"All That We See Or Seem" Full Discussion "Spoilers Allowed"

[SFFBC, Ancillary Mod]

A few questions to get us started:


1. What did you think of the world?
2. What did you think of the characters?
3. What worked or didn't for you?
4. Overall thoughts?

[Mai]

This one entertained me. Julia Z reminds me oh-so-faintly of Lisbeth Salander from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

[Kaia]

Mai, I can see that comparison - especially in the second half of the book when Julia is more on her own and directly focused on The Prince.

I really liked this - it was exciting, the technology felt plausible and was different enough from other books to not feel overdone, and Julia was a great character. I was a bit shocked when Piers died, as I liked his character contrasted with Julia. I thought the use of AI egolets as kind of an extension of self was an interesting concept.

The darker themes, surveillance, and contrast of analog and digital lives and skills also felt very real, to the point where I found the book hard to read before bed. (I am also listening to Hammajang Luck, and the combination of heist, paranoia, and technological manipulation between the two books has given me some strange dreams.) :-)

The one thing that really didn't work for me was the character of The Prince. He felt too much like a caricature to me, and I think the story would have been stronger without his point of view. If he were in the background but not really known, I think he would have felt more menacing. Victor felt more like a real (terrible) person.

All in all, this has been one of my favorite Book of the Months from this year, and I would definitely read another Julia Z story if Ken Liu continues writing about her.

[Pete Harris]

All that we see or seem is a near future novel whose primary theme is the dangers of social media, AI, and a massively digitised world. It sits somewhere between the speculative end of techno-thrillers and the very nearly contemporary end of science fiction.

In the prologue, a young married woman, Elli is running away from home, not from her husband, but from powerful forces in her professional life. She is an oneirofex, an artist whose canvas is peoples dreams and who uses technology to create mass hallucinations.

In desperation, her husband, Piers, a lawyer, turns to Julia, an IT genius who lives at the margins of society, protecting people from on-line threats, both corporate and criminal.

It is a novel in two parts, firstly it is the story of Piers and Julia searching for Elli while she continues to evade the dark forces pursuing her, and then in the second part it becomes a fight between Julia and the sinister “Prince”.

At its best, it is a fast moving thriller, which has a number of genuinely exciting set pieces where the tension is skilfully built up. It also has some interesting things to say about the dangers of social media, as a young Julia is badly damaged by on line abuse of her mother which cross contaminates her life. As Julia flees her early life and joins a hacker collective, author Ken Liu’s subject becomes the corporate misuse of on-line influence. In describing his digital universe, Liu provides some of the most convincing descriptions of cyberspace since William Gibson.

At its worst some of the dialogue, particularly in the early parts, is shockingly clunky, as characters explain the plot to each other. The spirit of Basil Exposition is living very healthily in the mouths of Liu’s characters.

There is also a bit of a problem with credibility, particularly with some of the technology reflecting Arthur C Clarke’s maxim about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic through a distorting mirror. Liu gives Julia technology so advanced, but also her own DIY creation, that it might as well be magic.

The book has two endings, one which sets it up to be the start of a series, the other a twist which has a signpost pointing to it from the very centre of the book. It is a twist which makes one of the central characters stunningly cold, calculating, and indeed heartless.

So, this is an entertaining, high tech thriller which provides an interesting commentary on the digital world, but sometimes stretches credibility to breaking point.

[P.E.N.]

That tension you mentioned between technology feeling almost like magic and still being treated as something “built” is interesting.

It made me feel like the story isn’t really trying to convince us of how the technology works, but of how it changes the way reality is experienced.

At a certain point, it’s not about whether it’s plausible… but whether the characters themselves still have any stable ground to stand on.

Especially with things like the egolets, it starts to feel less like an extension of the self, and more like a fragmentation of it.

Which might be why some parts feel slightly unreal, not because they break logic, but because they blur where identity actually sits.

Curious if that’s what made some of those elements feel off to you, more the loss of grounding than the technology itself?

[Shawnie]

My thoughts throughout the last 20% of the book were centered around how perception and reality are shockingly (for me) different in our digital world. How do we trust what we see?

I liked the characters, plot and writing enough to be curious about the next installment. Spoiler: Ellie almost comes across as a new villain? I want to see Julia spend more time with her friends.

Kaia, I can see how this might affect your sleep, especially with the dream technology. I also agree that the Prince at times read like an overdone supervillain.

[Nastia]

This novel doesn't fall under the category of books I usually enjoy, and honestly, I found it a little boring for most of the ride. We are already living in a reality where AI manages almost everything for us, so the premise didn't feel new or surprising to me — except for the collective dreaming element involving AI, which was a genuinely interesting concept. The descriptions of what AI will do for humanity read like a roadmap for the next five years. Nothing groundbreaking. Only the last 20% of the book, where some actual action kicks in, managed to hold my attention.

On the mechanics of the human farm — it just didn't make sense to me. In today's world, with a simple VPN, people from developing countries will work for $1 an hour. That's far cheaper than running a data center in the US, funding a smuggling operation, paying guards, and covering living expenses. I found the whole setup hard to take seriously.

Character-wise, I never connected with Julia. And Piers's wife? She didn't come across as someone who ever loved him. The book tells us she had been planning to leave for years, quietly stashing millions in offshore accounts — yet for someone supposedly that calculating, she doesn't seem to have thought things through very carefully.

[Shawnie]

Nastia wrote: "This novel doesn't fall under the category of books I usually enjoy, and honestly, I found it a little boring for most of the ride. We are already living in a reality where AI manages almost everyt..."

It hadn't occurred to me that it would be much cheaper to pay for services rather than farm people. Absolutely, Nastia, it is much cheaper and already exists.

[Megan]

I finished this today and liked it. (And between this and Esperance, I feel like maybe I should be paying more attention to the SF thriller subgenre, since I've been enjoying them a lot!)

I think my favorite aspect of this book was the vivid/collective dreaming. I found it really interesting as an art and as a technology, and I enjoyed the exploration of the sociological aspect of what people would want from it, from conspiracy theories to therapy. I thought the thematic connections to the concept of the American dream sometimes got heavyhanded, but I did appreciate getting to think about the ways individual and collective dreams are built, the communal importance of feeling like we share dreams and like we share reality, and how we navigate where our beliefs and reality conflict--and who has the power to control that reality.

re: the epilogue, I was hoping Piers had managed to survive, too, that the body found wasn't actually his, but alas!!

[Sarah, The Unsettled]

Megan wrote: "I finished this today and liked it. (And between this and Esperance, I feel like maybe I should be paying more attention to the SF thriller subgenre, since I've been enjoying them ..."

And here I was, the American Dream themes went right over my head. 🤣 Although I picked up on the commentary on capitalism on a whole. Maybe it’s my mood.

I really enjoyed this. It kept me engaged/interested the whole time. I was surprised at how fast the pages were turning. It was mentioned how the AI/tech felt like magic in some places and I’d agree, but then a lot of tech feels that way to me anyway. Kind of seems like even Liu is giving that a nod by tagging them as “-jinns”.

I was also shocked when Piers died. I feel like a lot of the times (not all, but a lot) as a reader I can kind of take comfort in the fact that the main characters are safe, but I’d forgotten Liu was one of those authors willing to take the other path.

Anyway. I’d read another Julia Z book but I also like that this felt like a complete story. As far as critiques go, I agree with others, The Prince was kind of mustache-twirling, cartoonishly evil. Could have been a bit more complex.

[Banshee]

I also liked the concept of collective dreaming. The book made me wish this kind of technology was made true and I could try it myself. I also enjoyed the rest of speculations on how the technology, including AI, evolves and changes everyday lives. It wasn't anything ground-breaking maybe, but still interesting.

I didn't care for the characters, though. I found all the protagonists to be flat and I agree that the main villain was over the top. People like the Prince do exist in real life, but I believe that a villain in a fictional story should be more nuanced to be worth reading about.