Geoffrey Carr

This is an intelligent, fast-paced, cyber-espionage sci-fi-thriller, with a pleasing mix of originality and nods to classics of the genre.

The first five pages have three, seemingly unrelated, threads spanning three continents: in China, the USA, and Angola. It continues switching people, places, and plots, in very short chapters. It’s exciting, rather than confusing: after only twenty pages, the main threads crystallise around the framework summarised in the blurb. It may also have helped show more that I read it in two sittings, a day apart, though that’s a bit chicken and eggy, as the reason I did so was that it’s such a page-turner, full of unexpected twists.

Image: A web of pages of binary, looking like a neuron (Source)

Machine consciousness

It’s an exciting story of ideas and flawed characters; it’s not about the ones and zeros of computer code. The science you need to know is minimal, and dropped in when relevant. No lengthy and implausible info-dumps where one character explains something to someone who would already know it.

The main idea is AI (artificial intelligence) and computer sentience, but it’s also a people-centred adventure.

Algorithms help software accumulate and analyse vast amounts of data, very quickly. If those algorithms can change what and how they do it - to do things they haven’t explicitly been programmed to do - that’s machine learning, and it’s the basis for any sort of AI. It’s a hugely powerful idea that is bringing fundamental changes to how we live, and like all such revolutions, there’s a potential dark side.

If, or more likely when (though there is debate about that), machines make the transition from intelligence to consciousness, that’s when human life will get interesting - in the sense of the famous, but spurious, Chinese curse. If it happens, maybe we won’t realise until it’s too late, especially if we’re worrying about “machines” that look like robots, rather than a more amorphous consciousness that’s harder to see.

Image: “I’m not scared of a computer passing the Turing Test… I’m terrified of one that intentionally fails it.” (A Source, but it’s all over the internet.)

Not having a physical body saves a lot of power and effort and makes it easier to go unnoticed, just oiling the wheels of human interactions with tech. But it’s also a limit on experience and thus consciousness. Even allowing for that, my only quibble with the book is that the AI actor called Randy was both very naive and also incredibly clever. It didn’t stack up, but it’s probably me, applying a human lens. However, he’s a major character, and his apparent implausibility annoyed me.

Colonialism

Whenever humans of one kind have colonised “new” (to them) lands, there’s always been a high cost for those who were already there. A clever aspect of this novel is that without really mentioning that, it touches on new sorts of colonisation: recent huge Chinese investment in Africa, human plans to colonise beyond earth, and the more disturbing possibility of humans being colonised by something… other.

Money

“What was the point of all that money if not to make history?”
Another theme is extreme wealth: to what extent its corrupting influence can taint potentially philanthropic works. As my father always pointed out, the Bible doesn’t say money itself is the root of all evil:
“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:10, King James Version.

When under-taxed billionaires like Branson, Bezos, and Musk seem to be in an exclusive space race, rather than taking the Gates route of medicating the developing world (I’m over-simplifying, obviously), it’s topical, as well.

Bonuses

There is a lot of scientific and cultural knowledge, lightly worn. I’d expect the former, but the latter is like talking to a clubbable raconteur who, unselfconsciously, peppers their conversation with erudite analogies. They’re never laboured, let alone explained, which is how it should be. Those I noticed are mostly from Greek mythology, sci-fi and fantasy classics, or detective fiction (plus PG Wodehouse and one of TS Eliot’s Practical Cats), and it was always a small joy to notice one.

One of the main characters in this novel, Professor Sebastian Hayward, is a Brit living in the USA. His occasional mild frustration at the differences between the two languages and cultures adds a little relatable levity.

More?

Part of the pleasure for me was that it felt richly cinematic and thus immersive. The way it repeatedly switches between storylines would transfer very well to screen, but furthermore, aspects of the plot reminded me of films I’ve enjoyed. There is certainly a bit of a James Bond vibe (seasoned with a dash of Musk), but I think it’s also because I watch thrillers and espionage far more than I read them.

The final page leaves a clear hook for a sequel, and if Carr writes it, I will be keen to read it.

Image: Human-AI interface? (Source, with title of just “The Internet” and no artist credited.)

Quotes

• “He put the phone down. When was it, he wondered, that the liberator had become a prison? ‘Big Other’, someone had called it once”

• “Though they made us they did not create us.”

• “He had come to love the United States. For all its maddening tics and affectations, its moralistic pretension, and its dissonance between national myth and quotidian reality, it still had an optimism about itself that was missing from the Old Country.”

• “It was weird. Every rich, powerful civilisation, from the Egyptians to the Americans, had had an edifice complex. The height of its buildings proclaimed its success to the world. Every civilisation except one. Geeks didn’t seem to care… California surely now rules the world, but it ruled it from two-storey buildings in business parks.” [The architectural style that Hayward dubs “California Bland”.]

• “It was humbling to be in a place [China] where one was as illiterate as a Mediaeval peasant, and as comprehending of speech as a post-tower citizen of Babel.”

• “Rosy-fingered dawn daubed the horizon.” [The poetic tone reflects the wistfulness of the character.]

• “He felt he had slipped into some nightmarish alternative reality, a lucid dream from which he could not awaken. It as every science-fiction cliché rolled into one - the self-created nemesis of mankind.” [If that’s partly to pre-empt possible criticism, it’s not necessary.]

The author

Carr is the Science and Technology editor of The Economist, so it’s no surprise that the necessary scientific nuggets are clear, interesting, and easy to digest. Furthermore, all the unfamiliar terms I Googled are real, even if the events in the story are only hypothetical. For now...

I also know Geoff a little. However, I bought my own copy and my review is not swayed by our connection. show less

Fun story. Nice to see some of the current concerns about AI woven into it. Unfortunately, the characters were just about skin deep and at times the writing was more than obtuse - especially towards the end of the book. I had to re-read bits and keep looking back at previous mini chapters to try and work things out. But still couldn't really follow it very well! (Still don't not if Yasmin was really a Chinese agent?)