Robots and Time Travel
If you’re wondering what happened to Friday’s post…guess who spent all of Friday getting emergency laser eye surgery.
I’m on a bit of a screen time restriction this week, but will try and write the RavenCon roundup this coming Friday…hopefully I’ll be off restrictions.
In the mean time, a couple of reviews.
Review: Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Another Adrian Tchaikovsky, at once very different and quite similar. Service Model falls into the subgenre of “weird post-apocalyptic stuff,” although it’s definitely more near future than the more traditional lineage going back to Gene Wolfe.
Climate change may be part of the apocalypse, but the existential threat is AI…which is a threat because it does its job too well.
Uncharles is our narrator, a valet robot who kills his Master for no reason he can determine. Seeking answers in his own robotic way, he hooks up with the Wonk…and the odd pair travel through a destroyed landscape that could be any country of the world after the apocalypse.
Filled with random pop culture references (I’m pretty sure there’s a Dark City reference, of all things, in there, along with The Wizard of Oz), this is a very interesting book…that is ultimately a tirade against social inequality.
I enjoyed it, although I prefer my weird post-apocalyptic stuff even weirder than that.
Recommended to everyone who wants to strangle ChatGPT.
I received a copy of this novel in the Hugo Packet for award consideration.
Review: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Bradley is a new author to me, and this is an interesting book. It’s a time travel novel, but our protagonist stays firmly rooted in the present. She is working as a “bridge” to train an “expat” from the past in how to handle the present day.
It’s also climate fiction, and not the more hopeful kind. It’s called a romance, but…that’s all I will say there.
This well written, diverse novel is set in a climate change ravaged England where heatwaves of over 100 degrees are common. Apparently the Gulf Stream is still working just fine. Sea level rise threatens London.
It’s an anti-colonialist novel too.
And it has an antagonistic time traveler called only…the Brigadier. I appreciated that reference.
The author does her research…the expat is Lieutenant Graham Cole, who died during the infamous Erebus and Terror mission…of course they’re doing the “pull people from the past who were about to die” thing.
It all comes together well enough in the end. Bradley has definite talent and I enjoyed this, but I’m not entirely sure how to categorize it.
Which might be the best thing about it.
Recommended to time travel fans.
I received a copy of this novel in the Hugo Packet for award consideration.