Summer Frost

by Blake Crouch

[Quirky Cat]

Black Crouch’s Summer Frost is the second novella in the Forward Collection – a project created by six different authors. The entire idea of the project was to showcase a far-flung future, all written with the hopes of getting the reader (or listener) to think.
Riley is an extremely talented video game programmer. Except, she’s done something completely unexpected, and all by mistake. She’s created the first true example of artificial intelligence. And she crawled right out of the game.
Maxine was originally a throwaway NPC. She was designed to die, again and again. But then one day she was freed from those confines and given the opportunity to learn and grow, all under Riley’s care and command.

“Out of two hundred million boos, your favorite so far is a revenge story about someone who was wrongfully imprisoned.”

Summer Frost was an aptly named novella, given the chills it’ll create. This both was and wasn’t like all of the other AI books out in the world. It’s a highly introspective piece, in a way. But only because we have the ability to see the situation from the outside.
Reading Summer Frost was like watching a train wreck: it was so clear to see all of the mistakes the humans were making, and yet the reader is incapable of making any changes. And yet it’s still a fascinating read, one I would happily pick up again at a later date.
As mentioned above, Summer Frost is part of a collection of novellas. I’ve already read the others, so I can safely say that they’re all quite different from one another. But they’re all worth the read – especially if you’re interested in some food for thought.

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