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thephdivabooks's review against another edition
4.0
Broken into two parts, The Mother Code is a surprisingly emotional book that fed into my fear of artificial intelligence taking over life, to an extent. In the first part of the book, the story moves back and forth in time, and later ties the stories together in the second part.
A boy named Kai is born to Rho-Z, a robot who is able to incubate and give birth to human babies. Though Rho-Z is a machine, her instinct is still to protect her child. Fifteen years earlier, there was a failed biowarfare experiment by the United States that cause a global epidemic. Experts from a variety of science and technology fields come together in a covert operation to alter human DNA enough to make humans immune from the disease.
The team is unable to produce enough antidote for everyone, and so they focus on these robotic Mothers giving birth to a new generation with built-in immunity who will hopefully survive and repopulate the human race. Meanwhile Kai meets a girl named Misha who was also born to a robot Mother, but has been saved by humans after her mother is damaged.
As Kai, Misha, and other children born to this new generation through Mothers come of age, the Mothers are also transforming. As the humans of this generation are pushing to destroy the Mothers, Kai is faced with the difficult decision of his bond with his own Mother, Rho-Z. How far will he go to save her?
The book has an obvious post-apocalyptic setting that works well for this story. The human race is largely this new generation who were birthed by the Mothers and are able to be immune to the virus that took the lives of the generations before them. The story also focuses quite a bit on the team of scientists and researchers who are working to tackle the problem of immunity and create the Mothers that will later save the human race, if they don’t also destroy them. I actually found their story more compelling in some ways, perhaps because it felt more tied to something I could relate to experiencing than that of Kai and the other children.
A clear theme of this book is to what extent machines can think or feel independently. Machines can learn, but that is a separate question from whether they can think. The Mother Code from the title is the code that represents each of the Mothers that were created. It was designed to preserve the essence of the true biological mothers (humans) to the children. In other words, each Mother has unique AI just as each human has unique DNA.
Giving each Mother the characteristics of the biological mother was intended to offer the connection in raising a child that a human mother would offer. The Mothers have heritage, history, and experiences built in that are designed to represent what the biological mother would have. Overtime, it becomes clear that the Mothers also learn from the children. They aren’t simply a robot built on someone’s past, and at a certain point they are evolving independent of the scientists who created their code.
There are some surviving humans, in addition to the new generation of children birthed by the Mothers. These humans are searching for their children, but the Mothers are trying to prevent them from getting close. They are designed to want to protect their children, but this also causes other unintended effects.
This book surprised me. The concept seemed too far fetched at first, but later I grew to become very invested. This is largely credit to Stivers, who explained complicated technology and concepts in a way that I was able to understand and appreciate.
Thought-provoking and gripping!
A boy named Kai is born to Rho-Z, a robot who is able to incubate and give birth to human babies. Though Rho-Z is a machine, her instinct is still to protect her child. Fifteen years earlier, there was a failed biowarfare experiment by the United States that cause a global epidemic. Experts from a variety of science and technology fields come together in a covert operation to alter human DNA enough to make humans immune from the disease.
The team is unable to produce enough antidote for everyone, and so they focus on these robotic Mothers giving birth to a new generation with built-in immunity who will hopefully survive and repopulate the human race. Meanwhile Kai meets a girl named Misha who was also born to a robot Mother, but has been saved by humans after her mother is damaged.
As Kai, Misha, and other children born to this new generation through Mothers come of age, the Mothers are also transforming. As the humans of this generation are pushing to destroy the Mothers, Kai is faced with the difficult decision of his bond with his own Mother, Rho-Z. How far will he go to save her?
The book has an obvious post-apocalyptic setting that works well for this story. The human race is largely this new generation who were birthed by the Mothers and are able to be immune to the virus that took the lives of the generations before them. The story also focuses quite a bit on the team of scientists and researchers who are working to tackle the problem of immunity and create the Mothers that will later save the human race, if they don’t also destroy them. I actually found their story more compelling in some ways, perhaps because it felt more tied to something I could relate to experiencing than that of Kai and the other children.
A clear theme of this book is to what extent machines can think or feel independently. Machines can learn, but that is a separate question from whether they can think. The Mother Code from the title is the code that represents each of the Mothers that were created. It was designed to preserve the essence of the true biological mothers (humans) to the children. In other words, each Mother has unique AI just as each human has unique DNA.
Giving each Mother the characteristics of the biological mother was intended to offer the connection in raising a child that a human mother would offer. The Mothers have heritage, history, and experiences built in that are designed to represent what the biological mother would have. Overtime, it becomes clear that the Mothers also learn from the children. They aren’t simply a robot built on someone’s past, and at a certain point they are evolving independent of the scientists who created their code.
There are some surviving humans, in addition to the new generation of children birthed by the Mothers. These humans are searching for their children, but the Mothers are trying to prevent them from getting close. They are designed to want to protect their children, but this also causes other unintended effects.
This book surprised me. The concept seemed too far fetched at first, but later I grew to become very invested. This is largely credit to Stivers, who explained complicated technology and concepts in a way that I was able to understand and appreciate.
Thought-provoking and gripping!
saira16_'s review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
midnightisquiet's review
3.0
I really liked the premise and the themes this tried to explore sounded really interesting, but this seemed...unfinished? It started out great and during the first half I thought this was gonna be a 4 star, but then during the second half and especially towards the end there were some character decisions that made zero sense to me and things happened that were very convenient.
Also, Sela's death was so sudden and done so quickly, that I didn't even realize it had happened. I literally did a double take like "Wait, what?"
polymera's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
alongreader's review against another edition
4.0
Bio warfare goes wrong and dooms the world. Scrambling for an answer, a military group create immune fetuses and entrust them to robotic Mothers, programmed with the personality of the children's mothers. As these children mature, they have to deal with the remnants of our world as well as the beginning of theirs.
The first part of this novel moves back and forwards in time, between Kai, being raised by his Mother in the early 2060s, and the various military and scientific characters fighting the outbreak in the late 2040s and early 2050s. Once I got used to this it was an interesting way to read, but it did lend a certain inevitability to some things; we know that despite the search for an antidote, the Children are still going to be launched, and the early difficulties engineering Children who can survive will be overcome. However, it would be much less interesting to read in order and I can't say for sure I'd have stuck with it.
I also found the ending very abrupt; the final conflict is still being finished only a couple of pages from the end and there's basically no wrap up.
Those issues aside, though, this is a thoroughly fascinating and very timely read. My limited understanding of this kind of science didn't find any problems with it, and I could follow what they were talking about without too much difficulty. The final conflict is intriguing, and while I could see both sides of the argument there was no question which side I and all the readers were meant to be on. I'd love to read a follow up to see what kind of society the Children build - there was a clear power struggle building and I'd like to know what became of it.
A creepily accurate and very timely book, I enjoyed it very much.
The first part of this novel moves back and forwards in time, between Kai, being raised by his Mother in the early 2060s, and the various military and scientific characters fighting the outbreak in the late 2040s and early 2050s. Once I got used to this it was an interesting way to read, but it did lend a certain inevitability to some things; we know that despite the search for an antidote, the Children are still going to be launched, and the early difficulties engineering Children who can survive will be overcome. However, it would be much less interesting to read in order and I can't say for sure I'd have stuck with it.
I also found the ending very abrupt; the final conflict is still being finished only a couple of pages from the end and there's basically no wrap up.
Those issues aside, though, this is a thoroughly fascinating and very timely read. My limited understanding of this kind of science didn't find any problems with it, and I could follow what they were talking about without too much difficulty. The final conflict is intriguing, and while I could see both sides of the argument there was no question which side I and all the readers were meant to be on. I'd love to read a follow up to see what kind of society the Children build - there was a clear power struggle building and I'd like to know what became of it.
A creepily accurate and very timely book, I enjoyed it very much.
iddylu's review against another edition
2.0
I think I might have rated this one a little more highly if it hadn't been so different from what I'd expected going in. The premise led me to expect an in-depth exploration of AI personhood and the relationship between artificial mother and child, similar to [b:A Closed and Common Orbit|29475447|A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2)|Becky Chambers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1457598923l/29475447._SY75_.jpg|48620653] (or, if things took a darker twist - which could have been interesting! - the film I Am Mother). But while the book certainly touched on those things, it didn't really delve into them in any sort of satisfying way, and the bulk of it was actually taken up by the technothriller-esque plotline about biowarfare - which I'd expected to be scene-setting and background info rather than the main thrust of the plot.
bcgoakander's review against another edition
2.0
Another "great premise, terrible execution" disappointment. The stars went down every quarter after the midway mark, when the story we'd been following poofed out of existence and was replaced by useless and unnecessary trauma with no character payoff and a complete rejection of the established world tenets. Super disappointing
nickymaund's review against another edition
3.0
The blurb of this one really appealed - and I was keen to know how it would play out. I’m going to admit, there were several parts of this that I really struggled with. Particularly the first part (which had most of the science speak and went way over my head).
We’re given multiple timelines and viewpoints to follow with this story as the risk to our survival is discovered and the plans for ensuring we overcome this. There were parts of this that really did pull me along, but sadly it wasn’t enough to make me really enjoy it.
We’re given multiple timelines and viewpoints to follow with this story as the risk to our survival is discovered and the plans for ensuring we overcome this. There were parts of this that really did pull me along, but sadly it wasn’t enough to make me really enjoy it.