Today's the day 'Lena's Nest' hits the electronic shelves!

Yes, the long-awaited (well, by me at least) day of publication of Lena's Nest has arrived. I'll be anxiously watching my Amazon page for the magical change in rankings showing that some wonderful person has bought my book. It's only £1.99 by the way ($3.02 if you're ordering from Amazon.com). If you feel in need of an exciting new read, please go to Amazon UK or Amazon USA to obtain your copy. (You can read this e-book version on your Kindle, tablet, phone or laptop. The paperback version will be coming soon.) One reviewer has already described Lena's Nest as 'terrifyingly exquisite'. See if you agree.

Lena's Nest is science fiction, which is a new genre for me as a writer, though I've been a fan for years. It's 'hard' scifi in that it's based on real science; real knowledge of computers and artificial intelligence (AI). But the science isn't blasted in your face; a lot of it's behind the scenes. And there aren't any warring planets or sophisticated weaponry. There are no aliens either - just different kinds of human beings.

The main story is Lena's. She's a roboticist and also a mother - and when she ends up 90 years ahead of her time, her main objective is to search for traces of her children. Are they still alive? Does she have grandchildren and great-grandchildren? Or have her descendants been wiped out in the conflict fifty years before? (OK, there is some conflict - in fact there's been a war - but we don't  witness it first hand.) Lena's own research - or the lack of it, in some areas - may have helped cause that war. She will have to face the consequences of her work, as well as coming to terms with a very different kind of life in 2104.

I have a background in AI and computer science, and this book reflects some of my concerns about developments in these fields - in particular the ethics of research. I'm pleased to see that such topics are beginning to make the news and even the drama slots - e.g. the recent Channel 4 series 'Humans' and the programme on BBC1 last night 'Could a Robot do my Job?' Radio 4 also has a lot of interesting stuff about computing and AI at the moment, including the reading of Ada Lovelace's letters (Ada was the first computer programmer and yay, she was a girl!)

One of the things that concerns me is that if we succeed in developing robots with thoughts and feelings, i.e. ones that are capable of happiness, sadness, pain and all the rest, will we treat them fairly and with consideration, kindness and respect? Some people fear what robots might do to us. My fear is what we might do to them. We don't have a great record as human beings for treating people we regard as 'different' or 'other' with kindness and respect (dreadful phrases like 'swarms of migrants' come to mind, but don't get me started on that).

These are some of the issues that Lena's Nest explores. Others include the vexed questions 'Who am I? Where exactly does my consciousness reside? What makes me me? If someone stored my brain in digital form, would that still be me? What if they copied it? What rights would that individual (or those individuals) have?' The lawyers will enjoy themselves, for sure - but these are issues that need to be thought about by all of us, ahead of time.

Some argue that a computer or a robot - something non-biological - can never be conscious. But the arguments are far from conclusive either way. I believe it could happen, and it may happen sooner than we expect. Ordinary people, not just scientists, need to start thinking about these things.
 


Just click here (UK purchasers) or here (Amazon.com purchasers) to obtain your copy of Lena's Nest. If you have Amazon Unlimited, it's free!

Best wishes 
Ros



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Alan Turing, Marital Angst, Dutiful Daughters and Living Dolls... a review of 'Speak' by Louisa Hall

I have a deep interest in the ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and am constantly on the lookout for fiction that addresses this topic. I was therefore very excited to discover a new novel by Louisa Hall that tackles the issue of what we do with artificially intelligent beings once we have created them.

Speak is a novel with a difference. It took me a while to get into, but after a few chapters I began to get the idea. It comprises a number of interwoven stories, the connections between them slowly being revealed. Mary is a young seventeenth century girl, newly married to a husband she doesn't much like, reluctantly accompanying him and her parents on a pilgrim voyage to America. On the way, Mary's beloved dog is washed overboard and she is overwhelmed by grief.

We hear the confessional thoughts of a scientist in a Texas prison in 2040. He has been convicted of creating intelligent dolls that have left their young owners over-dependent on them and incapable of forming true human relationships. The dolls have been removed to 'die' and their owners are left devastated and damaged.

Do you see the connection? Well, no, it's not obvious early on, except perhaps the common thread of loss. We are introduced to a couple in 1968 whose marriage is failing. We revisit the wife twenty years later and discover that she has been feeding the story of Mary the voyager, as well as her own story, into an AI program designed by her husband.

We also read the (fictional) letters of AI pioneer Alan Turing, written to Mrs Morcom, the mother of his dear friend Chris, who died when he and Alan were at school. Turing shares his thoughts on creating an artificial brain, while revealing his own complex emotions and the vicissitudes of his life as a gay man in the mid twentieth century.

The various strands slowly become woven together, in a way that left my mind stimulated both by the ideas and by the writing. This is science fiction of a special kind, perhaps appealing to readers of Margaret Atwood's more recent work. The writing is good, though a little flowery at times for my taste. The author appears to have done her research, pretty much, though the speed of development of some of the AI projects left me breathless. (And postcodes were not introduced to the UK until the early 1970s. Just a minor quibble...)

Chiefly, though, I will remember Speak for the challenge it poses. If we succeed in creating artificial intelligences that can truly think and feel (and how, ultimately, will we know - that's always the question), then how will we treat them? With kindness, respect and dignity, or not? Should AI be stopped (could it be stopped?) before we face this problem and many related ones (such as how they might treat us, their human creators)? These are not questions for the distant future; they are issues we need to start thinking about now, and it's good to see near-future sci-fi beginning to tackle them. (See also my own novel, Lena's Nest, to be released very soon, which tackles the same issue in a rather different way.)

If you like something a bit different, try Speak. Give it time and it may speak to you. It will certainly entertain, and perhaps challenge some of your cherished ideas about what it means to be human.
 
Title: Speak
Author: Louisa Hall
Publisher: Ecco Press
Publication Date: 7th July 2015
Price (UK): Hardback edition £13.05; Kindle edition £9.49
 
Happy reading!
Ros

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Resuming Sevice after a Break - and Announcing 'Lena's Nest'

 It's been a while but I'm back and planning to bring you lots of new reviews. I've done plenty of reading over the last few months so the only problem will be choosing which books to review.

But first, some news of my new novel, Lena's Nest. As some of you will know, it's coming out soon as an e-book, and I intend to follow that up with a paperback. It's science fiction - a new venture for me as far as my writing goes, though I've been a fan for many years.

One of my recurrent complaints is the scarcity of female protagonists in the genre. OK, there are women characters, but in many cases they still tend to be the helpless kind who suffer as a result of all those dangerous, ambitious males (human, alien, robotic...) and are need of rescuing by other courageous, capable males... you get the idea. And yes, I know there are exceptions, but not enough of them for my liking.  And where computers and AI are involved, it's always the men who do the programming, isn't it? Even in the recent film Ex Machina, which I like a lot... OK, there's female emancipation but it's the men who write the code.

I have taught in a number of university departments - Computer Science, Applied Computing, Artificial Intelligence etc... and we were always short of women, both female staff and female students. I've taught brilliant female students, often with deep insight and understanding as well as the ability to write code... but there were never enough of them. Things may have changed a little in the last few years, but they haven't changed enough.

Young girls need to see older girls and women programming computers. Congratulations to the Channel 4 series Humans, which I'm pleased to see has a very bright young girl who is clearly at home in the programming world. It's a great series in other ways, too, though I have my quibbles, which I won't go into here.

Anyway, all this points to my reasons for creating Lena, a female computer scientist, AI practitioner and robotics expert, who finds herself experiencing, ninety years in the future, the consequences of some of her own research... while doing other things like being a single parent and trying to find her missing children.

I had enormous fun creating the world of 2104 in which Lena finds herself. I used my own knowledge of AI, my sci-fi reading and my hopes and fears for the future, as well as my experience of beng a working mum with kids, to try to create a story that would speak to both sexes but perhaps especially to women. I hope some will read it who are not usually sci-fi fans. I hope it will provoke comment and discussion. The issues currently being raised in films like Ex Machina and programmes like Humans are not quite upon us yet, but they may be closer than we think... and we need to start discussing all that is involved - before it happens, not after.

Lena's Nest will be appearing soon. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, happy reading.
Best wishes,
Ros

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