Evolution's Darling
Just finished Evolution's Darling, by Scott Westerfeld. It came out in 1999, so I'm a little behind -- I came to Westerfeld via his young adult books, which I've been gobbling up as fast as I can get my hands on them.
One of the Amazon reviewers mentions that Westerfeld reminds him of Iain Banks. If the reviewer means Iain M. Banks, then I totally agree. (Banks writes science fiction with the middle initial, and horror without it.) Reminds me, I've got to read Excession again one of these days...
Best part of this book: the discussion of using an updated version of the Turing test on a brain-damaged, comatose human to determine if she was still a person. In the book's universe, a machine is considered a person with full legal rights when its Turing quotient rises above 1.0. The Turing quotient, which can be measured via an automated challenge-and-response process, is a measure of the gestalt of the machine's being. Can the machine love, or intuit, or crack wise, in a way that is not traceable to the data in its memory banks? Then it is a person.
But in the book's universe, humans are granted a free pass, personhood at birth. It's almost a throwaway line for Westerfeld when he calls newborn humans "mewling, mindless, screaming bags of want" -- the implication being, not people under the modernized Turing test.
It always fascinates me to watch people arguing about abortion and predicating their views on the timing of the beginning of life. What if, instead, we talked about when personhood begins? And what if that moment were significantly after birth? I know that when Elliott was a newborn, either of my cats had a much higher Turing quotient than he did, but even so my cats had fewer legal rights. I don't think our culture is ready to strip away the human status of infants, even if they are just mindless bags of want. Instead, some people want to give human status to blastocysts. Whatever.
But I digress...
Second best part of this book: the hot machine/human sex scenes. Darling, the main machine character, can very precisely monitor his lover's every physical reaction and fluctuation and tailor his actions accordingly. I know, it sounds pretty dry and scientific when I put it like that. You'll just have to read for yourself.
Perhaps my rating is inflated, due to the glut of mommy books I've read over the last few years, and the paucity of sci-fi, but I'll give this one 9/10.
One of the Amazon reviewers mentions that Westerfeld reminds him of Iain Banks. If the reviewer means Iain M. Banks, then I totally agree. (Banks writes science fiction with the middle initial, and horror without it.) Reminds me, I've got to read Excession again one of these days...
Best part of this book: the discussion of using an updated version of the Turing test on a brain-damaged, comatose human to determine if she was still a person. In the book's universe, a machine is considered a person with full legal rights when its Turing quotient rises above 1.0. The Turing quotient, which can be measured via an automated challenge-and-response process, is a measure of the gestalt of the machine's being. Can the machine love, or intuit, or crack wise, in a way that is not traceable to the data in its memory banks? Then it is a person.
But in the book's universe, humans are granted a free pass, personhood at birth. It's almost a throwaway line for Westerfeld when he calls newborn humans "mewling, mindless, screaming bags of want" -- the implication being, not people under the modernized Turing test.
It always fascinates me to watch people arguing about abortion and predicating their views on the timing of the beginning of life. What if, instead, we talked about when personhood begins? And what if that moment were significantly after birth? I know that when Elliott was a newborn, either of my cats had a much higher Turing quotient than he did, but even so my cats had fewer legal rights. I don't think our culture is ready to strip away the human status of infants, even if they are just mindless bags of want. Instead, some people want to give human status to blastocysts. Whatever.
But I digress...
Second best part of this book: the hot machine/human sex scenes. Darling, the main machine character, can very precisely monitor his lover's every physical reaction and fluctuation and tailor his actions accordingly. I know, it sounds pretty dry and scientific when I put it like that. You'll just have to read for yourself.
Perhaps my rating is inflated, due to the glut of mommy books I've read over the last few years, and the paucity of sci-fi, but I'll give this one 9/10.