SOJALS rating:

Awful (1/5)

I first read this in 1995 and most recently on the 2nd February 2010

Reverdy Jian lives on the planet Persephone. She's a spaceship pilot-for-hire. Indeed, she is offered a commission by Meredalia Mitexi to fly Meredalia's brother back from the planet Refuge, being where he'd ended up following some apparent mental difficulties.

The brother is a brilliant scientist and Meredalia needs him back to resume work on his greatest creation, "Manfred", a computer program that is capable of becoming a conscious artificial intelligence. The sister however has no such lofty aims. She has no intention of letting Manfred become self-aware.

Rather she needs her brother only to clip and crop Manfred until there is no chance of it ever developing consciousness. Then she plans to sell it.

This started well, but got a bit boring and ended up just being a thriller that could have been set in any exotic location.

It was also disappointing about what happened on the AI question - I thought Jian rather jumped to her conclusion on remarkably sparse evidence. In fact the plot was untidily contrived throughout.

This was a big disappointment after Melissa Scott's fabulous "Five Twelfths of Heaven". However, not quite as dreadful as her slightly more recent "Trouble And Her friends".