The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts

Published by Tachyon Publications on June 12, 2018

Everyone who has seen 2001: A Space Odyssey knows that it is unwise to put an Artificial Intelligence in charge of a spaceship. The time will eventually come when humans need to plot against the computer. The Freeze Frame Revolution asks how that might be done when humans are mostly in stasis, with only a few at a time awakened every few centuries to help the computer build gates across the galaxy, connecting wormholes so that future travelers will journey on interstellar freeways.

Thirty thousand explorers on a sizeable ship have been building those gates for 65 million years. They don’t know if Earth still exists. If it does, it isn’t the Earth they knew. Every now and then, a monster pops out of a gate they’ve built, perhaps trying to eat them, but they’re moving too fast to be devoured. So far, anyway.

Lian Wei is fed up with the monsters, but more than that, she’s fed up with her life. She knows that the explorers were engineered for longevity, to withstand thousands of years of sleep at a time, to be happy simulating the lives of humans long dead. She wants freedom in the form of self-determination. She wants her life experiences to be real. She thinks messing up the AI’s confidence algorithms, making it more dependent on its human crew, might give her what she wants. The ship has other ideas.

Lian confides in Sunday Ahzmundin, believing she might be of like mind. She’s not, at least initially. Thousands of years later, Sunday learns that other members of the crew have similar notions of freedom. Eventually feeling motivated to explore the vast ship, Sunday discovers a hidden chamber that leads to a revelation about the ship’s interaction with humans. Suddenly the question becomes: How does one plot a revolution against an AI that sees and hears everything, when the opportunity to interact with other humans only comes along once every few centuries, and when it’s unlikely that the same conspiring humans will be awakened at the same time? And more importantly (to Sunday, at least), how do you fight against the real enemy, mission planners who have been dead for scores of millions of years?

The Freeze Frame Revolution is hard science fiction, which I generally like, but maybe a little too hard for me, given that I’m not a scientist. I struggled with the nuts-and-bolts of the story, and while that’s my weakness, not the author’s, I had more fun reading Watts’ Echopraxia, which I found to be more accessible. In any event, the central plot doesn’t require a perfect understanding of the ship’s interaction with the universe or of the physics that underlie the crew’s conspiracy against the AI.

The plot moves the “evil AI” story in a new direction by assuming that an AI on a long-term mission won’t necessarily be all that smart, because machines are more likely to stay on track if they’re a bit limited and unimaginative (hence the need for a human crew). But even an Artificial Intelligence might turn out to be surprisingly intelligent, and as sf and mainstream writers alike have long noted, intelligence (artificial or otherwise) can’t be trusted.

As Sunday narrates the novel, she sometimes speaks directly to an audience. Guessing the identity of the audience she’s addressing is one of the novel’s many challenges.

Good science fiction, like all good literature, tells us something about the human condition. The Freeze Frame Revolution offers insights into how different personalities might respond to long but condensed lifespans spent under the watchful eye of a controlling computer, while at the same time asking how humanity might change when a cohort of humans, perhaps the last humans alive, are on a seemingly endless journey together.

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Echopraxia by Peter Watts

Published by Tor Books on August 26, 2014

Echopraxia takes place after Blindsight. Transhuman Bicamerals (hive-minded faith-based scientists who speak in tongues), engineered versions of zombies, and not-quite-human but controlled and confined vampires are among the many background characters. Don't grind your teeth -- this is not another dumb zombie/vampire novel.

The central character is baseline human Dan Brüks, a biologist and tenured professor who resists all the wiring and implants that most people take for granted. As Exchopraxia begins, Brüks is in the desert where he finds Bicamerals threatened by a not-so-controlled-or-confined vampire and her zombie helpers. Soon the Bicams and the vampire join forces (more or less) because they appear to have a common but unidentified enemy. An attack from an unknown source sends Brüks and the Bicams and the vampire and a baseline military officer and some other characters scrambling to a spaceship that is itself chased and attacked by the unknown enemy. Figuring out who (or what) is engineering the high tech attacks is one of the plot's three mysteries. The second involves a mysterious something -- the "Angels of the Asteroids" is the roughly translated name bestowed by the Bicams -- and its association with Icarus, a space station that acts as a conduit of unlimited solar energy. The third involves the abrupt disappearance of the Theseus, a spaceship that investigated mystery number two, on which the military officer's son was serving.

Peter Watts has a better than average prose style. I like the way he renders dialog in a character for whom language is too slow to keep pace with thought. Characters have carefully designed personalities. Brüks and the military officer are both carrying a bundle of guilt, a byproduct of being baseline humans who can't jettison inconvenient emotions. The plot moves quickly, particularly in the novel's second half, but it does not short-change character development or the refinement of themes (including the benefits and disadvantages of being human rather than transhuman) that are central to the story.

The novel's background is filled with ideas, some familiar and others fresh. Watts doesn't assume that readers are stupid and need their hands held. Concepts that don't seem to make much sense initially (like "smart paint") are eventually made clear, usually through context rather than direct explanation. Watts scores points with me for avoiding needless exposition.

While Echopraxia is science-heavy science fiction, Watts also scores points for recognizing and engaging the limits of science -- which is not to say that the novel prefers a religious approach to understanding phenomena, despite the importance of transhuman monks to the story. Watts understands that too many people have blind faith in the ability of either science or religion to supply correct answers to all questions when, given our relatively primitive evolutionary state, we don't even know what questions to ask. Watts provides an antidote to arrogance, a reminder that it is wrong to belittle others because their understanding of the universe (or of our tiny part of our single universe) differs from our own. Echopraxia makes a strong argument for the importance of keeping an open mind about ... well, everything ... because the odds are good that whatever we believe to be true is fundamentally wrong.

Apart from being intellectually engaging, Echopraxia tells an entertaining story. The combination of an intelligent background, a fun plot, important themes, and strong characters make Echopraxia a rewarding read.

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