Code of the Lifemaker

I really liked this beyond expectation. Those expectations were set by 8 other Hogan books on my shelves I'd been rereading deciding whether or not they'd keep a slot on my precious shelf space--I was finding the answer up to this had been no. They'd tended either to be too heavy-handed and preachy (especially Mirror Maze) or technobabble infodump (almost all, especially Thrice Upon a Time and Two Faces of Tomorrow), took too long to get going--and in the case of Cradle of Saturn too crackpot--that one was dedicated to Immanuel Velikovsky of Worlds in Collision infamy. According to the Wiki, late in life Hogan became attracted to a host of "fringe" views--one critic claimed he had encountered a "brain-eater."

So this was an unexpected show more delight on several levels I wouldn't have expected from the author of those other books. In fact, ironically, the theme of this one is science as a candle in the dark, reason as a way to ward off superstition--notably against pseudoscience as embodied in Karl Zambendorf, purported psychic. It's well-paced, not preachy or of any recognizably political flavor, has memorable characters, is free of eye-glazing overdetail--and has an original premise: On Titan, abandoned machines of a dead alien civilization have evolved a mechanical "biosphere" of robots. And I had to smile at the prologue introducing it all. After telling how a supernova destroyed the progenitors, the line after that is: Everybody has a bad day sometimes. *snerk* This novel had a sense of humor and light touch that was much appreciated. *pats book fondly and puts it back on my shelves where it belongs* show less

I was not sure how well this one would hold up, but it did. The premise is fascinating (alien robots, not aliens, yet undergoing evolution/natural selection just the same), and the main character (a con artist with a strong moral streak) and his would-be nemesis (a psychologist trying to unmask him) work perfectly together in the story.

The story has two perspectives, from the humans' and the robots' point of view. The robots are basically undergoing the early stages of the enlightenment (and yes, that social setting with a robotic culture actually does work), while the humans are, well, about where we are now.

Good solid traditional hard science-fiction that uses metaphor (occasionally too obviously) to discuss and consider a wide range of issues from spirituality, religion, theology, evolution, and the existence of the soul to economics, media manipulation, colonialism, and the conflicts between dogma and free thought.

All the subjects are handled well and subjectively in what is ostensibly a first contact story with humanity encountering a species of evolved machines left behind on Titan by an ancient alien race.

If the book has flaws it’s that it perhaps tries to cover too much philosophical ground that sometimes gets in the way of the story itself, and that once the humans and machines meet their individual storylines become less show more compelling as the plot veers towards predictable confrontations. show less

Three and a half stars.

The prologue was delightful, with its description of how life on Titan evolved. The story was pretty good. There were women characters that were actual characters. The writing was pretty good, although the medeival-esque rendering of Taloid dialogue got annoying.

The story is overtly and comprehensively anti-religion, though, in the usual paradigm that groups believers with gullible fools and dupes over against skeptics and enlightened scientists. Boring and annoying for me, though I can see how it would appeal to people who are in its target audience. I'll probably keep it but I doubt I'll reread it often.

Medieval robots and space-traveling humans!!! That's all it took for me to pick this book up out of the free bin outside of my grocery store. I'm glad I did. I can't say that the book is all that deep. Hogan would like to remind us not to trust the military/industrial complex, that politicians are corruptible, and that the common thread between humanity is not the form in which it comes. It is, however, entertaining and humorous. I'm glad that I read it, and I'm glad that it only took me a week to do so.

This is an odd book. It starts with a long prologue that gives the evolutionary history of a machine race on Saturn’s moon Titan, from its inception with a damaged Von Neumann factory ship to mutation, sexual reproduction, competition, and the rise of diverse species and intelligence. Then it sets up a first contact situation between humanity and these machines. We in our spaceships, and they struggling to move past their own equivalent of the stone age.

There are also twin battles going on between science and mysticism. For the robots of Titan, there is a nascent movement towards science and observations, all the while struggling beneath an oppressive religious doctrine handed down in the sacred scribings of the Lifemaker. Meanwhile, show more amongst the humans, we have hardened scientists trying to expose the trickery of a new-age psychic who is in truth an incredibly talented con artist.

It was an interesting story, and I eventually enjoyed most of the characters, though the psychic bugged the hell out of me at first. I did find some of the storytelling mechanics hard to follow as we jumped from one setting to another and one POV to another with little visual or textual clue that it was happening. I wonder if this might have been the fault of the transfer to ebook, since this is an older book that came out on paper back in the 80’s. Either that, or it was just the way it was written.

It was a good ending in that everyone got what they deserved, so I came away pretty happy. show less

A long-lost alien robotic factory ship, damaged by a supernova, crash-lands on Titan. A database malfunction causes the machines to produce imperfect copies, which evolve into self-replicating, machine-based organisms.

Over millions of years, the Taloids, human-like machines, develop a technologically advanced civilization mirroring Earth's Middle Ages. Interestingly, they build their tools using organic materials but are completely ignorant of their own inorganic, mechanical biology. They possess a strong religious reverence for their unseen creator, the Lifemaker.

In the 21st century, a North Atlantic Space Organization colony ship originally bound for Mars is secretly rerouted to Titan. The crew includes military units, scientists, and show more opportunists. The arriving humans are initially revered by the Taloids as their mythical Lifemaker deities. However, human factions begin to aggressively compete against each other to exploit, colonize, or profit from the unwitting alien robot civilization. show less