I thought about the rating for this one for awhile, and a solid three stars doesn’t quite capture it. It’s better than that, but has some issues that I found…not frustrating….or off-putting exactly, but definitely distracting. So we are in the future, 2144 to be exact, and the patenting of technology, medical research, information, and biotech is one of the driving features of our society. We follow a few different storylines here, both parallel and intersecting. We have Jack Chen, an underground medical researcher/gene coder […]
A is for Autonomous
Technically, I started this book in 2018, but I did the bulk of it on the first of January, so I’m giving myself a pass and starting with it. A book with an “A” title is a good place to start. Autonomous is about a future where everything is patented, and people, as individual citizens, are treated like potential property and capital rather than individuals who possess innate rights. The impetus for this change in thinking and living comes from the contradiction that exists when […]
The future is augmented
I’m combining my reviews for Company Town and Autonomous for a couple of reasons. 1. Both stories happen in the future 2. Both stories take place in Canada 3. Both authors have won awards for their books 4. The authors have appeared together on panels to discuss their work, where they are often likely to discuss human/robot sex, for reasons which will become clear in this review. Writing about the future is a broad topic and goes by a lot of descriptors—science fiction, utopian/dystopian fiction, speculative fiction—there are many […]