"The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" Final Thoughts *Spoilers*

[Kim]

Ummm... So about the starship Wanderer? What does everyone think about how the sequel will be? It just came out and instead of the crew it will focus on Pepper and Lovelace instead.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Kim wrote: "Ummm... So about the starship Wanderer? What does everyone think about how the sequel will be? It just came out and instead of the crew it will focus on Pepper and Lovelace instead."

IDK. I'm not too excited about it once I realized that no one from book 1 will really be in it.

[Sarah]

I'm really curious about it. I really liked Pepper.

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

Kim wrote: "Ummm... So about the starship Wanderer? What does everyone think about how the sequel will be? It just came out and instead of the crew it will focus on Pepper and Lovelace instead."

I dunno...

It'll be nice to see more Pepper and I'm curious what will become of Lovelace now...

But I'd rather it be part of a story which also included the crew at large, and felt kind of deflated when I saw that it wasn't.

[Hank]

I too am interested in the book but I will probably let an uber-reader guinea pig try it first to see what reaction they have.

Let us know what you think after you read it Sarah Anne ;)

[Sarah]

I think I'm reading it in March. North American release dates are all funky on that one and only the kindle is out in the U.S. Poor Canada has to wait for everything until March. I'm waiting for the paperback.

[Trike]

Yeah, I'm perplexed by the release dates. I was all set to read it this month, but then they delayed the US release for some reason.

I'm not too bothered by notion it's only about a couple of the characters from the first book since numerous other SF authors have done that over the years. (McCaffrey in Pern, Chalker in Well World, Niven in Known Space, etc. Even S.E. Hinton did it with The Outsiders and That Was Then, This Is Now where the major characters in one book were the minor characters in the other.)

I like the idea of exploring other aspects of this universe with Chambers' unique take on relationships and humanity's place in the grand scheme of things.

One of the parts of TLWTASAP I liked best was the idea of humility, and approaching new people and places with the attitude of wanting to learn more rather the typical gung-ho "We're right and they're wrong" we see so often in Western sci-fi. The usual arrogance and braggadocio that's so common to these tales was absent, which was a breath of fresh air.

So if she can keep that part, it doesn't really matter to me which specific characters she uses or what the plot is.

[Kim]

Weird, I hadn't noticed that. I just picked up the Kindle edition and will hopefully read it soon.

[Sarah]

Both the paperback and audio don't come out until March. It's extremely weird.

[Rob]

I started the sequel tonight. Interesting so far, but I'm only 10% in.

[Michael]

Edwin wrote: "...Chambers does a pretty decent job in this book of using science fiction to explore and maybe push on several current social issues and boundaries:

Our “normal” conventions of love:
--Non-human: Jenks and the computer AI, Lovely
--Interspecies (read inter-racial?) : Ashby and Pei
--Group love (and sex): Sissix and her “family”
--Homosexual: Rosemary and Sissix

Cultural perceptions:
--Xenophobia and our inherent biases against things different
--Cultural preconceptions and misunderstandings, and how they lead to problems (read Toremi)
--Judgements based on appearances, like anthropomorphizing and misjudements based on body postures or inflections (again, read Toremi)"

Great break-down, Edwin. I would add

- forcing our own values onto others who think radically differently from us (killing Ohan's virus, wanting a body for Lovey)

I actually wish she had gone deeper in all of these areas; they were great brain candy, but I wasn't moved as deeply as I thought I could have been by those topics (even the fear of Ashby and Pei being found out seemed diluted). An exception would be Jenks and Lovey: I thought that was brilliantly explored, and all done through conversations, not internal philosophizing. The chapters around her death made me weep.

[Glynn]

I like Edwin's breakdown also. This book certainly wasn't light reading and took on some heavy subjects. I would have liked to see some more about the Toremi though. Maybe they will appear in her later works.

[Michael]

Chris wrote: "For a book's message, I think that "show, don't tell" is especially important. There was a lot of message in the narration, undisguised and simplistic. When it's well done, a book's events have a theme, and a skillful author weaves in complexity. "

I agree with your argument here, and you don't need Grimdark to do it. I think Star Trek TOS is a good example, and people whose fathers "missed" the messages are proof that the messages were often subtext.

On the other hand, I was intrigued by TLWTASAP's vision of a harmonious inter-special society because, hell, actually getting everyone in harmony would be an insane amount of work! And I think part of what we saw in the narration was just how much you would have to be thinking about other viewpoints - all the time - in order to pull this off. You could argue that in a truly harmonious society all of these conventions would be ingrained and they wouldn't have to talk about it in their head or out loud, but I would argue that it is a delicate balance because the reader won't know all the ways you can offend other species ahead of time so there has to be some exposition in the narration.

Plus, the argument could be made that this harmonious melting pot is still in transition, and so of course all the characters would still be talking about tolerance and reminding each other how to be welcoming to all forms of expression. After all, they continue to get it wrong (Corbin -> Ohan, Ashby -> lobster creatures, etc.) all the time.

On a philosophical note, (and at the risk of bringing up a well-worn topic) I think the world of Firefly has a bit more believability. What I mean is, the only reason our various present-day societies have achieved some semblance of tolerance for class/race/religious/sexual/etc differences is because we have plenty of resources, and representative governments where special interests can have a voice. Out in the "dark" of space, who would be enforcing this tolerance?? It seems like what would more likely happen would be the domination by "outlaws" with the most stash and ammunition, not by the groups that are the most welcoming and have the most different types of chairs for different species to use. We saw that briefly in the pirates chapter in this book. It just seems like the way human history has played out, at least.

But maybe the author countered that argument already? By saying that only the species that achieved internal tolerance survived to reach space. And humans were an accident? But I saw a lot of counterexamples in the world described here...

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

Michael wrote: "Plus, the argument could be made that this harmonious melting pot is still in transition, and so of course all the characters would still be talking about tolerance and reminding each other how to be welcoming to all forms of expression. "

That's a very good point - especially for Rosemary, who is the audience surrogate since it's her first rodeo away from her home.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Michael wrote: "What I mean is, the only reason our various present-day societies have achieved some semblance of tolerance for class/race/religious/sexual/etc differences is because we have plenty of resources, and representative governments where special interests can have a voice. Out in the "dark" of space, who would be enforcing this tolerance?? It seems like what would more likely happen would be the domination by "outlaws" with the most stash and ammunition, not by the groups that are the most welcoming and have the most different types of chairs for different species to use. We saw that briefly in the pirates chapter in this book. It just seems like the way human history has played out, at least."


But, didn't the text state that it didn't start this way? Chief's entire race is dying out due to civil war - which makes me think they would have been raring to go fight others if there were still a lot of them left.

And I remember something about the blob looking people - they WERE conquerors and slavers and did so for quite a long period of time. In fact, wasn't that the set up for the fight that almost killed Ashby? Those guys used to be enslaved or something.

And it's not like the entire universe is at peace - we are clearly told about two different wars happening.

I think the reason everything seems so peaceful is due to the fact that we are following regular, everyday people. People who do NOT make a habit of hanging out in the most dangerous of places. They purposefully go to safer locations because they aren't military. People like us...mostly safe people.

Also, one of the reasons that they took the Tormei job was the hazard pay.

[Michael]

Yeah, I guess I am trying to understand where this culture of tolerance comes from. It seems like everyone is trying to conform to this against their natural instincts (seeing other species as ugly, Corbin calling Sissix a lizard), it doesn't seem like it is something that is coming spontaneously from the ground up. Are the Aeluons the ones with the fancy impossibly smooth spaceships with chairs for every possible alien configuration? Are they spearheading this idea? Or is it because the Galactic Consulate or whatever has so many treaties in place that require tolerance? I mean, hey, I liked reading about their efforts of inclusiveness because I think it's the right thing to do, but I think some readers might have felt it was preachy because it seemed like it was coming from the author and not from a clear prerogative in the world she created. But I admit I'm not the greatest at understanding sociology...

[Sarah]

It's just political correctness taken up a few notches. Think of how that has developed within our lifetimes. Half the time things change too fast for me to keep up and I'm using the wrong term.

Example: Indian to Native American to American Indian... or not? Seriously I hear yay and nay over American Indian.

[Sarah]

And I completely empathize with Rosemary's panic over how to behave properly. One time I donated to someone who came to our door and then a few weeks later someone from the same place came out. He didn't believe that I had donated and he was asking me a bunch of questions. It wasn't appropriate but I was so busy panicking over whether I should say that the guy that came out was "black" or "African American" that I let the convo go on way too long.

[Michael]

Sarah Anne wrote: "It's just political correctness taken up a few notches. Think of how that has developed within our lifetimes."

Yes, but that is kind of making my point. In order for anything to be called "political correctness" it means there is a political payoff/fallout from it. I never got a clear picture in the book what the political backbone of this hypothetical world was. Although the council at the end seemed to show us some of the political wrangling, it was kind of an afterthought, and Ashby wasn't even motivated to attend at first. It wasn't clear to me how its decisions would be enforced across vast interstellar distances.

And I think it is a little easier to relax about it if you remember that "political correctness" is just "treating people with respect". There's even an app for it. (Well, okay, it's actually a Google Chrome extension...)

[Sarah]

Michael wrote: "And I think it is a little easier to relax about it if you remember that "political correctness" is just "treating people with respect"..."

Is that what it is? ;) My brain froze in that one situation. It has, however, made me more understanding in the long run.

Do you think that there was something equivalent to political wrangling from the... crap, I've forgotten what the name of the universal group. Anyway, we didn't qualify at first so maybe it would have made us more willing to conform, and more likely to be as cautious as Rosemary. And there are those of us, like me, who are so worried about upsetting someone that we're likely to overcompensate and be quite awkward. I get the feeling Rosemary was a bit like that.

[Michael]

I thought the council debriefing scene highlighted some interesting tensions - the controversy about whether A.I.'s should be treated as people, the controversy about whether there are species (Toremi) who are inherently too hostile to be welcomed into the consortium (yeah, I don't remember what the word was either), and the fact that this political body obviously had a lot of different opinions and their decisions were definitely not unanimous. The decisions and information seemed to be spun a bit by the media as well. So, not so different, just harder to enforce in space, I think.

I had forgotten humans didn't qualify at first, do you remember where they talked about that? I do remember that they were just floating through space when they were discovered by chance by one of the members of the consortium or whatever.

I was originally thinking that Rosemary was so vigilant because she knew so many languages and therefore would be aware of the dangers of misunderstandings and how easy it is to make an incorrect gesture and start a war. It could be the other way around, though, she could have learned the languages because she was worried about offending other species. We don't really know her history in that regard, although it is clear she is cut from a different block than her rich, opportunistic father who wouldn't seem to have a problem with everyone killing each other if he could make a buck.

[Sarah]

I don't remember where it was mentioned. Someone with an ebook would probably have the best luck finding it.

I think Rosemary combined being extra-sensitive with being extremely naive. I think the sensitivity was a reaction to her father destroying so many lives but I could be wrong. And then she had never been off Mars. So I think she was more vigilant than others, but that gave us better insight into negotiating the waters. She was such a blank slate. She had all of this info but no experience.

[Nick]

Interesting to see people liking the Jenks and Lovelace romance. Our bookclub really split over it because some people thought it was really sweet and romantic, but one person thought that it was potentially abusive (since Lovelace is totally dependent on Jenks) and creepy.

The whole AI situation was one reason why I thought this book was shallow and the 'niceness' was hollow.
Lovey was clearly a person not a machine, she could think, she could feel. So the fact that she had no rights at all and was basically treated like a thing is slavery. And it was really weird to me that none of the characters noticed that and thought it was wrong?
Ashby has a moment, after Lovey dies and Jenks is so upset, where he kind of realises that Lovey was a person and feels a bit bad when he encounters another AI, but nobody seems to put two and two together and think, 'Hmm, if AI's are really people, and every ship has an AI, then there are literally millions of AIs enslaved on ships through-out the verse! This is wrong. We need to change the laws, we need to start an anti-slavery movement. Where's William Wilburforce?!'

The entire economy of that universe is built on slavery! And people are praising the book for being nice and upbeat and happy. It's not; it's a hideous dystopia. It seems really odd to me that people praise it for promoting tolerance - but doens't anyone think that tolerating slavery is perhaps too much tolerace? And not in a good way?

[Melanie, the neutral party]

I genuinely loved the ensemble aspect of this book. It was a good blend of interesting characters with interesting back stories, set in a fascinatingly developed universe. I complete agree with all the comments above complimenting how the universe was presented naturally and without the drudgery of excess exposition.

[Trike]

Nick wrote: "Lovey was clearly a person not a machine, she could think, she could feel. So the fact that she had no rights at all and was basically treated like a thing is slavery. And it was really weird to me that none of the characters noticed that and thought it was wrong?"

The same could be said of many animals. Dogs, dolphins, parrots, horses, crows, elephants, octopi...

It's probably going to take a while for AI to be recognized since they're created by living beings, and we can be fooled by programs designed to simulate intelligence and emotions, clouding the issue.

[Carolyn]

Melanie wrote: "I genuinely loved the ensemble aspect of this book. It was a good blend of interesting characters with interesting back stories, set in a fascinatingly developed universe. I complete agree with all..."

All of this!
I quite enjoyed all the character development, and that for once, a book isn't about adrenaline-junky heroes, but about regular people trying to cope with one day at a time.

[Nick]

Trike wrote: "The same could be said of many animals. Dogs, dolphins, parrots, horses, crows, elephants, octopi... "

I dunno - you don't see many horses building or navigating spaceships.

Trike wrote: "It's probably going to take a while for AI to be recognized since they're created by living beings, and we can be fooled by programs designed to simulate intelligence and emotions, clouding the issue. "

Yeah, but that's our future. That's not the world of TLWTASAP. In the book the AI are not a new thing. They're on every spaceship. They been around long enough for laws to be written preventing their free movement and their owners are specifically allowed to delete them at will.

I agree that the fight for AI rights is going to happen and it will be as tough as any other civil rights fight, my point was that it doesn't even seem to have occured to any of the characters in the story!
Readers praise the book for being nice and - what's the opposite of grimdark? - happybright, but a story in which some characters are slaves and nobody objects is a grimdark story if you read it for actual ethics rather than mood.

Maybe I misread everybody else's interpretation? Maybe readers didn't think that Lovey was a person, and what everyone found nice was the positive portrayal of a man falling in love with his tools?

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

My impression was that Lovey wasn't the norm. She had attained a level of awareness because of Jenks' love and the time he spent with her and, frankly, yes, tinkering with her.

Most of the AIs in the world are, ultimately, computer programs which mimic human behavior but which don't seem to actually have self-awareness in the way that people have.

And you don't see many horses building or navigating ships, but you do see them put to work carrying people and pulling carriages and doing a whole host of manual labor that they may not actually want to do... The AIs don't seem to even have the "want or don't want" level of awareness. They are what they are and they do what they do...

That said, there *are* people in the universe presented in the book who believe they deserve more autonomy, so it seems like it's an issue that that universe is still grappling with, as it's really not a cut-and-dry issue. I mean, they are computer programs. At what point do they gain autonomy? It's not really a simple question to answer.

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

Unrelated -

I overheard a coworker this morning talking about an Incest Prevention App in Iceland. It made me think of Sissix's culture. ^_^

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Nick wrote: "Interesting to see people liking the Jenks and Lovelace romance. Our bookclub really split over it because some people thought it was really sweet and romantic, but one person thought that it was p..."

IIRC, one of the AI issues is that Lovelace [and those with her kind of programing] is a sentient AI while most of the rest of the AIs were not.

So all of the ships don't have their own "Lovey," some of them have computers more like on Star Trek.

And that might be a confusing issue when talking about giving AIs bodies and rights. All of them are not sentient but all of them are made from the same components. So there is potential for a great amount of abuse once you start putting them in bodies. Domestic and sexual slavery would be the best that would come out of that without some real thought and guidance.

I don't remember if the new computer is a sentient AI or not.

[Juan]

Didn't think about Jenks and Lovey relation as a sweet thing, simply thought as a weird one. Perhaps, because never stoped to thing that Lovey really could be considered as a "person". The "personality" of the AI was more a copycat of "human" behaviors" than really an independent one for me. I have to think about it.

In any case, all the inter-species, when you think about it, is a little weird. I mean when you REALLY think about It. It's not "natural", and when it will happen it will be interesting to see where the moral code of people will put this kind of relations.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

colleen the fabulous fabulaphile wrote: "My impression was that Lovey wasn't the norm. She had attained a level of awareness because of Jenks' love and the time he spent with her and, frankly, yes, tinkering with her.

Most of the AIs in..."

Great point. The text did mention at the beginning that Lovey was "Jenk's baby" and he'd tinkered with her.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Re: the relationship between Lovey & Jenks

I didn't think of it as "sweet" per se. I thought of it as...something closer to puppy love. That's not the right term, either.

Jenks is different. He hasn't done any of the body/gene mods that are so popular. IIRC, he's very short with long(er) arms.

I'm assuming that he hasn't had a very easy life, let alone love life. It's probably hard for him to get to know new people. And I don't know about Chambers' future but NOW dating is hard. And painful. I get ear-fulls from my single friends that let me know I don't ever want to be single again.

Shit. People are doing body mods NOW, so I can only imagine what it's like for those who don't Mod in the future.

So here goes Jenks - he's the oddball. And he meets Lovey. She's learning about everything - and thus never looked at him as lacking because he was part of her learning experience.

Imagine how seductive being appreciated for yourself can be.

[Nick]

MrsJoseph wrote: " All of them are not sentient but all of them are made from the same components. So there is potential for a great amount of abuse once you start putting them in bodies. Domestic and sexual slavery would be the best that would come out of that without some real thought and guidance.

It's an interesting point. If the AIs are not sentient then it's not abuse to use them for domestic or sexual purposes any more than it's slavery to use your vacuum cleaner (domestically or... otherwise). But if they are sentient, then it's terribly cruel to prevent them having bodies and moving around freely if they want to.

I checked back and your right about not every ship having a sentient computer. There's a bit where Jenks and Lovey are talking about her escaping (it's at 43% Loc 2887 in my kindle version) and she suggests replacing herself with a nonsentient model. Jenks agrees that it would be possible:

Jenks blinked. A non-sentient model could do Lovey's job, yes, with some heavy tweaking, but it would never be someone they could speak to in a relatable way. It would never really be part of the crew.

[...]

He'd need to chew on that. 'It'd be Ashby's call, in the end.'
'That's the second thing that bothers me. We keep glossing over what Ashby's going to do when he learns what we're up to.'
Jenks sighed again, heavily. 'I honestly don't know. he's not going to be happy about it.

So it seems like the characters all have a clear idea of when an AI is sentient and when it's not. Ashby could have just had a machine to do Lovey's job and he chose a sentient being instead. If you had the choice between a machine and a slave, would you chose to own a slave because you'd enjoy relating to them? That seems straight-up evil to me, and it's why the whole 'found family' aspect didn't work for me. You can't be a family when one of you owns another one of you.

[Chris]

Nick, the whole AI-abuse thing seems a minor point — not altogether false, but I think that you make too much of it. AIs are emerging sentient beings. It's not like they have been sentient for millions of years and just now encountered other sentients. Clearly, the status quo in the book is not Utopia, but then again Utopia is literally "no place." The various groups are still struggling to figure out how to deal with each other equitably, and the relationship to AIs is something that is work yet to be done.

[Nick]

Chris, that's fair enough. It is a fairly minor part of the story, but I think that's what I found so jarring about the book. There are various moments where the world-building suggests really big horrors that are never acknowledged or addressed by the characters in a meaningful way. The AI problem is just one of them.
I'm sorry if I was harping on the point - I think part of the problem I have is that so many people praise the book specifically for being 'nice' but it seems worse than grimdark to me - if the 'verse is horrible I'd rather see characters engaging with the darkness (even if cynically) that just going 'la, la, la, no horror here!'

Where in the book are you getting the idea of are the AIs emerging? I have probably got it wrong, but I got the impression that they were not a new thing - they're pretty well established.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*]

Nick wrote: "So it seems like the characters all have a clear idea of when an AI is sentient and when it's not. Ashby could have just had a machine to do Lovey's job and he chose a sentient being instead. If you had the choice between a machine and a slave, would you chose to own a slave because you'd enjoy relating to them? That seems straight-up evil to me, and it's why the whole 'found family' aspect didn't work for me. You can't be a family when one of you owns another one of you."


Well, considering the fact that clones are not truly treated as sentient and "have no right to exist" the fact that a sub-set of AIs have a somewhat similar issue isn't surprising.

And humans weren't (as still aren't) fully accepted as "human" (for lack of a better word).

Ashby clearly never 100% thought of Lovey as being "human." She wasn't the type to complain - she had Jenks and Kizzy - but he realized that feeling that was a shortcoming. In reality, he took her for granted and didn't realize what he had until she was gone.

So, it appears to me that you might be conflating a few things - where this universe is and where we would like it to go. It's reached a few places but if it were already at an "utopia" then what would be the point of the books? Something has to happen in the future.

[Trike]

Nick wrote: "Trike wrote: "The same could be said of many animals. Dogs, dolphins, parrots, horses, crows, elephants, octopi... "

I dunno - you don't see many horses building or navigating spaceships."

Or AIs in this universe.

As the discussion has moved forward while I was out fighting crime (darn my sense of civic duty and love of haberdashery), Lovey is rare, if not unique.

It feels like AI rights are an ongoing process in the book, just as rights anywhere are. Europe has nude beaches, but in the Middle East women have to wear burkas that completely cover their bodies and in the US people lose their minds if there's even a hint of side boob, nevermind a nipple.

Here in the US we're still in the middle of attempting to treat black people as equals, despite the obviousness of that and the utter ridiculousness of the position of others. We keep trying to educate people about White Privilege, which is difficult because to most white people it's invisible. I think in Chambers' universe AIs are in the same position socially among the enlightened, but in the position legally that blacks were in America 50 years ago, with segregation and anti-miscegenation laws. (Which are still on the books in some places.)

Since Chambers is gay, I suspect that's the direct parallel to present America. Some places and people have no issue with gay marriage, but in other parts of the country they are being actively persecuted, combining social pressure with the full weight of law and the government arrayed against them.

These are the parallels I get from the book, but they weren't explicitly stated front and center, but rather woven into the fabric of the universe. I kind of suspect that's going to be the focus of the sequel.

[Nick]

MrsJoseph wrote: "Well, considering the fact that clones are not truly treated as sentient and "have no right to exist" the fact that a sub-set of AIs have a somewhat similar issue isn't surprising. "

I agree! It's pretty horrific. I think the AI thing bugged me because it was a huge moral failure on behlaf of characters that we knew and were invested in. Ashby owning a slave is a pretty serious mark on Ashby's character and the fact that never thought of Lovey as being 'human' is an indictment, not an excuse.

The clone thing was just a clumsy device to force Corbin and Sissix together. It doesn't reflect badly on the characters because they all do their best to help Corbin, and they aren't responsible for Quelin laws.

if it were already at an "utopia" then what would be the point of the books

I'm not saying that the governments depicted in the books should be utopias at all. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.
I'm saying that I don't understand why this book is praised for promoting virtues like tolerance, when tolerance of things like slavery or infanticide is not a virtue. I don't understand why it's praised for being a 'found family' story, when one of those family members is a slave. I dont understand why it's praised for being nice and comfy when the universe is just as terrible as any grimdark universe, but worse because the characters are so morally vacuous they can't even acknowledge their own complicity in the evil.

[Chris]

Nick, humans today are 200,000 years old as a species. How far in the future is the book? 500 years? 1000? Not much time in the scheme of things. And the word AI can be used loosely. I play games against AIs that are not sentient. I don't know what the book's chronology says about the origin of sentient AIs.

AIs are created, and they never would have existed if they had not been created to serve. So the idea of slavery is an imperfect analogy in this case. Is a working dog a slave? PETA may think so, but most people don't, and the dog doesn't seem to think so. Nor does Lovey. Does the AI's feelings matter?

[Nick]

Trike wrote: "As the discussion has moved forward while I was out fighting crime (darn my sense of civic duty and love of haberdashery), Lovey is rare, if not unique.

It feels like AI rights are an ongoing process in the book, just as rights anywhere are"

OK, I think I see where our opinions diverge then. I got the impression that Lovey was common, if not ubiquitous.
I felt that AI rights were non-existant and there was pretty much no conversation around it. They were fixed as chattel.

However, I would be much more of your opinion if you were right, and going back over the book I think you might be. Rosemary arrives on the ship unsure of how to interact with sentient AI, she's ineracted with them previous at university where the library was sentient, which suggests they're not very rare, but not very common either.

At 13% (Loc 877 in the kindle) it says:
There were other Lovelaces out there, of course. Her core software platform could be purchases through any AI dealer. There were probably dozens of versions o fher travelling through the galaxy, maybe hundreds, who knew.'

This doesn't really make any sense at all. Galaxies are huge. If Lovelace can be bought at any AI dealer in the galaxy then there ought to be billions of her. If there are just dozens then she must be insanely expensive, but if that's the case then how could Ashby afford to buy her? Maybe it's just badly thought-out world-building?

Since Chambers is gay, I suspect that's the direct parallel to present America. Some places and people have no issue with gay marriage, but in other parts of the country they are being actively persecuted, combining social pressure with the full weight of law and the government arrayed against them.

I think that AI rights are a really bad parallel for gay rights. Gay rights were denied because it was perceived as deviant unacceptable behaviour, but nobody doubted that gay people were people. It's a much better parallel with oppression of African Americans because the slavery link is so much more obvious. Masters through-out history often deny that slaves have the same moral worth at their owners.
Rosemary and Sissix would've been a better metaphor for gay rights, love between two people who cannot be together, except nobody opposed them.

[Nick]

Chris wrote: "And the word AI can be used loosely. I play games against AIs that are not sentient. I don't know what the book's chronology says about the origin of sentient AIs."

Agreed, it can be used loosely, but the story is pretty clear that there are sentient AI and non-sentient and Lovey is the former. I don't think the book says anything about the origin of sentient AI, but they're on ships, in universities, in customs offices, as receptionists - so common enough to not be brand new.

Chris wrote: "AIs are created, and they never would have existed if they had not been created to serve. So the idea of slavery is an imperfect analogy in this case."

I disagree. Plenty of people have been created in the past for the purpose of slavery - think of masters who rape their slaves to make more slaves. It doesn't make it acceptable.

Chris wrote: "Is a working dog a slave? PETA may think so, but most people don't, and the dog doesn't seem to think so.

Well dogs can't talk, so we can't be sure what they're thinking, but presumably dogs aren't intelligent enough to understand the concept of slavery.
Since Lovey is running the ship she's probably more intelligent than most humans and so she counts as a person.

Chris wrote: "Nor does Lovey. Does the AI's feelings matter?"

Yes, the AI's feelings matter. That's why it's so terrible that it's against the law for her to have a body and leave the ship if she wants to. That's why it's so terrible that she could be deleted at any time if Ashby wanted to delete her.

We can debate what the criteria are that count as a person, if you like. I guess philosophers of AI have spilled a lot of ink on the subject already and it's pretty complicated when you get down to blurred boundaries.
My problem with the book is that the book half raises the issue, and then doesn't address it really, and ends up making the characters look bad in the process. Lovey is presented as a person: she's self-aware, intelligent, feels emotions, has desires. You can argue that she doesn't count as more than a dog if you like, but the book doesn't make that argument. Ashby owns her and the book doesn't really address that morals of that at all. Instead, the AI laws only really exist to provide tension for the forbidden love affair.

[Trike]

Nick wrote: "Trike wrote: "As the discussion has moved forward while I was out fighting crime (darn my sense of civic duty and love of haberdashery), Lovey is rare, if not unique.

It feels like AI rights are a...

OK, I think I see where our opinions diverge then. I got the impression that Lovey was common, if not ubiquitous.
I felt that AI rights were non-existant and there was pretty much no conversation around it. They were fixed as chattel."

These issues are why I suspect the sequel deals with Lovelace and Pepper. I listened to a couple interviews with Chambers and it feels like she's really thought through the backstory, so she's probably noticed the points you make and wants to fill out that aspect of her universe.

I do keep struggling to find direct parallels for the AI situation because as I cycle through typical examples in our world -- women's rights, gay rights, Native American, aboriginal, black, historical -- the comparisons are not exact. Which I think gives the story added power, because Chambers has found a new to talk about inequality.

[Trike]

Nick wrote: "MrsJoseph wrote: "Well, considering the fact that clones are not truly treated as sentient and "have no right to exist" the fact that a sub-set of AIs have a somewhat similar issue isn't surprising.

I agree! It's pretty horrific. I think the AI thing bugged me because it was a huge moral failure on behlaf of characters that we knew and were invested in. Ashby owning a slave is a pretty serious mark on Ashby's character and the fact that never thought of Lovey as being 'human' is an indictment, not an excuse."

It's the same cognitive dissonance many of us have when we discover that the Founding Fathers owned slaves. Here are Washington and Jefferson fighting for freedom and equality, yet they are slave owners. Even Lincoln's views on the matter evolved over time, and that was nearly a hundred years later.

Yet I don't think anyone would put Jefferson or Lincoln in the category of "bad guy," despite their complexities, complexities that some people would deem moral failings. Jefferson certainly cheated on his wife with his slave Sally Hemings, fathering several children with her, and there's plenty of contentious evidence that Lincoln might have been bisexual, if not actually gay. Even (or especially) during their era, these were not the actions of "decent" people. Yet we can't deny the massive amount of good these guys did, moving society forward.

Ashby is of that same mold, I think.

I don't think Chambers gets credit for the complexity of her characters.

[Chris]

Nick wrote: "I disagree. Plenty of people have been created in the past for the purpose of slavery - think of masters who rape their slaves to make more slaves. It doesn't make it acceptable."

Masters didn't create slave species. Masters and slaves were the same species, and as peoples, they pre-existed the master-slave relationship.

AIs as a category were created by humans and other sentient species. They were designed from the ground up to perform specific functions. They never would have spontaneously come together from silicon dust and evolved as living beings. Programmers writing code is not rape.

I never said that the place of AIs in the book universe was justified, just that your analogy is off and biases your interpretation.

Edit: Another analogy — imperfect, as analogies always are — that may give some insight is the relationship between parent and child. When the child is born, the parent has almost complete authority. Over time, the authority decreases as the child becomes competent to make his or her own choices responsibly. When the child becomes an adult, he or she should be accepted as an equal. An AI seems to be similar to a child in the beginning. Over time, it grows and has independent ideas about what it wants to do with its existence. Lovey seems much like an adolescent — not a child, but not quite an adult either. You can see this in her tentativeness, her reliance on what Jenks wants. At some point, perhaps some "fully grown" AIs are going to demand to be recognized — freedom is taken, never given. Maybe that's what the sequel will explore.

[Nick]

Trike wrote: " Here are Washington and Jefferson fighting for freedom and equality, yet they are slave owners. [...] Yet I don't think anyone would put Jefferson or Lincoln in the category of "bad guy," despite their complexities, complexities that some people would deem moral failings."

Hmm, well, I'm not sure either of them fought for equality. Some freedom for property owning men, in the form of local government, sure. So yes, I think you can definitely make an argument that great men are not necessarily good men. But we're drifting from the point, which is the novel.

Trike wrote: "Ashby is of that same mold, I think.

I don't think Chambers gets credit for the complexity of her characters."

I'd be really interested to know what in the book gave you that impression because I didn't see Ashby being written as a great man. I saw him as an average joe type. He's got a small business that's quite successful, but he's still fighting to make ends meet and struggling with bureaucrats for contracts and the laws of various different governments.

He seemed to me like a really nice guy. He's kind and gentle and]against violence and specifically guns. And his crew really love him. Indeed when Jenks and Lovey are thinking about escaping one of the things they're worrying about is that it might hurt his feelings!

I didn't see the complexity of Ashby (with regards to the issue of owning AI) because none of the characters seem to think it's wrong for Ashby to own Lovey, so it's never explored as a problem! This is why I think it was fundamentally a badly written book. The characters are all concerned with being nice to each other and polite - but none of them seem concerned with rights or justice. Rosemary worries about offending Lovey - Jenks and Lovey worry about hurting Ashby's feelings - but none of them ever consider that although it's the law that says Lovey belongs to Ashby, Ashby is wrong for taking advantage of that law. So there are gaping holes in the story where a lot of the interpersonal drama should be.

I hope Chris is right and the AI issue is going to be explored more fully in the next book.

[Nick]

Chris wrote: "Masters didn't create slave species. Masters and slaves were the same species, and as peoples, they pre-existed the master-slave relationship.

AIs as a category were created by humans and other sentient species. They were designed from the ground up to perform specific functions. They never would have spontaneously come together from silicon dust and evolved as living beings. Programmers writing code is not rape.

I never said that the place of AIs in the book universe was justified, just that your analogy is off and biases your interpretation."

I may not be understanding you correctly, then, because I thought you were making the arugment that the place of the AIs in the book 'verse was justified. I'm not sure what you're arguing if it's not that?

I didn't mean to say that writing code was rape. I meant to say that people have deliberately created slaves in the past, and we know it was wrong. It doesn't seem to me that it's ok for a thinking, feeling creature to be a slave just because they were created by someone else. Nobody every spontaneously comes together from dust. We are all created by our parents.

I think the core of our disagreement here is whether we're talking about individuals or about 'types' or 'groups' of beings. But surely rights are universal and applied to individuals. It doesn't matter whether humans designed and created AIs in general. It matters whether or not Lovey in particular is a thinking, feeling person who has a right to autonomy.

I'm not sure Lovey can be seen as a child. She's the AI that is responsible for the ship. The lives of the whole crew are resting in her hands so she's trusted with a vitally important job that we probably wouldn't trust to many adults. This suggests that she is accepted as fully responsible.
But if we do think of Lovey as a teenager, isn't it still wrong of the law to deny her a body? The only way teenagers learn is by getting out and interacting with other people. Lovey is confined to the core, but generally when we send teenagers to their room it's a punishment!
And what does it say about Jenks, if we accept that Lovey is an immature person who isn't ready for her full rights? We generally don't approve of men who start romantic relationships with teenage girls, precisely because teenagers are vulnerable to manipulation and abuse. The one person in my bookclub who disliked the Jenks/Lovey relationship said it was because Lovey was trapped in the core, so she was so dependent on Lovey that it was an abuse of power for him to be in a relationship with her.
But I don't see the book trying to position Lovey as still growing or in need of guardianship. I've had a quick browse and I can't see any of the characters referring to her that way. And Ashby never treats her like his child.

[Michael]

Great discussion going on here! And I am most impressed that people are making an effort to be civil and respectful in the face of strong disagreement. I love seeing that.

I'm glad you raised this issue a little higher in my mind than I had it, Nick. There is definitely some injustice going on that is not strongly and directly addressed in the book.

"The characters are all concerned with being nice to each other and polite - but none of them seem concerned with rights or justice."

I think you hit the nail on the head here. I liked the book a lot because it addressed issues that I think of as justice/rights, but there definitely was a superficiality about it that didn't quite pierce the grave things happening in the universe. The AI plight is one of them, as was the cloning, and the prejudice against Auleon/human love. In all cases, the crew was on the side of "justice", but pretty much for reasons of convenience; they never talked about movements that might change these situations.

But I also agree with the Jefferson/Lincoln analogies, or at least those time periods. There were some horrible things we have accepted as a culture in our past - slavery, genocide of First Peoples, ownership of women, burning gay people and midwives at the stake - but those things are not the sum of us. We also did amazing and brave and compassionate things during those times in history, and there were always people in history that fought for the rights of the oppressed despite whatever the cultural norms were.

Which is to say, just because slavery of sentient A.I.'s is wrong, doesn't mean everyone should know it yet in Chambers' universe, or any universe. This type of awareness and change takes time. There are some true stories about human slavery that I can't even read about, I can't imagine how people could have lived it, and how white people could have considered it normal/necessary/convenient for over 300 years.

Do we believe any of our computer systems in 2016 are sentient? Will we know when they are? If we haven't even figured out how to deal with these issues in our present day, I don't see why we should judge our future selves so harshly. Chambers' universe looks at a lot of phobias/biases that still exist today, and moves past them. Others, they haven't moved past. I agree that the book is a little fluffy in confronting issues of justice, but one thing about this universe that made sense to me was that some things had progressed and some things were still in a state of injustice. At least these issues were brought up, they aren't even considered in most sci-fi books.

[Michael]

Nick wrote: "one person thought that it was potentially abusive (since Lovelace is totally dependent on Jenks) and creepy."

I thought this was an interesting thought. Although Jenks was also totally dependent on Lovelace (isn't she in charge of life support?).

[Juan]

The big problem in this discusion is about who or what do we consider "human" or "equal". Is asentien AI "equal" to humans? I really don't know, caus I haven't really met one. Even a sentient AI could be only mimicry of human characteristics, but doesn't make it really "human".
The argumen that sais that Lovey is Responsible cause he can control the ship, is like saying nowadays, the computers that control aeroplane flight are equals to human: it's simple programation with good control parameters.

For me, for the moment, the relationship between Jenks and Lovey could be similar to those relationship between people and sexdolls-

And, as I said it's really weird. Also all the inter-species relations. People tendo to think thar Rosemary and Sissix is an homosexual relation between white people and black people. But inter-species y a los differente: is between a human a a talking-horse. At what point, we consider that those kind of relations are not weird? If the horse pass an IQ test you can have relations with him?

The same applys to Jenks an Lovey. We all want t think of Lovey as a Human or Proto-human, but that it isn´t simply true. I recomend a book "Golem XIV" of Stanislas Law, that talks about this huge gap between what we thing of AI, what it could really be: something that we won't really understand.

(again, sorry for my english,)