   ecwix 2007-10-13 . chapter 1Stumbled upon this in the sci-fi section. Short story, yay!
-"“Something that can learn,”"
Hm, I'm wondering if you ended the quotes in commas on purpose, probably did, but anyhow. Were you trying to give the effect of the speakers talking right after one another, as if, sort of, interrupting almost?
-"While I incubated and grew, they got the machines working, the network links secured and so on. They had the patience to wait through the years, [biding] their time until they could debut me."
-"I debuted, drawing attention from all over the world."
Your use of the word "debuted" intrigues me. It's very... detached. The only thing I really sort of felt with it was that I remembered you had already used the same word before and I felt sort of annoyed that there wasn't a nice synonym to tickle my mind. :P
-"The police got anonymous tips from [mechanical?] voices about a certain businessman’s accounting practices, and then they’d find that he was paying off someone to keep his secrets hidden."
-Eh, overall, it wasn't a bad piece of writing. The prose was very good. The only flaws that really stick out at me are the "technical" concepts.
It may just be me, but I feel as if this "network consciousness" concept, although good, somewhat stalls to a stop when you have a formerly human mind, made by contemporary humans, as the head.
I can't really pull myself to believe that part of it, and that really hurts my enjoyment of the story.
Firstly, there's this "conscious network". So, your Ka can draw thoughts from any conscious being. Where, may I ask, does it store this data? Where does it do its processing? With the amount of data this "Know-All" must be processing, you would probably need a planet's worth of data storage devices. I'm sure this would merit at least a minor mention.
And can a simple human mind be enough to process that much? A human mind is only as powerful as it is. No matter how smart a person is, I'm sure no one could keep track of billions of people all at once, living a billion lives within just one mind. You would need beyond a supercomputer, beyond anything humans have ever seen or will probably ever see in the near future. Again, might merit a mention.
Then, there's this feeling about how the "Ka" isn't really human at all. When you said that she/he was once human, readers expect at least some human qualities. Sure, maybe the experience of being "all knowing" changed her (I see "it" as a her, lol), but there's sure to be some things that remain. You make the Ka seem cold and analytical, like just a computer program. In fact, I think that's probably the best way you could have presented this concept, forgoing the whole human mind part.
And then there's the part about how this idea isn't completely original. If you've ever read Greg Bear, he incorporates similar themes into a few of his books. The only one I can think of right now is Slant. His idea basically has "network minds" working together to create extremely powerful consciousnesses. Bee's within networks, bacteria within networks. Although their minds may be relatively simple on their own, when you harness their combined power, you can come up with some pretty powerful stuff. But still, this "network consciousness" needed memory banks, needed huge buildings to contain.
I know this is "speculative", but the way I feel about speculative fiction that sets its base in some reality is that it should either just make one basic assumption, and this assumption shouldn't violate anything we humans already hold as truth. Sure, one can say that "they figured out that it isn't always that way later," but to readers of this age, that can just feel weird.
Ugh, and one more thing. The conversation in the beginning feels so out of place compared to how the rest of the story goes.
Don't take me wrong, this is an admirable work. I'm just giving you my lame, non-trustworthy thoughts on it. Maybe they can help you out somehow. :P |
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