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Amazon link: Emergent Properties
Author: Aimee Ogden (@Aimee_Ogden)
Website: aimeeogdenwrites.wordpress.com
Thumbnail sketch: A unique and intriguing protagonist with a ten-day memory gap and a lunar mystery to solve. Fast-paced and enjoyable; I read it twice.
4 Stars
My take on Emergent Properties
The top-line blurb for Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden suggests the novella is a great way to get your Murderbot fix while waiting for the next installment of Martha Wells’ series. As a fan of Murderbot, a self-hacked android security unit with a love of human entertainment media, that’s a tough piece of marketing to pass up.
It’s also not a fair comparison. Scorn, the AI protagonist of Emergent Properties, is both more and less than that other artificial life form but above all is deserving of consideration on zir own merits. This review is based on an advance copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley for that purpose. The book will be available on July 25, 2023.
In a dystopian future of nearly unfettered corporate governance, income inequality and environmental calamity, Scorn is an independent investigative journalist – ze’s chosen occupation. Zir’s two mothers are brilliant scientists and corporate bigwigs who created Scorn to explore the galaxy. Their bitter divorce and on-going feud may have given Scorn the opening to reject their plans for ze’s future.
A future that is uncertain when Scorn activates in the cloud after being off-line for more than ten days. Scorn is sure ze is in the midst of a big story but doesn’t know what the story is, or how far along the investigation has gotten due to the missing time-gap. Exploring ze’s financial transactions points to the moon colony, where autonomy for the Translunar corporation is a hot talking point and where Scorn discovers ze’s last chassis was destroyed in a transportation accident.
As an AI, Scorn shifts from the cloud to a variety of chassis, including humanoid models and palm-sized spider-bots, a flexibility put to good use unraveling the mystery and not a feature Murderbot enjoys. Both study human behavior and tend to cynicism about human foibles, but with an adjustable emotional core Scorn is a wide-eyed child compared to the android. An older adolescent from a broken home, as well, charting a path independent from parental expectations.
The mystery is solved in due course, but I read this fast-paced novella twice to better appreciate and enjoy getting to know Scorn. Hopefully the author will give us more of this unique character.
5 stars
Scott Whitmore, writer 