Hard SF discussion

The Book of the Month for November, 2009 is Fool's War, written in 1997 by Sarah Zettel:

For 500 years we have carried our ancient hatreds and millennia-old wars into interstellar space. With them have gone the seeds of new self-aware life-forms mutating from artificial intelligences, techno-viruses, and info-flow. Beings with no bodies and no limits, evolving to leap from cyberspace to outer space. Beings born to be our rivals...

Katmer Al Shei, owner of the starship Pasadena, does not know she is carrying a living entity in her ship's computer systems. Or that the electronic network her family helped weave holds a new race fighting for survival. Or that her ship's professional Fool is trying to avert a battle that could destroy entire worlds. And when Al Shei learns the truth, all she'll really know is that it's time to take sides...

According to the author's web site, Fool's War is based on the short story “Fool’s Errand”. The book can be read in its entirety at Book View Cafe.

Please add your reviews and comments here. If you want, cross-post them to the Yahoo newsgroup as well.

Perhaps it would be wise to start by saying that despite the word "war" in the title, it does not seem to be "military SF". Although there is a sort of conflict later in the book, that does not constitute most of the book, and it is not a military engagement in a usual sense. Nor is the impression I got of the author's attitude towards using military approaches in resolving the issues in the book the kind I would expect from a typical military SF novel. Readers who are disinclined towards military SF need not ignore this book. Readers who are looking for true military SF are not likely to find their military appetite satisfied.

It takes place in a distintive world. For instance:
1) Starships hire professional jesters / facilitators of crew morale as part of their crews
2) FTL communications which are expensive enough that physically transport of data by starship is more economical
3) One culture of spacemen believe the souls of dead people could find a new life in a properly designed AI
4) AI's are useful, but are often kept limited to prevent them from going rogue
5) A community of AI's unknown to humans

The story begins with a spaceship involved in interstellar trade. From the beginning, there are a number of issues. The brother-in-law of the ship's captain has been involved in computer hacking and other illegal activities - and it seems he left something on the ship. New members of the ship's crew include a new fool (jester) and a pilot who is a Freer (a human society of which others tend to be suspicious). The pilot is also in a 2-year period of punitive exile from her society for reasons not immediately stated. The owners and captain of the ship are Muslims, another group that is not fully accepted by many people.

In the first part of the book it seems the story will be about the fool, issues of crew relations, fixing some issues in the computer system, etc. And there did seem to be potential for a book developing those aspects. Then the story shifts to a greater emphasis on independently-conscious AI's. Although I don't mind some twists and turns in a story, for some reason I found this shift disconcerting for a while. However, the story develops into exploration of some interesting questions related to possible AI futures.

The pilot's culture hopes to be able to use AI environments to give a place for souls of dead people. She has brought a computer storage device on the ship that contains AI code which she is trying to foster. Another crew member comes from a planet whose infrastructure was crippled when a newly conscious AI went wild. And it seems someone has put an AI in the ship's computer system. When the ship makes its first data delivery at another planet, an AI becomes active there, causing outages in the planet's networks. After a while, we learn there is a community of AI's that are striving to reduce human fears of AI's. There are various descriptions of AI's traveling through computer and communications systems, and their activities in those systems.

A variety of issues related to AI's are raised by the story. Personally, I wasn't always convinced by the portrayal of how AI's would perceive movement and activity in a computer system, or what they could do. However, there's food for thought here, including the questions of how an AI would perceive the environment in a computer, and how AI design would effect what AI's could do inside a computer system. (The story does not deal with robots or AI's that otherwise have their own hardware for their exclusive use. They are inside computer systems intended for purposes other than supporting an AI. Rules somewhat different than the Laws Of Robotics seem to be needed.)

The story takes on an aspect of espionage - there are forces at work, not all of which are clear at first, and understanding the implications of the various agendas is not explicit from the beginning. It provides a sort of mystery and intrigue that gives another dimension to the story.

The cast of characters is full of individuals who don't entirely fit in or are not entirely accepted by society as a whole. Generally, they allign themselves with society anyway. But a thoughtful reader may also find material to consider the issues of loyalties for such people.

- David

Thanks for that, David! I had every intent of getting that book read before the end of November, but didn't get it done. I'll get it read asap - your post makes me want to read it all the more.

Just one thing of the many ones that bothered me: there´s FTL communication, yet starships trade carrying data. We are told that the bandwith is too little to send big medical databases but on the other hand AI´s travel the FTL network without problems, and have more or less the same size.
The clumsy writing was hard to parse, it took me a long while to finish this book. Now I´ve started a different one and I see it wasn´t that I was just tired. A good writer can let the story flow.

I agree there were holes in the logic of the tech the plot depended on - such as the ones you mentioned. One might also point out that the Fools' Guild was supposedly organized the way they were to gradually change human attitudes towards AI's, but the Fools seemed to mostly interact with / influence those involved in interstellar travel rather than targetting government, media, scientists or the general population. But there was also food for thought in the book.

An important element in Fools War was the different factions among the AI's which had different approaches on the relationship between the AI community and human society. This is also an issue which was discussed to some extent in Hyperion. To one degree or another it continues to play a role in The Fall Of Hyperion which I'm currently reading.