Capacity, by Tony Ballantyne

I noticed that Patrick Rothfuss had a list of authors he enjoyed, so I meandered over to our online catalouge and reserved a few books. Granted, I pretty stuck to the sci-fi genre. So sue me. =)

Capacity is set in 2252, but the concepts are a lot more advanced than that, I think. Personality Constructs that can mimick real life so well that the personality (or personae, or person) cannot tell it is living in a digital world. Not only that, but some great "Transistion" now ensures that all such Personality Constructs are given full human rights.

Lots of interesting things going on in this book. The explosive advancement of Artifical Intelligence is amazing in scope and breadth, such that some supposed super-AI (codenamed the Watcher) is supposedly on par with sovereign, god-like powers, and as such, some folks think this Watcher entity is merely a myth, while others believe it to be the Creator. There is a fantastic questioning of what is free will? Do we actually make any choices that are completely independent of external factors by the force of our own minds, or are we merely a link in a long chain of natural (yet complex) reactions to stimuli? I consider this kind of question good because we take so many things for granted, and questioning helps us uncover truth.

The actual nuts and bolts of science fiction in this piece is also very good. I really enjoyed the deep, hard-core sci-fi of the hypership (so wrapped up in enigma), the plant life that feeds on intelligence, and the afore-mentioned mushrooming AI element. Ballantyne had too much emphasis on the role of sex in an otherwise philosopic context; is this the author's true color shining through as he tries to impress us with hard hitting ideas, or did he just dump it in there to attract a wider audience? Not sure what was going on with that.

I enjoyed the book. I reminded me a little of Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" mixed with the esoteric, almost-wackiness of William Gibson. A relatively quick read, I am interested in checking out his next book ("Divergence"), and possibly his previous book ("Recursion").