Service Model
Another mid year, and another Tchaikovsky novel. This time, he takes on the heady topic of AI and what it means to be sentient.
This is one of those “light” novels from Tchaiovsky, and it seems like it’d be a better short story than the long form it turned into. The ideas are worthy, the setting is intriguing, but the adventures felt a bit forced. In this story, we follow the adventures of a butler robot who wakes up to find itself having murdered its master while in a shaving mode. You get introduced to the ridiculous world where robots and their subordinate functions are enslaved to routine (the interplay between the robot police and the robot doctor is particularly enlightening of this), and where it seems all sane human beings have been wiped out. The robot then gets relieved of its duty and sent to central processing to be diagnosed with what made it kill its master.
Its there that we meet our first human, the wonk, and this sets off another set of hijinks where the robot butler is sent on various “quests”, involving a museum display of what the human condition used to be like, “live in a small apartment, commute to work in a crowded tube, and then work in a cubicle, then go home, eat a small meal, sleep and repeat ad infinitum”. Tchaikovsky tries to show that the human condition as it currently is, is already pretty “efficient” and replacing us with automatons wouldn’t look any different.
There are a few more adventures and you do find out what has happened to the rest of humanity, and as with every Tchaikovsky story, there’s a happy ending.
My problem with this book is that while Tchaikovsky is a wonderful spinner of tales regarding the human condition, he’s not as well read or understanding of the technical world of computers and coding. His presentation of logic problems and logistical issues have all long been solved for at least a decade, and wouldn’t present itself the way he does it. Of course, it could have been deliberately sabotaged, but i think the author just wants to exaggerate the ridiculousness of some logic bombs that hasn’t been present since the early 1990s =).
all in all, its still an entertaining read, but the big questions present in his other novels just isn’t here. or at least in a form i understand. this could be that i’m more deeply versed in the field of computers and coding, and so just see his questions/viewpoint as simple caricature, but all in all, a rather disappointing read by tchaikovsky’s standard.