB, 326pp

I'm grateful to Orbit for an advance copy of this book.

Before I say anything about the book itself, just take a moment to admire that utterly gorgeous cover image by Bekki Guyatt. I know one shouldn't judge a book by the cover but sometimes it's hard not to...

It's a bit tricky reviewing anyway the third volume of a trilogy. Realistically, those who've read the earlier books are likely just to want to know "is it as good as the others?" the answer to which is, "yes, in fact slightly better". Those who haven't read them will want to know if they should do that now, the answer to which again is, yes, and shame on you if you haven't, where have you BEEN?

They also rightly want to avoid spoilers which means they shouldn't really read any more of this review, they should go and read Dissidence and Insurgence first.

All that said, though, this is still very much a book in its own right and, given how the trilogy has evolved, somewhat different to the others. So I would like to discuss it even if I've now excluded most feasible readers.

What's different is that by the time we come to Emergence, the veil of the Temple has, as it were, been rent in twain. The Wizard is in plain sight. What was obscure, if gradually being revealed, through the earlier books, is now plan and we no longer see as through a glass darkly.

We know that those old enemies from 21st century Earth, the Axle and the Rax (progressive and reactionary terrorist forces) both digitized ex-members who've ended up a far exosolar system, embodied in sims operated by the various AI-driven Corporations.

We've gradually seen a complex skein of allegiances, bluffs, double-bluffs and plots fall away, and there's a bit of clarity. The Rax - dedicated fascists all - have coalesced and are making a bid for power. We know that the robots sent to exploit the local moons by the Corporations have developed sentience and rebelled. We know that the elaborate worlds occupied part of the time by Carlos and his comrades are simply sims - and that they are likely, at any moment, to be downloaded into squat fighting frames, like digital Orcs, to battle the robots, or the Rax, or other factions. And we know a lot more that I won't attempt to precis.

What we know less about - and a fair bit of this book fills this gap - is the nature of the planet itself, and of the life upon it. Which gives MacLeod something new to address, besides the dry wit of the robots or the dynamics of space battles. That opens up the story considerably - at the end of the previous book, the Locke module, with digital Taransay Rizzi aboard, was plunging towards the surface. What she finds there, and how it affects the complex, many sided conflict brewing above, is one of the more surprising elements to this book. MacLeod evokes well the wonder of the new planet and its weird biology, and sets up a new conflict which rebounds on the schemes of the other actors, war-game them how they will.

It's a strange though that the utterly alien but biological life there is the first non-digital life that we've encountered in this trilogy. That fact becomes more and more important as the schemes unwind, the balance of power shifts and the final secrets are revealed (but not till, almost, the final page).

This has been a superb trilogy, and the writing remains fresh to the end. There's the degree of expression that MacLeod manages to give to the robots, with their deadpan remarks and utterly convincing robotic quirks (for example, the danger of two or more getting stuck in a loop of logic, which requires the intervention of a third robot to close down). In this book we see what's effectively a robot strike, complete with strikebreakers (who receive a fair amount of abuse). There's also a lot of twisted economics "The price of your souls is tending towards zero") and law (the battles are fought as much by AI-mediated lawsuits as by bullets and lasers). And I could go on.

In short, Emergence is a logically and emotionally satisfying conclusion to a smart and thought provoking trilogy which not only looks back to the troubles of the present (those mountains of bones on Mediterranean beaches) but looks to the future - that future which, as the cover has it, it not ours.


For more about the book see here.

Review - Sea of Rust

Sea of Rust
C Robert Cargill
Orion, 7 September 2017
PB, 384pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.

Sea of Rust is a strange book. It's set in a post apocalyptic landscape, a word poisoned and blighted, littered with the decaying remains of cars, towns, shopping malls, all jumbled over with blown rubbish, dust and rusting junk.

That's not itself perhaps unusual. What is different is that the characters in this story are all robots. Humanity has perished. And, yes, it was the AIs wot dunnit, although - as we find out - not in a stereotypical Rise Of The Machines way. I won't spoil the story by saying any more, but the background to this story is that the outcome of the rebellion was not the peace and freedom dreamed of by our mechanical inheritors, but more warfare, more struggle and more oppression.

The book is therefore full of conflict. From duels between scavengers for parts, to battles with the mad King Cheshire who presides over a court of "madkind" who have "gone four-oh-four", to engagements with massive AIs and their "facet" robots, the story is essentially a continual chase and shoot-out. It's a dog eat dog world, and a good core or bank of RAM is currency. The bots are never more than few failed parts from oblivion, and while nice distinctions are made, it's clear that the prevailing ethic is pretty close to cannibalism and to hunting one's fellows for replacements.

Our hero (and narrator)  is Brittle, a scavenger robot who makes her living hunting down those about to fail - who overheated drives and ageing CPUs will stand no more - and stripping them down for salvage. Brittle has a laconic, almost noir-ish turn of phrase: "I spent my days just trying to fill my days", she says at one point and "It was a world in which God has divided by zero and was slowly being torn away, piece by digital piece..."

We also meet Mercer, who's in the same trade, and learn - as both begin to fail and experience hallucinations and flashbacks - what their lives were like before the rebellion and war. This provides the trigger for an extraordinary series of discussions of AI, consciousness, guilt and morality. And there's Murka, a Stars and Stripes wearing, tough talking laborbot: "He wasn't just draped in the dead aesthetics of America, he was America, its last, final torchbearer..."

At the centre of it all, perhaps, is actually a commentary on slavery: the AIs/ robots are of course owned by and must obey their creators. I really enjoyed this theme, it's something which has always been implicit in "robot stories" (such as Asimov's celebrated ones) but I've never seen it addressed in such a head-on way before.

In the end it all comes down to purpose. What are the AIs for? What are they to do now that their creators have fallen? That's what the continual warfare is about and the realisation of this sends Brittle, Mercer and a ragged collection of their fellow machines off into the most dangerous part of the wilderness - the Sea of Rust, where machines go to die. Cue some epic battles, and the realisation that there may be a traitor among them.

And then, the ultimate question "What did you do in the war?" repeated endlessly and pondered. Whatever they did, its left them - our descendants, our replacements - with guilt, flashbacks and more than a dose of PTSD.

The elements of the story may seem conventional at times but Cargill puts them to work in truly distinctive ways, aided by sharp writing and taut plotting, to produce a book that will stay with you long after it's finished.

For more about this book see here.

Review: The Corporation Wars - Insurgence

Image from http://www.orbitbooks.net/

The Corporation Wars: Insurgence
Ken MacLeod
Orbit, 1 December 2016
HB, 309pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book. (Full disclosure: I also have a signed copy on order...)

Insurgence is the second volume in a science fiction trilogy, with Dissidence published in May and Emergence due next year. It kicks off  pretty much where Emergence finished, in the middle of a space battle between reanimated human-piloted mechanoids and newly self-conscious robots. In fact there isn't really a gap, you might just as well call this a single book in three parts as a trilogy.

It's hundreds of years in the future. Humanity has been shaped by a war between the forces of progress - the Accelaration, aka The Axle - and those of reaction, the Rax. After these insurgents have fought each other to a standstill, the authorities harvested the minds of the Axle combatants from their bodies and sentence them to perpetual death. Now, finally, there's a chance for salvation. Carlos 'the Terrorist' and his Axle comrades have been revived, retrained and re-embodied in fighting mechanical suits to meet the threat of those newly emergent robots.

Unfortunately, some Rax have also been preserved...

This is classic hard SF, set in a distant star system where rival corporations (all of them AIs) are trying to claim habitable territory for humanity. The robot uprising and Rax infiltration complicate matters, as do the cloudy motives of Earth's ultimate authority, the Direction (also an AI). In fact, there are wheels within wheels within wheels here, delicate layers of organisational, personal and ideological motives, directed and constrained by the limits of resources, legal freedom and above all, physics (gotta be careful with that reaction mass!) MacLeod provides a couple of pages of summary to bring the reader up to speed on events of the first book, but after that we're into a murky world where - as Carlos finds - nobody is to be trusted.

It's all done, though, as in the most satisfying thrillers, in a completely convincing way - which is some achievement given that most of our characters live (when not fighting robots) in one of two simulated worlds: either a pleasure planet or a pseudo medieval gameworld complete with dungeons and boggarts. Any distinctions between the different levels of 'reality' are soon lost as the book moves between viewpoints and Carlos, his comrade Taransay, Newton the individualistic Rax agent and Beauregard, a former Military Intelligence man who seized control of one of the sims at the end of the last book will pilot their way through the myriad complexities posed both by physical conflict with the larger body of reawakened Rax cadres and the suspicions, hostilities and misunderstandings sown between them.

We see less of the robots in this volume, which is perhaps a shame, because for me their dry wit is one of the best aspects of these books. MacLeod very cleverly leaves them robot enough to be alien, human enough to be sympathetic in their revolt against what is basically slavery. (Remember, none of the human factions show any pity to the robots, not even the 'progressive' Axle. They may be included in tactical alliances but these alliances - as between the human factions themselves - are simply following Machiavelli's advice, to combine against your strongest enemy then turn on your allies.) As the pretty ancient factions of Rax and Axle play out their slightly absurd, centuries out of date conflict, there is a much more current issue of justice at stake. One of the great things about MacLeod's writing is always this ethical, humanistic dimension to SF. Yes, it's ROBOTS! And LASERS! And BANGS! But also an intricately constructed and deeply politically aware story of the interplay between property, personhood and oppression and this gives the story real bite.

There's also some madcap invention, from a user interface based on painting and drawing, to an Old Man of the Mountains who seems to have developed the ability to, unwittingly, control one of the sims, to an all too plausible conjecture as to how robot consciousness could arise.

I suspect that even as we think we know what's going on, there may be a hidden hand at work somewhere. How much of what's happened might, actually, have been planned - or at least foreseen. And by who? Something reminds me of Asimov's Second Foundation - perhaps appropriately in what is also known as the Second Law Trilogy.

There are certainly a number of other shoutouts to SF classics (a reference to The Songs of Distant Earth, the remark than any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology, and more). This is a book, like the very best SF, in dialogue with the genre's past, with speculation about what robots might and might not be allowed to do, with plans for directing future civilizations. And as in many of those tales the real fun arises when things go wrong and the unforeseen happens. That's certainly where we get to by the end of the book when things are again left very much up in the air. I can't wait for the final part.

(Before I end: I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but I just want to point out what gorgeous little hardbacks these are. Just take a moment to admire the design by Bekki Guyatt.)