This novel is told by the voice of the artificial intelligence. "He" has a ship to oversee, to drive it to the promise land, and cannot afford interference from these curious humans with its job. You understand.The effect is engaging. This is one of the few Sawyer novels (or the only one I remember) that features fewer philosophical discussions otherwise common in his books. I enjoy those, however the strengths of this book lie more elsewhere: the air of novelty of a story written from the perspective of the AI (it's not the first, but it's rare enough), the detective attempt of the main (human) character to find out what is going on, the story of the team traveling for years to reach their destination to a distant star. All that, with surprises on top.Close to the speed of light travel, relativity, sentient AI (which hasn't heard of the three laws), apocalyptic event, mysterious alien message, copy of a human consciousness into a computer, these are ingredients of the story.The more I think about this book, the more I realize that it's a quite unusual Sawyer. I don't think many other books have memorable plots. Yet, this novel does have a well constructed plot (of detective story), it keeps the reader engaged, from a startling beginning to the final surprises the story reserves, going through several sub-stories, some of which relevant. Not the love stories, those are just there.Characterization is not a strong area. If you're looking for great psychological portraits, or very differentiated, meaningful characters, this is probably not the book for you. Characters have a functional role, in the weaving of the story, and they perform it.The sentient AI voice gives an interesting tone to the entire story. As much as I love that, it has its weirdness: the voice is non-linear, so to speak. It starts out sounding cruel, then for most of the book it has an air of superiority, then towards the end it's quite indistinct. Still, interesting.A sentient AI with feelings of superiority, willing to do everything to give a future to this whiny human race. I'd bet on it. If you want to know if this book might be for you, you could read the first chapter. Seeing that it gives you a quite shocking entry in the story and things get better from there, it'll probably make it or break it for you. This work by Alfaniel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
This is a 2.5 star book. Because GoodReads doesn't like fractions, I almost gave this book 2 stars.This is the story of a giant space ark on a decade-long journey to another planet, and the artificial intelligence who runs the ship. The most interesting thing about the story is it's written from the perspective of the AI, who's running a neural net and therefore has a bit of a personality. That's cool. But the plot is a let down -- the computer causes the death of a human early in the story, and spends the rest of the book trying to cover it up. We presume he's got a good reason, and a plausible explanation that is introduced early turns out to be a long and drawn out red herring. The real explanation for his behavior is just plopped down on the table just before the book ends, and if there were clues that could have led me to deduce it I missed them all. Maybe they're there and you could catch them. Some of the not-as-hard-as-it-pretends-to-be science in this book is thought-provoking, and the book is an easy read, both of which were critical in my pushing to 3 stars instead of 2. The ultimate reason why I can't limit this book to 2 stars despite its flaws is the epilogue, which is a very satisfying addition and ties up a loose end I thought maybe the author had forgotten about. If you go in with sufficiently lowered expectations, and you've got a bedside table devoid of stacks of books, this is worth a read.
Do You like book Golden Fleece (1999)?
One of the early works of Robert J. Sawyer, this is a murder mystery set on the space ship "Argo." Traveling 47 light-years to begin a new colony world, with 10,034 people, the AI tells the story of how - and why - he murdered passenger Diana Chandler.What is interesting about this story - beyond the murder mystery - is Sawyer's ability to get inside the heads of the characters with surprising clarity: you can understand these folks, and rarely do they do something that makes you scratch your head.
—Nathan Burgoine
10.000 people on a starship are the last human survivors but they don´t know. The starship AI does know though, and is trying to keep it a secret. Also, there is a message from an alien civilisation that gets deciphered, and it turns out to be something nasty.
—Jochem Markestijn
"Mi chiamo Jason e sono il più perfetto infallibile ed egocentrico computer mai fabbricato. E guido la mia astronave tra mille pericoli alla volta di un pianeta lontano, per impiantare una nuova colonia di umani nello spazio. Purtroppo l'altro giorno la dottoressa Chandler, uno degli astrofisici, è morta. Un suicidio, dico io, ma il marito è convinto che Diana sia stata ammazzata da me. Dal computer di bordo, come nei vecchi film di fantascienza. Inconcepibile, non trovate? Ma, per una volta, vero."
—Matteo Pellegrini
