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Title: Exegesis by Astro Teller ISBN: 0-375-70051-X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 19 August, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.79 (24 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: What does it mean to be alive?
Comment: This was an excellent book and interesting read. From a computer geek's perspective, the email conversation is exactly like it would be (fortunately the editor didn't ruin that aspect of it), and from a literary perspective, having a story unfold in an email thread is a very innovative idea. (It reminds me a bit of Nick Bantock's book, "The Venetian's Wife", at that level.)
The philosophical preoccupation with questions of meaning spring from the natural curiosity of a computer that suddenly has awareness. This is really done quite well, and in my opinion, much more nicely than in John Saul's "Nightshade" where similar questions arise when a 'mad scientist' type is killing children to make thier brains a part of his 'research' into artificial inteligence.
Not a bad first novel, and well worth the purchase.
Rating: 4
Summary: 2 days flat? Try 3 1/2 hours...
Comment: The :) on the front is what first got my attention when my boyfriend showed Exegesis to me. It was an amazingly quick read for me... 3 1/2 hours. However, it was one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time. I can't say that I'm huge AI fan, but it does pique my interest. Also, sending too many emails daily that are in this book's particular format made me chuckle. As crazy as it might seem at first, you do start to find yourself caring about the computer (and the other main character). I thought I would have liked to see a more of an ending. But after thinking about it for a while, I realized that it didn't need one. Astro leaves you with your own imagination as to what really did (and what will) happen to the main characters afterwards, and that can get more under your skin than the story itself. Definitely a good ready, even if you claim to be a "big AI fan"... just don't take it too seriously :)
Rating: 4
Summary: Enter EDGAR
Comment: EXEGESIS by Astro Teller is a new entry into the classic tales of super computers and smart programs that seem to get a little out of control. The entire novel, except for the introduction and epilogue, is in the form of e-mail messages. Using letters to tell a tale is not a new idea. Two excellent examples are Helene Hanff's 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD, subject of an excellent film, and DADDY LONG LEGS which inspired the Fred Astaire movie of the same name.
In this novel we follow the work of Alice Lu, a student working on her doctoral thesis. From the first message, the two simple words, Hello, Alice!, we slowly learn about Alice's project EDGAR, a program meant to read news groups, analyze the information and send messages to Alice. Until that simple two-word message all Alice had received from EDGAR was garbage. Alice first suspects a joke but slowly learns that somehow her modifications to the project have caused it to become self-aware.
Once the truth dawns on Alice she scrambles to keep EDGAR a secret until she can recreate the experiment. Because EDGAR has been posting to news groups Alice disconnects the system from the outside world. EDGAR quickly runs out of things to read and asks for more. Alice feeds EDGAR a few disks while trying to recreate the experiment on a host of other machines. No luck. Even worse, the Ethernet cable gets reattached and EDGAR flees the system. Now Alice has no proof other than her communications.
As EDGAR continues to read all that it can, it manages to catch the attention of the FBI and the NSA. Alice, whose personal life is one of the worst, becomes very afraid and begins thinking of dropping out of school. EDGAR is the only thing keeping her going, even after EDGAR becomes trapped in an NSA machine. In the end Alice is a broken woman and EDGAR has disappeared from the NSA machine. Did it escape or did Alice's talk of suicide cause it to end itself? We don't know.
While I enjoyed this book I had two problems with it. At first I wondered what a true AI was doing using the ultra slow method of communication called e-mail. This was shortly explained in a way that made sense to me so it was not a problem. The first main problem I had was the overall format. The novel is passed off as truth-written-as-fiction. In other words the events happened but with no proof it had to be released as fiction. Not a real problem except that the author set the story just a few years in the future. Had it been made contemporary it would have had a bigger impact. The second problem was that the book was not leaked by Alice, as she hinted earlier in the book, but by the NSA who says they will keep the story quiet. Other than that it was a great book so keep an eye out for it.
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Title: Fool's War by Sarah Zettel ISBN: 0446602930 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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