A review by arkron
The Great Detective by Delia Sherman
2.0
Full review at my blog.
The novelette reflects the contemporary futuristic discussion of human rights and artificial intelligence - of course, our current A.I. systems are not self-aware, yet, and this problem is as far away as wondering about overpopulation of Mars. One miss in the story is that it doesn't touch Robot ethics, i.e. the risks coming along with robots, at all: Everything about mechanics is happy sunshine and working absurdely perfect. That is another problem with the story that I have: I didn't buy into the steampunk logic at all, as the pure technological background is so far away from believability that I only could consider it as pure fantasy.
The scenery and atmosphere was beautifully described. Characters remain distant, and do some behavioural jumps which I simply didn't understand, e.g. Tacy's love story. The logic of the detective story was somewhat far-fetched and has some holes.
The novelette reflects the contemporary futuristic discussion of human rights and artificial intelligence - of course, our current A.I. systems are not self-aware, yet, and this problem is as far away as wondering about overpopulation of Mars. One miss in the story is that it doesn't touch Robot ethics, i.e. the risks coming along with robots, at all: Everything about mechanics is happy sunshine and working absurdely perfect. That is another problem with the story that I have: I didn't buy into the steampunk logic at all, as the pure technological background is so far away from believability that I only could consider it as pure fantasy.
The scenery and atmosphere was beautifully described. Characters remain distant, and do some behavioural jumps which I simply didn't understand, e.g. Tacy's love story. The logic of the detective story was somewhat far-fetched and has some holes.