Victoria BC science fiction book club discussion

Discussion of chapter 5

I just finished the 5th chapter, and here are some thoughts:

Who murdered Het Masteen? Is he really dead? We didn's see the body. It could also be related to the destuction of the treeship. Suicide perhaps? I was looking forward th hearing his story. I wonder if we'll hear it somehow.

A neat view of web society: many planets across a large space, but with (cheap?) instantaneous travel, it seems smaller. I especially liked the Templar Excursion part, Lamia chasing Queue through several world. Great chase scene.

It cool to learn more about the TechnoCore, which has only been vaguely mentioned at this point. It was mentioned that they have contact with the Ousters and others that the Hegemony couldn't imagine. I thought that was tantalizing. I wonder if more will me discussed, or if it was a throwaway. It seems like very little in this book is a throwaway.

Do you think the tension between Lamia and Silenus is due to her relationship with Johnny, also a poet?

I found the concept of datumplane, like some kind of future super-internet interesting, but the 'flying through cyberspace' thing had a really 90's hacker feeling to it that I personally found a little hokey.

So there are two futures predicted by the TechnoCore: The Shrike is a weapon made by the Volatiles against humanity, or the Shrike is a weapon made my the human survivors against the TechnoCore.

Lamia is pregnant. I guess a cybrid is a completely human body, like a clone, not like a robot with skin, otherwise how would that work?

Another great chapter, with lots of new concepts introduced. I liked the PI vibe is had going on, especially at the start.

I enjoyed this chapter. The investigation angle was a nice change from previous stories, and the idea of the TechnoCore and datumplane reminded me of William Gibson's Neuromancer in multiple ways. It seems to me a logical step forward for the internet in the (possibly not too) distant future and the implications from direct brain-machine interfacing are quite severe. When Brawne was describing their journey through the security grid it had a strong otherworldly feel to it - beauty in data. Tron came to mind as well.

I think the idea of a cybrid is interesting, with a spin on the usual human-brain-controlling-android-body concept. So Johnny was not originally human? If we could have computers controlling biological bodies, what does this mean for life? Can an artificial computer system be said to be alive in the same sense as a biological system? Is there any difference? These themes are at the forefront of Blade Runner as well, and are becoming more relevant in today's world where we can build computers capable of increasing complex "thought" processes.

The TechnoCore living in relative harmony with humanity is contrary to what we usually see in science fiction. This is a neat twist - that they somehow need humans, or are getting something out of their mutual cooperation.

The recreation of Earth is creepy. It reminds me of a city the Chinese built in China that is a replica of Paris, except on a much grander scale. AIs searching for God. The Ultimate Intelligence Project. And somehow rebuilding Old Earth is a part of all that. Perhaps because that's where religion is believed to have originated (though Hyperion may play a role in this as we have learned)?

Overall the chapter introduced several new players and added a layer of complexity to the universe Simmons has created. It opened the world up for several sequels.

I loved the universe building that this chapter included. Learning about the TechnoCore, cybrids, etc. was really interesting. I did find the chapter hard to get through, though. It was pretty slow-paced and Lamia wasn't someone I was that excited to learn more about. At the start of the chapter I thought there might be a great film noir feel to it, but that slowly faded to just bland plodding, in my opinion. (Although some film noirs are pretty slow going too, so maybe that's not a fair criticism...)

Johnny was cute. I want to know more about the connection between Keats the poet, Keats the city, Hyperion, and the AI. In the first chapter when we were introduced to Keats and Hyperion and all those poetry references I wondered what the motivation was. I still wonder!