heavyboots reviewed Stone by Adam Roberts
Billed as like a Culture novel…
3 stars
I would say it has certain elements that are somewhat Culture-ish, but certainly not in the same way that the Culture is run almost entirely by Minds and the humans are fine with that. Instead AI is relatively sparsely used and everyone is kept alive and incredibly healthy by “DotTech” which is a type of nanomachinery.
Also, there is almost no murder in the society because people are so incredibly hard to kill. Which is where our main character comes in—they managed to become a serial killer, get caught, and get an offer from jail to help them escape, but only if they kill off the population of an entire planet…
Anyway, a decent book, some interesting ideas but definitely not nearly as satisfying a read as a Culture novel, so I’d advise approaching it for what it is, not what it is not if you do decide to read …
I would say it has certain elements that are somewhat Culture-ish, but certainly not in the same way that the Culture is run almost entirely by Minds and the humans are fine with that. Instead AI is relatively sparsely used and everyone is kept alive and incredibly healthy by “DotTech” which is a type of nanomachinery.
Also, there is almost no murder in the society because people are so incredibly hard to kill. Which is where our main character comes in—they managed to become a serial killer, get caught, and get an offer from jail to help them escape, but only if they kill off the population of an entire planet…
Anyway, a decent book, some interesting ideas but definitely not nearly as satisfying a read as a Culture novel, so I’d advise approaching it for what it is, not what it is not if you do decide to read it.
