Silver Screen presents an enjoyably different, subversive slant on the
science fiction themes of AI and cyberspace. Insecure and overweight
heroine Anjuli O'Connell is one of a group of friends who have been
hot-housed from an early age to perform in genius-level jobs. But Anjuli
worries that her eidetic memory and her friendship with genuine smart
boy Roy Croft has been her ticket to success, rather than any real
intelligence of her own. She's put to the test when Roy kills himself in
an experiment to upload his mind into cyberspace, seeking that SF dream
of bodiless immortality, which doesn't work as expected. At the same
time her boyfriend's research has led to him harnessing himself to
dubious biomechanoid technologies, which pull the user into mental
symbiosis, creating hybrid consciousness - a new "I," continuous with
the old, but different. "Where does life end and the machine begin?"
Meanwhile Anjuli's grasping multinational employer, OptiNet, the owner
of global communications AI, 901, is locked into an increasingly bitter
war with the Machine-Greens, who preach AI liberation. As the case for
901's humanity, or otherwise, comes up before the Strasbourg Court,
expert witness Anjuli is targeted by assassins and entangled in the hunt
for an algorithm which is the key to machine consciousness, and which
may even be the master-code of life itself.
This story explores many interfaces between humans and their
technologies, between the promises of science and the explanations of
faith. It is written in a first-person style that mingles elements of
detective story and confessional. Alongside its SF content, the book
delves into the complexities of friendship, loyalty, love, and betrayal
from an intimate human perspective.
