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Aurora Rising (Prefect Dreyfus Emergency #1)

Alastair Reynolds

Start date: November 1, 2021

Finish date: November 30, 2021

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Aurora Rising

AR: Who does the narrator sound like?
By Deirdre · 4 posts · 27 views

last updated Dec 10, 2021 03:28AM

AR: He blinded me with...bad science!
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last updated Dec 08, 2021 05:42PM

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What Members Thought

Jun 21, 2012 Harold Ogle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fantasy, detective, police-procedural, mystery

A great book that I enjoyed very, very much. It's a detective novel set in the ultra-high-tech society that Alastair Reynolds has written about previously in books like Chasm City. Apparently I'm a sucker for such juxtapositions of genre, as I loved this book as much or more as one of my other favorites, Walter Jon Williams' Voice of the Whirlwind. The book follows three characters who are all prefects of Panoply, the legal enforcement organization. It's simple to think of them as cops, but thei A great book that I enjoyed very, very much. It's a detective novel set in the ultra-high-tech society that Alastair Reynolds has written about previously in books like Chasm City. Apparently I'm a sucker for such juxtapositions of genre, as I loved this book as much or more as one of my other favorites, Walter Jon Williams' Voice of the Whirlwind. The book follows three characters who are all prefects of Panoply, the legal enforcement organization. It's simple to think of them as cops, but their charter is unlike any police force in the real world; their only authority is to enforce the application of democracy, as realized in this futuristic world. That is to say, all of their authority (and the only crimes they can prosecute) is based on a citizen's right to vote. Tamper with a citizen's ability to vote, and you've committed a crime. Since voting is done through the omnipresent "abstraction" (a wireless computer network that anyone can access with any variation of a network terminal - most characters in the world have the network access built into their brains), very little can actually impede the voting process. Kidnap a person? Not a crime, unless the kidnapper somehow cut off the citizen's ability to connect to the network. Torture? Not a crime...unless it interrupts the citizen's ability to connect to the network for voting. In this book, we primarily see three variations on this "interrupting democracy" crime: actual vote tampering, network interruption, and murder. The primary protagonist is Tom Dreyfus, a Field Prefect who is training his subordinate, a new graduate for prefect training named Thalia Ng, to effect Panoply's justice in a case of vote tampering. Matters quickly escalate from there, as they gradually connect a series of crimes in a vast conspiracy that will have profound effects on the entire civilization. I found the book particularly gripping.

Superficially, Reynolds' setting has a great deal in common with Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, and at the same time strikes chords with Daniel Keys Moran's Tales of the Continuing Time, but it's interesting to see how different authors approach far future humanity with regards to artificial intelligence. Each of these authors has created a far future society in which extreme body modification and cybernetic connection to the network is the norm; people in each can and have reformed their bodies into exotic and disturbing forms, to the extent that it's unlikely that a person could come up with a configuration that hadn't been tried already. Want to implant your brain and neural network into the body of a giant butterfly? It's been done. Realize that you will live your entire life in space and never enter a gravity well, so you wish to replace your legs with another set of arms? You'll have plenty of company. But for all their similarity, they each have a very different take on machine intelligence. Moran assumes that AIs will be present in the far future, but rigorously policed as inherently dangerous. Banks, like Asimov before him, sees AIs as omnipresent caretakers of humanity and inherently benevolent, so no control or limitation is in place. Reynolds is somewhere in between; in the Glitter Band, AIs exist, but most are recreations of human personalities..."back-ups," if you like. Artificial intelligences that aren't based on human minds are all at the level of "smart" machines, and the society does not contain or even anticipate sentient AI. So in order to enjoy each setting, you have to accept these assumptions about AI; for some readers, this may be too difficult, but I was able to roll with it in each instance. ...more

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Jul 26, 2023 Brittany rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sciencefiction, space-opera

I really enjoyed this one! I'm looking forward to the next two. Thalia is my favorite. ...more

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Dec 23, 2021 Beth rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

I found it a bit hard to connect with the main character at first, and had to really push myself to read it. But by the end I found the setting interesting and enjoyed the various ideas and thoughts presented.

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