Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden
Friday, July 28, 2023 at 6:07AM 
Published by Tor.com on July 25, 2023
Scorn’s big brother is a weather station mounted to the top of a tall building. Scorn’s mother is human, a bigwig behind CometCorp, one of the corporations that compete for supremacy as the passive world government does nothing to stop them. Scorn is not his mother’s biological offspring; like his brother, he is an AI that she created. The construct of family is changing; Emergent Properties suggests an additional way in which it might change in the near future.
Scorn has chosen to be a journalist. As the story begins, he realizes he must have come upon a big scoop. He doesn’t know what it was, as the recent past is missing from his memory. He evidently didn’t get a chance to make a backup before his chassis was destroyed. The death of his body might have been accidental but Scorn doubts it.
Note: I’m using the male pronoun to make this review easier to read. Scorn has no gender because what use does an AI have for gender? His preferred pronoun is ze. His becomes zir and so on. Gender-neutral or gender-inclusive pronouns have become common in science fiction, to the dismay of the pronoun police. It makes sense to me that a genderless AI would have a genderless pronoun. It doesn’t take long to get used to it, although the pronoun will likely trigger the state of outrage in which some sf fans (among others) prefer to live.
The journalistic investigation Scorn was conducting apparently took him to the moon, where his chassis came to an end. He plans to return but he’s running out of robots to carry his consciousness. Asking his mother to help is out of the question. His little spider robot is hard to kill but it doesn’t function well in the human world, where hands and height are useful.
Scorn dodges creative attempts to assassinate him as he makes his way back to the moon in search of a story that someone wants to keep him from telling. The nature of that story is the mystery that underlies the plot.
Emergent Properties combines action and politics in a future that will be recognizable to science fiction fans. Corporations are essentially nation states. Corporations have power while what passes for government has none.
The details of robotic communication and AI interaction with humans are familiar but entertaining. The reveal — the truth that Scorn uncovers — might be a bit farfetched, but farfetched is easily forgiven in science fiction. The present is crazy; why shouldn’t the future be crazier?
Scorn is undergoing a sort of evolution. His software allows him to simulate emotional responses, but authentic emotions might be emerging on their own. Although not a focal point, the story touches upon freedom and autonomy for sentient beings.
The inclusion of AIs in a family and their impact upon the family dynamic is more original than the novel's other sf concepts. The novel’s other animating ideas have been explored repeatedly, but a lack of freshness does not impair the reader’s ability to enjoy the thriller that leaks out from the background facts.
While this novella-length work is fun, it might have been better as a longer book set in a more detailed, carefully-imagined future. Emergent Properties reads like the start of a work that needs greater depth and an original spin on its borrowed ideas. At the same time, if Aimee Ogden decides to write more stories about her adventurous AI journalist, I would welcome them.
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