“’That’s the heart of the problem. I haven’t lived enough. My character is just the combination of my intellect and my faults. I haven’t had time to become more complex, more interesting. […] I’m not sure if you realize this but without my flaws I’d be pretty dull. You should know that.’”

In “A Calculated Life” by Anne Charnock

For the sake of argument let me be devil’s advocate.

The scientific materialist assumption is that the body is the primary organ and consciousness is secondary. This is not so; consciousness is the primary experience and the body and all other experiences are secondary. The body is a construct of consciousness. Forward thinking scientists are just beginning to realise this. Man might be able to prolong life but a 'machine' existence will never happen because the 'reality' of phenomenal existence is simultaneously 'real' and 'not real'. People, including scientists tend to see everything in terms of being a binary system. Yes/no, off/on, is/isn't, 0/1, true /untrue. Reality is not that simplistic. Mm, that's some good pseudo bullshit. Preventing aging is almost certainly more achievable soon than consciousness transfer, but ultimately the latter offers greater security and opportunity. Immortal DNA is all very well, until you suffer catastrophic injury or brain damage. With transferable consciousness, you get the immortality, along with the option to backup and restore in the event of a fatal accident, as well as the ability to travel at light-speed as a digital signal to be reawakened on arrival. And that's before we even get into the idea of truly inhabiting the virtual world as digital consciousness. With an infinitesimal fraction of the earth's current energy use, you could have untold trillions living in a virtual utopia, with a near infinite diversity of cultures, worlds and lifestyles. Nevertheless, is it misleading to talk about 'transferable' consciousness? What would be uploaded would be a facsimile of your consciousness. As far as the exterior world, interacting with the facsimile, would be concerned it would be you. However, it would actually be a totally new instance of you, with no continuity of your original consciousness. It's what's always troubled me about the idea of Star Trek-type teleportation - the thought that disintegrating someone in one place and then reassembling them in another, would effectively mean the death of the original, internally-experienced consciousness (although nobody else would notice or care!). 

If you're into SF, read on.

This is a hell of a pessimistic story. It is a story of haves and have-nots, of before the ecological collapse and after, and it argues relentlessly that without at least a bit of material prosperity, there is no such thing as human kindness or decency.

We don’t see the world of the “haves” in this story; these biochemically-manipulated and cyber-enhanced people are depicted in the novel A Calculated Life, which I haven’t read. In “The Enclave,” we only see them through the points of view of a boy who’s heard some second-hand snippets about them, and a woman who failed at being admitted among them (it’s easy to get excluded). Whether or not their lot is really enviable is not clear. It’s only certain that they carefully lock have-nots out of their spaces, consigning them to extra-urban enclaves and requiring a pass for travel to the cities.

Charnock is more concerned with depicting the before-and-after contrast in the life of her main character, twelve-year-old Caleb, who used to live in Spain before heat and drought sent everyone in that country fleeing north. Before, he had two parents, a school, friends, and friendly games. After, he had a missing father and an existence walking the road with his mother, unwelcome wherever they went. Although Caleb’s mother imagines that his papers, pedigree, and education will be sufficient to get him admitted to the cities, she disappears before finding out if that’s true, and Caleb is picked up by a child-trafficker and turned over to work in a recycling business in an enclave.

Caleb is bright and creative. And his childhood taught him to believe in friendship. He offers the gifts of his talents and his caring to the people in the enclave, and gets less than nothing in return. No one besides Caleb and his mother do a single act of generosity in the entirety of this story. The enclave and the surrounding countryside are a world where friendship doesn’t exist (there’s a scene where Caleb contrasts his games with old friends with the way the children in the enclave “play” by fighting and beating each other), where romance is sex and sex is a transaction, and where family is only a way of defining who belongs to your own gang, and you'd better obey the head of the family if you want to stay in.  Not surprisingly, the story ends with Caleb’s moral ruin.

What does the author get out of depicting poverty as a world of absolute exploitation and dog-eat-dog? Is it just a cautionary tale to middle-class people, don’t lose your prosperity? I must say I didn’t  find this setting entirely convincing. Nothing about it was original, the hinted-at technologically-enhanced society didn’t seem particularly plausible, and more importantly, the relentlessly negative interactions of the enclave residents didn’t add up to much more than a checklist of social evils. There were very few well-developed characters; even Caleb seemed more of a signifier than an individual, with his past amounting to a checklist of middle-class “normality.”

This isn’t a particularly bad story; it’s smoothly written and moves right along, with just the right amount of content for its length. But it isn’t outstanding in any way either.

1) Powerful, poignant, and deep, Speak has an unusual structure, weaving together six narrative voices that together illuminate a link between the creation of artificial intelligence and the fundamental human yearning for connection. When I started the book its nonlinear format put me off, but it took just a few chapters for me to become totally hooked. The narrators include a Pilgrim or Puritan girl leaving her former life behind to journey to America, AI pioneer and WWII code-breaker Alan Turing, and a now illegal, slowly “dying” babybot--a doll of the future so lifelike and compelling that children who had one couldn’t bond with people--as it slowly loses power and memory. 

I don't normally pay much attention to epigraphs, but I love Speak's. One is from Notes From Underground by Dostoevsky, while the other comes from what I think is Disney's Snow White: 

“Slave in the magic mirror, come from farthest outer space, through wind and darkness I summon thee. Speak!”

2) Beautifully written and haunting in the sense that it leaves you with things to think about, Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind completely captured me. Blending science fiction, art, and history, its three connected storylines span time--with one in the past, one in the present, and one in the future--but all revolve around the fifteenth century painter Paolo Uccello and his artistically talented daughter Antonia, two real life historical figures. A lot of research went into this novel, and I actually learned something about painting composition, art history and the possibilities of future technology.

3) I loved Between Mountain and Sea, and really didn’t want to leave the characters behind. Fortunately it’s the first of a sci-fi series that’s part of the Paradisi Chronicles, an intriguing multi-author project about 10 extended families who exit our devastated home world to set up colonies in New Eden, an Earth-like planet that already has native hominids. These original people are an interesting human variation, and several of them play important roles in the novel.

M. Louisa Locke, author of the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series that starts with Maids of Misfortune, is here telling the story of the Yu family, who have their roots in China. Mabel Yu was one of the original settlers and traveled from Earth as a young teenager. About 150 years later Mei Lin Yu, Mabel’s descendant, discovers Mabel’s diary, a fascinating document that tells the real history of the colony, not what Mei Lin has been taught at school. These new insights help Mei Lin question the path that’s been laid out for her, one that doesn’t suit her at all. Though Mei Lin is YA age, romance plays almost no role in the action--it’s more a coming of age book. As indicated by the title, the setting is vivid and wild, and while parts of the plot were a little predictable, I was so caught up in the world and the lives of the characters that I didn’t care.

In Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind we get three parallel stories, all of them have something to do with Antonia Uccello, or her father Paolo Uccello, the famous painter.

In the past we get to follow Antonia Uccello as she is preparing to a life in a convent. Her father decided that's the best solution for her since there she will have a chance to continue to paint since if she would get married, painting would at all probability be denied her.

In the present time, a copyist is getting a commission from a rich Chinese businessman to duplicate a Paolo Uccello painting. He is visiting China with his teenage daughter. They are recuperating from a loss and in a way will this journey will be a new starting point for them. Something good after all the pain.

In the 2200-century is a painting found that could be painted by Antonia Uccello. This discovery is very important for art historian Toniah. She has for a long time wanted to bring light to Antonia Uccello life.

I think one thing that really appealed to me with this story was out of the three parallel stories in this book one was set in the future. I found the idea of time, just around 100 years in the future interesting. The world, almost similar to ours, yet with some differences. And, the largest difference is of course that the families can look a bit different from now. Because of technology, there are now partho families. At first, was I a bit confused about what that meant, then it was explained that thanks to parthenogenetic a woman can have a child without a man. Basically, this is cloning. I found that very interesting. Toniah, the main character in this story is actually a clone.

My biggest problem with this book is that even though all three stories were interesting to read separately didn't they feel linked together that much. I think I wanted something more than a small link, I mean what has the second story, the one about the father and the teenage daughter to do with Antonia Uccello? It felt more like it was linked to Paolo Uccello. I mean I liked the story, but I would have liked it even better if it had been separated from the others. If it had just been one story and not part of three stories. The same can be said for the other two.

Also, the book ended way too abruptly. I felt that the stories never got a closure. Like the last pages of the book was missing. That bothered me to be honest. It didn't feel like an ambiguous ending. It felt like the stories ended when they started to get good. 

On the plus side was it interesting to learn more about Paolo Uccello and to learn that he had a daughter that was considered a paintress. Too bad that none of her paintings seem to have survived to present days.

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy for an honest review.

This is a slow starting but ultimately moving  “wow!” of a story, set in a dystopian future Manchester with three types of “humans”: humans with a moderate amount of genetic engineering to help them resist social evils like addiction, genetically engineered humans who have been enhanced with implants to make them smarter, and simulants or “created” humans who have been completely bio-engineered to have beyond genius level brains that can process huge amounts of data for their employers. Simulants, of course, have never been children and they have no families, so they live in regulated dorm-like residences. There has been some tinkering with the simulant models to make them more personable, but giving them a larger emotional scope could backfire by decreasing their functionality, so they are carefully monitored for any deviations.

Jayna, one of these newer simulants, uses her stellar data crunching skills to forecast social and economic trends at the offices of Mayhew and McCline where she tries to interact smoothly with both types of more normal humans.These humans interest her greatly in spite, or maybe because, of the fact that she often has to correct their faulty work, and the slow start I mentioned is no criticism because it’s fascinating to be inside her head as she interprets the world around her.

Jayna starts to believe that both her personal life and work-related predictive skills would be enhanced by experiencing more variety and  texture, which draws her slowly into an increasingly dangerous relationship with Dave, an un-implant-enhanced human who works in the company archives but has a side business selling honey. Dave’s grandfather had been a rebellious, freethinking college professor, placing Dave very low in the social hierarchy, so he lives in the high-rise, slum-like outskirts of town, past the comfortable upper middle class houses of humans with implants, and beyond the citrus groves that must be part of the English landscape as a result of climate change.

As new understandings and sensations open to Jayna--some as simple as the smell of a fresh brewed cup of coffee--she feels compelled to continue her risky encounters with Dave, but if she’s caught she could be wiped clean and reprogrammed by “the constructor”, the entity who supplies the simulant workers to businesses.

The author creates a strong connection between hyper-intelligent but naive Jayna and the reader--though anxious about the possible consequences of Jayna’s actions I was cheering her on--and the world building of this chilling, socially stratified future Manchester is excellent, and introduced naturally through Jayna’s interactions with the people who work at her office and the simulants who share her housing compound. The building tension of the story kept me hooked, and the ending left me a lot to think about. I listened to the well done audio version of this unusual but compelling book.