User Profile

Just finished the fourth story, "The Lifecycle of Software Objects", and I'm not sure how to feel about it. It reframes the age-old questions around "human-like" AI as questions about emotional connections between humans and "digients", which are somewhat akin to purpose-built pets. It manages to put a fresh spin on the subject and feels very believable in its technological and economical details. However, I think the story fails on a narrative level. It's too long, first of all, and it only clumsily ties together the different directions it explores. Unfortunately I couldn't really relate to the characters either, which were too bland considering how long we followed them and their relationships for.

I wouldn't say it was bad, but I liked the previous stories much better.

The first two stories in this are already absolute bangers.

A worthy conclusion to the trilogy. It ties together the mysteries of the previous two books, but leaves open the meaning of the big picture. While there were some pointers as to what Area X actuallly is, I was longing for a bit more material to make sense of it. It makes sense that we can never fully understand it, but I will admit it leaves me slightly unsatisfied.

I wasn't a huge fan of the changing perspectives, although I saw their benefit for the narrative.

In general, a bit of the spark of the first two entries was lost for me here – not because Acceptance was worse, but because of the immense increase in available context from the other books to guide you through what's happening, reducing the unsettling nature somewhat. Which isn't to say Acceptance doesn't make you feel uneasy. It certainly does.

colleague recommends

colleague recommends

"Buch der Stunde" trifft es sehr gut. Sehr viel relevante Analyse über die konkrete politische Situation in der wir uns derzeit befinden, mit einigen interessanten Ansätzen. Viele Appelle in dem Buch sind den meisten politisch besorgten Menschen vermutlich schon bekannt – trotzdem ist es gut, eine so umfangreiche Übersicht zu haben.