Recursion

AI Trilogy #1

by Tony Ballantyne

It is the twenty-third century. Herb, a young entrepreneur, returns to the isolated planet on which he has illegally been trying to build a city–and finds it destroyed by a swarming nightmare of self-replicating machinery. Worse, the all-seeing Environment Agency has been watching him the entire time. His punishment? A nearly hopeless battle in the farthest reaches of the universe against enemy machines twice as fast, and twice as deadly, as his own–in the company of a disarmingly confident AI who may not be exactly what he claims…Little does Herb know that this war of machines was set in motion nearly two hundred years ago–by mankind itself. For it was then that a not-quite-chance encounter brought a confused young girl and a nearly omnipotent AI together in one fateful moment that may have changed the course of humanity forever.From the Paperback edition.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Artificial Intelligence, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Cyberpunk

432 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2004

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Anthony Ballantyne, is a British science-fiction author who is most famous for writing his debut trilogy of novels, Recursion, Capacity and Divergence. He is also Head of Information Technology and an Information Technology teacher at The Blue Coat School, Oldham and has been nominated for the BSFA Award for short fiction.

He grew up in County Durham in the North East of England, and studied Math at Manchester University before moving to London for ten years where taught first Math and then later IT.

He now lives in Oldham with his wife and two children. His hobbies include playing boogie piano, walking and cycling.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Final Rating: 4/10

You can read my full length review of this book at my Official Website . Below is an overview of my thoughts about it.

OVERVIEW
I don’t know anything about the genesis of this novel, but it feels very much like three unrelated short stories cobbled together in an attempt to create a single narrative greater than the sum of its parts. If that is the case, it’s probably not surprising that Recursion is a rather disjointed affair that follows three characters in three different timelines.

The overarching premise connecting these three distinct narratives is actually quite interesting. However, readers looking for a story about the potential threat posed by the development of Artificial Intelligence might want to look elsewhere as there are surely much better options available, especially if a realistic take on the premise is sought. Recursion offers a highly improbable (quite frankly absurd) take, by comparison.


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[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My, what an interesting experiment this is. Recursion takes a lot of unorthodox approaches to storytelling: three (initially) disconnected narratives, no clear antagonist for most of the story, unreliable narrators left and right...there are a lot of ways this could have just fallen apart, and yet it doesn't. The narratives are separated by hundreds of years' worth of time, but they all connect in the end in a pretty satisfying fashion, and it's a really satisfying feeling, as you watch the pieces start to come together.

As for the story itself, I can't really say much without giving away twists and reveals. Thematically, at least, it explores subjects ranging from the existence/non-existence of free will, the nature of sentience, what it means to be alive, and more. I haven't read a sci-fi story this heavy on the philosophy since Snow Crash, and while Recursion never becomes quite that mindblowing, it's still a thought-provoking book.

I could see the argument that the ultimate threat is dealt with a little too easily in the end, but I get the distinct impression that the main threat in this book is merely a prelude to whatever comes next in the series--an antagonist that could be any of a number of things. On that note, it's hard to say who the heroes are in Recursion, and I think that's a good thing. Real life isn't as cut and dry as heroes and villains most of the time, and the ambiguity on display here lends the story an air of believability--even when planets are being eaten by self-replicating machines, and warp drives are commonplace technology. The universe that Ballantyne has built here is bleak, but also disturbingly compelling. I look forward to seeing where it goes from here.

[M— · Rating 2 out of 5]

California Vacation Read #1: The first of a disastrous selection of books brought with me for the trip. The plan to select books for this vacation based on how long I'd owned them and haven't yet gotten around to reading them was a terrible idea. Never. Do this. Again.

In many ways, this one had the distinction of being the least bad of the books on this trip, and yet it still only rates a two. The story had a great deal of potential (Chess game for godhood rights. God that smiles all the time.) but it barely held my interest and stuck in my recall even less. Forgettable story; abandoned at front desk of Yosemite resort lodge.

California Vacation Reading List (November 2009)
#1 | Recursion
#2 | The Devil and Miss Prym
#3 | The Lost Continent
#4 | The Tower of Ravens

[Onefinemess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m pretty sure it’s the idea that sold this book. It’s a good one, and I suspect the writer is either a computer programmer, or read up a lot on how to sound like one. It’s believable enough, but at times it seemed a bit forced.

The writing is serviceable, but not particularly grabbing or exciting. The idea he’s got here – which I can’t spoil without spoiling the book – is a good one. I only wish he’d written a more interesting story about it.

OK wait, that wasn’t quite right. The story is interesting. His writing just wasn’t, for me at least.

Worth reading for the concept, but the writing wasn’t gripping.

Idea: 3.5 stars

Sum total: 2.75 stars

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was almost a surreal view of a future world where there are private space vehiles, reproducing machines, an all knowing AI and personalities that don't know they're copies. You are following three stories set at different time periods and it all kind of comes together at the end. Maybe in the following books it continues to explain but I didn't find the book absorbing enough to continue on.

[Larry Kenney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book was ok. It starts off pretty slow and boring, gets better about half way through. Not sure I would have finished the book if it hadn't been a book club choice.

I do find a lot of aspects of the book interesting, as far as the ideas go. However, just felt most of it was presented poorly. Also, the twists didn't really seem like twists. Pretty predictable.

[Jean Corbel · Rating 2 out of 5]

dropped reading after a few chapters. while some elements of the storyline are promising, the treatment is sometimes (to be nice) nonsensical, like the inept spying through own-built simulation, or the "psychologies".

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can't say that I was overly enchanted with this book. Wasn't bad. But it was really only the last 50 pages or so of 390 that was keeping me engrossed in the story. Two more in the series, but I'm not sure I care enough to read them. Needs 2 1/2 stars.

[Avarice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

[Ruth Gledhill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I found it difficult to follow at first it really was worth persevering with Recursion. The reader takes a parallel journey with the characters as you try to work out what is real and what isn’t, what is man and what machine, just what is going on. I love particularly the philosophical examination of a possible AI personality and the questions that hang over the whole book about the origins and nature of AI, never mind humans. It’s an incredibly thought-provoking piece of writing which takes us to the very heart of what it means to be human, or should I say, intelligent. Aware. Conscious.

[Sara]

Mad that code went by
war start
stoped machine knock the star
lair to human
and broken heart take that road
after stoped war
at blind time i love in war
broken without drug to take
far away throw the time
i made mistake
and machin take gray road
and music was sad
i take all that imotion
and y take my candil
my wisper
my hush ah
what ramin to me
hulf soul in machin war
and red went gray
what ramin cold huge
hot tears
age of memory
it go on without return back
what i will take with me

[Ron Pang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nick Bostrom will be proud

Prose that is not awkward, science fiction that takes its science seriously, while not neglecting the fun (fiction) side of things. All in all, a book that inspires AI philosophers to be proud of their work.

Also, the first good book I read on Von Neumann Machines, controlled by artificial superintelligences. StarCraft players and fans will really appreciate this.

[Curtis Lann · Rating 3 out of 5]

The overall story of this book is really interesting, but the layout was hard for me to enjoy. The story follows three characters from three time periods and each chapter is for a different character. This makes the chapters very long and if you don’t live one of the characters like I didn’t, it will make about a third of the book not super fun to read.

[L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engaging exploration of AI and Von Neumann machines. A contemporary SF writer I can actually stand to read...it's a miracle...

[Me · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of these books that is not gripping had to force myself to finish.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘IN A WORLD OF MANIPULATED REALITY, WHAT DOES IT TRULY MEAN TO BE HUMAN?

It is the twenty-third century. Herb, a young entrepreneur, returns to the isolated planet on which he has illegally been trying to build a city - and finds it destroyed by a swarming nightmare of self-replicating machinery. Worse, the all-seeing Environment Agency has been watching him the entire time. His punishment? A nearly hopeless battle in the farthest reaches of the universe against enemy machines twice as fast, and twice as deadly, as his own ��� in the company of a disarmingly confident AI who may not be exactly what he claims…
Little does Herb know that this war of machines was set in motion nearly two hundred years ago – by mankind itself. For it was then that a not-quite-chance encounter brought a confused young girl and a nearly omnipotent AI together in one fateful moment that may have changed the course of humanity forever.’

Blurb from the 2006 Bantam Spectra paperback edition

Ballantyne’s debut novel follows three characters in three different timelines.
In the earliest period, Eva is a suicidal waitress. On her well-planned second attempt to commit suicide by overdose, she was miraculously raised from the dead and sent to a facility for therapy.
Eva has long been convinced that an Intelligence has raised itself to awareness on the internet and is watching Humanity. No one believes her and now she is also hearing the voice of her dead brother in her head.
About a century later Constantine Storey is sent to a top-level meeting. Constantine is something of a secret agent, working for the Environment Agency, the nature of whose business is somewhat unclear.
Constantine also hears voices in his head, but they are drug-based additional personalities who possess additional skills for Constantine’s use.
The meeting is to decide whether or not to launch the first interstellar colony ship which will be accompanied by a terraforming AI. There are concerns as to whether the warp drive was invented by humans or by AIs. Constantine then discovers that he has been copied and is existing within a simulation run by political and business interests who are trying to discover what he brought back from his trip to an AI-free mars.
A hundred years on from this, Herb is a wealthy spoilt techie who has infested a world with his own Von Neumann machines in an attempt to create his own city. This has gone horribly wrong and the planet is now a seething mass of voracious machines.
The Environment Agency have been watching him however, and his ship is boarded by one Robert Johnson, who conscripts Herb to join a war against something so vast it takes up a scary percentage of the galaxy.
It’s a very clever piece of work. Ballantyne makes it clear that there are connections between the three, but you have to get a long way into the novel before things start matching up and the pattern emerges logically and inevitably.
Ballantyne is a fairly recent addition to the British SF scene of the Noughties, and it will be interesting to see the direction in which his work goes.

[Pete Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are three threads to Recursion, all being explorations of several connected and multi-layered psyches at various points in the future. First there is Herb Kirkham, a 23rd century man whose self-replicating Von Neumann Machines have devoured an entire planet. He thinks he's escaped the clutches of the all-powerful Environment Agency until a dapper man by the name of Robert Johnston enters his life, and his spacecraft, and enlists him to clean up a much bigger mess out in space called the Enemy Domain. Then there is Eva Rye, a solitary 21st century woman living in Wales who hears the voice of the Watcher in her head and eventually tries to kill herself. She fails, of course, but why is the Watcher talking to her? Lastly we have Constantine, a mysterious 22nd century employee of the nano-tech company DIANA. He also hears voices but that's because he spends a great deal of time in the Australian virtual reality city of Stonebreak, so much so that he becomes increasingly unsure if he is not a virtual reality construct himself. He learns there are far reaching consequences to his job that not only lead to the emergence and proliferation of a sentient nano-technology, but consequences that also reach back in time to a young and disturbed 21st century woman.

Cutting back and forth in time from nearer to further future, this is a clever Singularity story about before, during and after the event itself though I noticed that Ballantyne, strangely, never once uses the word 'singularity' in the entire tale. I wonder about the reason for this, and other factors such as Eva’s over-long scenes set amongst other young maladjusted people in a care home and their subsequent escapade, lead me to speculate that is more identifiably a young adult novel but one curiously aimed at grown-ups. Recursion also has something of an identity crisis, a kind of multiple personality that finds recursive echoes in the story itself: disembodied voices, hidden identities, a confusion of worlds both real and virtual. The three threads all appear so markedly and deliberately different in voice and style that they seem barely related other than by the over-arching plot that connects them, though each thread’s effect on the other two threads does cleverly give us the ‘recursion’ of the book’s title. Ballantyne has made a quirky, though not brilliant, debut; there may be things lacking here that further books, if this is the first of a series, will hopefully provide.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recursion interweaves three stories set at different time periods in the future. One's a woman in the near future who starts to feel that her life is being manipulated by outside forces... not just the ones she knows about, involving an intrusive society who interferes with people's lives for their own good, but one people are growing to suspect that is not human at all. Another is a secret agent a century later who is to help make a decision that could affect all of humanity... although others want what he knows. And finally there's the story of Herb, a rich dilettante whose illegal attempts to use self-replicating machines to custom design his own planet goes horribly wrong, and as punishment he's recruited to fight an AI menace that encompasses part of the galaxy, and expanding.

The book deals with a lot of SF themes that I really enjoy, and it does have some particularly interesting thoughts on those themes. The stories mostly move at a decent pace (although they seem annoyingly irrelevant to each other at first, and even towards the end don't tie in quite as well as I'd hoped), and although I was something more interested in getting back to another time period than the one I was in, I was never bored with any of them.

So why does this only get three stars (which of course, does mean I enjoyed it, if somewhat less enthusiastically than other books)? Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. There was just something slightly off about things, particularly the characters, that I couldn't put my finger on. Not a fatal flaw (although, I was particularly annoyed with the character of Robert Johnson... even though I expect part of the point was to be annoyed by him, it still lowers my enjoyment to have to go through it), just it wasn't as smooth as I'd hoped.

I did grow to like the book more as it reached the conclusion, mainly because this was where more of the more interesting speculation started to kick in, and some of the problems I thought I had earlier began to have reasonable explanations. It's probably closer to 3.5 stars than a straight three, and that's largely because of the second half of the book.

I'm willing to write off the problems as either a personal experience (I was reading them during the winter blues!) or the traditional first novel problems where authors hopefully improve, and I'm still interested in trying the second book in the series.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was read to me by Michael over the course of more than a year, mostly in the car. Intermittentness is bad both for enjoyment/understanding of a story when it is a very cleverly-constructed mystery with layers and secrets and so forth (I'm sure it's much more exciting when you can keep enough track of what's going on to guess at some of the mysteries), and for remembering what interesting thoughts one might have had about it when one is writing a review.

There are some obvious drawbacks to the fact that the author probably assumed he was mostly writing for teenage boys; the sections written from the brash/callow-young-man point of view were, I think, the most poorly done in terms of drawing the reader in, I assume because he assumed his audience would most easily identify with that character and it didn't need as much work. Or maybe he just assumed that because he'd been a brash/callow young man, he could write that part the easiest and get it right without trying as hard.

Relatively-elegantly-done world-building; Michael and I had a long and interesting conversation partway through comparing it to Otherland (Tad Williams) and enumerating the merits of each, which I'm sure would be greatly enlightening to all the denizens of GoodReads if I could remember anything about it. Oh well.

The ending is poorly done. I gather it's part of a trilogy and one is supposed to pick up the next one to continue the story, but it's not just that there's no good wrap-up; it's flat.

[Broodingferret · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another random used-bookstore buy from a while ago. Recursion provides an interesting answer to Fermi's Paradox, and goes in some neat directions with the implications. Ultimately, however, the book, like so many sci-fi works, comes across as an extended dialogue that the author is having with himself on a number of subjects, this particular dialogue being both on the benefits of social engineering and on who should be trusted with establishing the baseline standards of said social engineering. As such, the characters come across as kind of flat and the plot as somewhat simplistic. Ballantyne has apparently written a few other books that follow this one, and maybe he fleshes things out a bit more in them, but I currently have too many other books on my list to worry about them right now. Fun sci-fi romp, but that's about it.

***

Having re-read this several years later, I find myself holding a more charitable opinion of the piece, which may have come about from my approach to a second reading—expecting a ‘fun romp’, I was open to seeing some depth that I apparently missed the first time around. I’ll probably read it again, some day.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A future history primarily focused on the interactions between humans and artificial intelligences (AIs), but also has other themes such as choice versus responsibility. It simultaneous tells the stories of three people from three time periods. The suicidal Eva is trying to escape the health care system that caused her depression. The corporate agent Constantine is trying to initiate a secret plan hidden from the AIs. The rich scion Herb is drafted into service by the Environmental Agency to pay for his illegal terraforming experiment. I don't think any of these characters would be compelling enough to carry the book on their own, but they are enough to carry a third of the book apiece.


Note: from reading other reviews, several of the things I like about this book (the simultaneous stories, the switches between reality and computer simulations) are reasons others found the book hard to follow. I can totally see that.

[Katie O. · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like world building - literal world building, not just that thing that authors do for books - then this title will fascinate you. And you have to like AI, too. Because this book is ALL about how artificial intelligence can/may or can't/won't create a tolerable-to-idyllic near future that may or may not be at the expense of a truly sustainable far-distant future on Earth and elsewhere. Oh, and even if the most sophisticated AI may or may not be allowing/favoring/supporting free will, it most likely is doing so while also knowing EXACTLY what you are up to each & every minute. It's Big Brother, tracked-via-your-cell phone, socialized medicine and privacy ISSUES on steroids. And while the story grows and pivots on mostly things related to Setting, there are a few likeable, interesting characters (and some less so, but still interesting) with key inputs.

I'm glad I read it since it's at the outer limits of my sci fi comfort zone. Will I read the 2nd in this trilogy? Maybe. But not in the very near future.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2007/04/the_2007_philip.shtml[return][return]This first novel is an ambitious exploration of the future development of artificial intelligence through three viewpoint characters separated by decades in Ballantyne's future history (2051, 2119 and 2210), but sharing the problems of an intrusive nanny state and also a consistent uncertainty - extending to the characters' perception of themselves - as to who is human and who is an AI. However, I was left unconvinced by the external world-building - on the very first page, one of his central characters accidentally destroys an entire planet, which raises for me important questions, never answered, of how you can locate planets that can be so casually destroyed. In addition, I felt that the author's prose style simply did not rise to the level needed for such an ambitious plot.

[Gensan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It starts out fairly simply but with a story spread out across three (or 4) distinct time periods spanning hundreds of years with characters that pop in and out of other periods and murkey motivations so that you're never certain of the motivations of any of them it gets fairly complex quickly.

Throw in the fact that some of the characters are imaginary, and it just spirals out of control.

It did have some interesting ideas about AI, and an almost luddite perspective about technology in general - but only about ai, technology is everywhere throughout the book as a positive thing - as long as it's "made from human ingenuity" which is a distinction I don't think I fully grasp.

[Frances Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

While at times a little dry / stilted, conceptually this novel is so strong I feel like it pushes through - there were portions in the care home that really was suffocating but I assumed this was on purpose. I first read this 10 years ago (?) but has still stayed with me and I actually quite like how disparate the 3 POVs are and how Ballantyne ties them together. The threads that become relevant to other POVs at different stages...I thought that was done so well.

I rememeber finding this in a bookstore and tearing through 30% of it just standing there against the shelf and then I bought it and took it home.

[Unapologetic_Bookaholic · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could picture the best sci -fi movie in my head that I hadn't seen but wanted to, this would be it. It's a book that should be a movie. Of all the movies that get the green light and get millions of dollars to be made, this should be one of them. The theme of a man covertly turning a planet into a disaster and while trying to get away, gets caught is only the begining. There's 2 other stories being told. If your not one that like multiple stories or characters, erase that idea. This book makes you want to know why this is happening to them.

[Daniel Roy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up this book based on the summary, which seemed quite interesting. I was saddened to discover, however, that the writing is extremely poor. If you pick up this book hoping to have the author depict an interesting and nuanced SF world to you, you'll be disappointed: every description is bare-bones, more like a movie script than a book (of the kind 'He said this, she said that, he nodded, he walked home.')

I would definitely have passed this one had I known this before.

[Jason Lutovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, solid scifi with intrigue and maneuvering, and fascinating with no real overt action at all. Extinction is imminent, and some deaths are implied, but there's no killing "on camera". LOVED how the development of the plot was told from three different times over two hundred years. Got a little bit muddled at the end, though, as the timelines resolved into the latest "present". Probably more a matter of my expectations than failing by the author, though.

[Wealhtheow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not great, but not terrible. The first 3/4ths of the novel are confusing and the various characters have literally nothing to do with each other. The very end is interesting in much the same way as Westerfeld’s Evolution’s Darling or Blindsight--it’s an exploration of what it means to be intelligent, and what intelligent machines would mean (both to humanity and to themselves).

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this. I kept the physical book, which must mean the I liked it, but I can't figure out or remember why. Upon learning that it's the first part of a trilogy, I have no urge to read the other two, which must mean it's a 3 star rating (won't read more) instead of a 4 star rating (kept the book).