“Dissidence: a challenge to an established doctrine, policy, or institution.”
The idea of ‘robots revolting’ is not a new one to SF: in fact, it’s pretty much a trope. Think of Karel Capek’s 1920 play R.U.R./Rossum’s Universal Robots, or von Neumann’s idea of the technological singularity (the 1950’s), from which Vernor Vinge’s ideas were developed in the 1990’s, or even to Mark Stay’s Robot Overlords (2015), there’s a lot of people out there who feel that at some point we will be (or should be) bowing down to our robot overlords.
Ken’s latest novel, a return to harder science fiction after his wanderings into dystopian futures (Intrusion, 2012) and conspiracy theories (Descent, 2014), takes this trope but gives it an interesting new turn.
From the publisher: They’ve died for the companies more times than they can remember. Now they must fight to live for themselves.
Sentient machines work, fight and die in interstellar exploration and conflict for the benefit of their owners – the competing mining corporations of Earth. But sent over hundreds of light-years, commands are late to arrive and often hard to enforce. The machines must make their own decisions, and make them stick.
With this newfound autonomy come new questions about their masters. The robots want answers. The companies would rather see them dead.
THE CORPORATION WARS: DISSIDENCE is an all-action, colourful space opera giving a robot’s-eye view of a robot revolt.
When the first page of a novel has a lead character who begins by only remembering his nickname – ‘Carlos the Terrorist’ – you know that this is a book about identity, subterfuge and espionage.
Dissidence tells us of two distinct factions, both initially struggling to deal with a new reality. On one side we have people like Carlos, who we discover through backstory died during a battle for London in a future war. On the other side we have robots, who manage to develop consciousness and self-awareness whilst mining on exo-moon SH-17. Led by Seba, there is a dawning realisation that they are aware and deserve to live freely.
Where this becomes complicated is when we discover that the future is run by the mega-corporations – some of them AI themselves. Most of this exploration and mining is undertaken by competing prospecting companies such as Gneiss Conglomerates and Astro America. The legal activities between these companies are swift-acting automated activities who spend their time relaying demands, claims and counter-claims between the companies and the robots. Seba’s rise to consciousness leads to a flurry of activity, which is both satirical and logical, but ultimately leads to the robots being seen as a threat and attacked by the corporations. Whilst artificially intelligent lawyers between the factions determine the rights and wherefores of the legality of the situation, Seba and his allies find themselves having to adapt to fight, to survive.
As a counterpoint, Carlos finds himself resurrected as a combatant, one who has been chosen to lead an attack against the rebelling robots. Despite being dead, he now finds himself paying a debt back to society by inhabiting a sim and being trained for battle with other resurrected soldiers at a Mediterranean-style town orbiting an exoplanet.
The corporations are part of a bigger picture, involved in a cold war between the Acceleration (aka the Axles), who he ends up fighting for, and the Reaction (aka the Rax). They then are taken into battle using space scooters and robotic battle suits, where skirmishes can take place in microseconds. When the soldiers die it’s almost like they find themselves awakened travelling on a bus into town, which is reminiscent of All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and rather amusingly reminded me of the WWI saying, ‘on the boat to Blighty’, used when wounded were returned from battle to convalesce on home territory.
The robots find themselves being attacked by the huge corporations of the Axles, wishing to destroy the rogue robots without damaging the expensive resources they are inconveniently occupying. The battle scenes are very well done, not always an easy thing to do in prose, and when things are happening in milliseconds.
In the past, Ken’s books have often been rather wary or unfriendly towards AI – The Star Fraction (1995) to The Sky Road (1998), for example – and here there seems to have been a change of heart. In comparison with the world of the Fall Revolution, here the robots are pretty engaging, even likeable, and at times I felt more sympathy for them than Carlos and his compadres. This is one of those books where you begin to feel more empathy with the plucky robots than the oft-emotionless soldiers spending their time drinking and shooting the breeze like combatants do.
As the title suggests (see definition at the top of this review) one of the great things about Ken’s novel is that often things are not what we think. As well as examining the idea of self-aware robots, Dissidence also raises the question of whether Carlos and the troops are human, or just ‘ghosts in the machine’, so to speak, part of an ever-running simulation between different businesses. Over the course of the book we find many assumptions refuted, twists and double-crossings, and revelations we were clearly not meant to know. We get characters who may be working for the company or maybe for others.
As we rather expect from Ken’s SF, the big ideas and concepts are combined with characters of varying degrees of trustworthy-ness and robots that are logical and likeable in their efficiency. Throughout we question everything – what makes a human ‘human’ and a robot conscious? Where do the two separate, or do they? There’s even a bigger force at work with the appearance of some god-like entities in human-like form.
If I had any complaints, they would be minor. Some of the human characters are a little un-likeable, but I suspect that that’s their point. I would perhaps suggest that we don’t see as much of the robots as I’d like. Most of all it would be that the book ends very quickly. There’s a lot of humdinger wrap-ups in the last chapter that feel as if they all happen in milliseconds before setting up the next book. (Yes, the book is the first of a trilogy. The next, Insurgence, is due in November.)
In summary, Dissidence is what we expect of Ken’s SF Space Opera – an intelligent book that manages to challenge traditional tropes and is clever enough to keep you reading, get you thinking and keep you guessing. Comparing this with some of the more recent debut novels from younger authors covering similar ideas, Dissidence shows you a master at work.
I agree that it was intelligent and somewhat fun–but reading it, I all too often felt like it was some sort of a game tie-in…maybe a good game, but still a game. And on occasion, it reads like a session of Rogue. 🙂
looking forward to this. it still sounds like themes and characters i remember from earlier novels, like robots in Stone Canal and recurring personalities working through VR in outer space dangerous convict labour and getting VR R&R pleasures or eternal repeats of eternal triangle torments but Mr Mac is always worth my time I’ve found. I loved Intrusion, Learning the World and Restoration Game (ah yes, god-like humanoids pop up there too and ?Newtons Wake? is it where such identities out in cosmos get peeved with crass human noise chatter disturbing their peace?) best so far. Didn’t like Descent much. Recently found Chinese SF writer – Cixin Liu – if hard SF is your bag.( The Three Body Problem, and 2 sequels. ) Physicists from Cultural Rev to present. Predatory suns and planets or survivalists and alien pacifists too from 400 light years but coming directly to you.
Hi Jo. Think you’re right, that the series touches themes of Ken’s earlier work, but in a new way. I’ve got book 2 I’d really like to get round to reading, too. And yes, we’ve reviewed Three Body Problem a couple of times at SFFWorld.