Silver Screen

by Justina Robson

"Silver Screen" presents an enjoyably different, subversive slant on the science fiction themes of AI and cyberspace. Insecure and overweight heroine Anjuli O'Connell is one of a group of friends who have been hot-housed from an early age to perform in genius-level jobs. But, Anjuli worries that her eidetic memory and her friendship with genuine smart boy Roy Croft has been her ticket to success, rather than any real intelligence of her own. She's put to the test when Roy kills himself in an experiment to upload his mind into cyberspace, seeking that SF dream of bodiless immortality, which doesn't work as expected. At the same time, her boyfriend's research has led to him harnessing himself to dubious biomechanoid technologies, which pull the user into mental symbiosis, creating hybrid consciousness - a new 'I', continuous with the old, but different. 'Where does life end and the machine begin?' Meanwhile, Anjuli's grasping multinational employer, OptiNet, the owner of global communications AI, 901, is locked into an increasingly bitter war with the Machine-Greens, who preach AI liberation.
As the case for 901's humanity, or otherwise, comes up before the Strasbourg Court, expert witness Anjuli is targeted by assassins and entangled in the hunt for an algorithm which is the key to machine consciousness, and which may even be the master-code of life itself. This story explores many interfaces between humans and their technologies, between the promises of science and the explanations of faith. It is written in a first-person style that mingles elements of detective story and confessional. Alongside its SF content, the book delves into the complexities of friendship, loyalty, love, and betrayal from an intimate human perspective.

• ISBN10: 1591023386
• ISBN13: 9781591023388
• Publish Date: 18 March 2014 (first published 13 August 1999)
• Publish Status: Cancelled
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Prometheus Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

I'm very glad I intercepted one of Justina Robson's books en route to another library becasue this too was a very good read.

In a near future England where clever children are sent to a school to learn faster, Anjuli O'Connell is an exception, among all the exceptionally bright she's different, she has perfect recall, a memory that logs everything (would have made an exceptional librarian!). Her school friends carry over to her working life, partially because she can decode what they're talking about into understandable English.

WHen on of her friends dies while apparently trying to upload himself into the network, her world starts crumbling around her. There are secrets within secrets and the AI's are getting to an independant age.