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A review by lazer
Evolution's Darling by Scott Westerfeld
3.0
I knew this was an adult book going into it, but was still caught by surprise to see such an explicit novel from an author I've always (clearly mistakenly) associated with YA.
After the first chapter I was kind of thinking it might just turn into a straight up erotica story tied together with some thin semblance of a plot, but this didn't turn out to be the case. The setting and characters were interesting, and the story of an (seemingly psychopathic?) assassin of mysterious origins (unknown even to her) and an AI art appraiser/collector with a very long, unique history hunting down a new piece of art by what is meant to be a dead AI artist actually ended up being really captivating. The sex scenes weren't super cheesy or overly gratuitous either (though so weird, but not in a bad way).
Most of all, without giving too much away, I was really interested by the approach to AI rights in this book. The story starts when Darling (the AI art collector) is relatively young, just a spaceship AI (then-unnamed) owned by a journalist. These AIs have a measurable "Turing Quotient", which becomes higher as they get closer and closer to sentience over the course of their existence. The spaceship AI gains experience, interactions, etc and its Turing Quotient creeps up - especially through the interactions with the ship owner's curious daughter, whom he is tasked with helping protect on their travels from a very young age. When it crosses the threshold into legal personhood as its Turing Quotient reaches 1.0, Darling is granted full human rights. The treatment of AIs is further developed over the years, with some really interesting concepts (eg humans adopting lower-TQ AIs and purposefully raising them like children until they reach personhood).
Combine all of this with the very ethically prohibited idea of copying a mind and this turns into a pretty interesting story!
Anyway - final thoughts: very porny, but not at all shallow, with an interesting plot and setting.
After the first chapter I was kind of thinking it might just turn into a straight up erotica story tied together with some thin semblance of a plot, but this didn't turn out to be the case. The setting and characters were interesting, and the story of an (seemingly psychopathic?) assassin of mysterious origins (unknown even to her) and an AI art appraiser/collector with a very long, unique history hunting down a new piece of art by what is meant to be a dead AI artist actually ended up being really captivating. The sex scenes weren't super cheesy or overly gratuitous either (though so weird, but not in a bad way).
Most of all, without giving too much away, I was really interested by the approach to AI rights in this book. The story starts when Darling (the AI art collector) is relatively young, just a spaceship AI (then-unnamed) owned by a journalist. These AIs have a measurable "Turing Quotient", which becomes higher as they get closer and closer to sentience over the course of their existence. The spaceship AI gains experience, interactions, etc and its Turing Quotient creeps up - especially through the interactions with the ship owner's curious daughter, whom he is tasked with helping protect on their travels from a very young age. When it crosses the threshold into legal personhood as its Turing Quotient reaches 1.0, Darling is granted full human rights. The treatment of AIs is further developed over the years, with some really interesting concepts (eg humans adopting lower-TQ AIs and purposefully raising them like children until they reach personhood).
Combine all of this with the very ethically prohibited idea of copying a mind and this turns into a pretty interesting story!
Anyway - final thoughts: very porny, but not at all shallow, with an interesting plot and setting.