Dreamships

by Melissa Scott

Paperback, 1993

Status

Available

Call number

PS3569.C672 D74

Series

Dreamships (1)

Genres

Science Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Tor Books (1993), Edition: 1st, 352 pages

Description

The Minneapolis Star Tribune named Dreaming Metal an "Editor Pick for 1997", saying "Dreaming Metal makes one of the oldest and purest sf themes -- artificial intelligence, the Frankenstein thing -- once again new and stirring".Scott now returns to the world of her earlier novel, Dreamships (Tor, 1992). In Dreaming Metal, Persephone is a planet racked by class struggle and economic and political upheaval. Celinde Fortune is an entertainer, an illusionist who makes good money but plays the Empire theater, a venue that also books socially controversial bands who attract bomb threats. When she combines two advanced computer chips in a new way in order to sophisticate her act, the resulting form of computer life seems awfully like a true artificial intelligence. This is beyond controversial -- it could get her killed.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member dreamless

A rollicking yarn whose center contains an attack on the whole turing test dealy from a fresh if not entirely convincing angle. But you can chew on it in your head, and it's a good read even without.

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LibraryThing member pennyshima

If one were to take a mash-up of my undergraduate degree (Computer Science:Artificial Intelligence, also Psycholinguistics wannabe) and crossed it with my graduate degree (Information & Archive Management) and mixed in my random interests you might come up with this book. I randomly picked it off

the shelf at the used bookstore and am delighted to have found it. I enjoyed reading it and will look into Scott's other writings.

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LibraryThing member jms1203

I liked Burning Bright because it had interesting characters and a good plot, plus the world it created, incorporating virtual reality games, was fascinating. I did NOT like Dreamships. Too much focus on the world she was creating, incorporating virtual reality technology, and not enough on

characters and plot. I kept waiting for the book to "start." About a fourth of the way through I gave up.

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LibraryThing member AltheaAnn

I should have read this book before "Dreaming Metal" (the sequel).
Some of the things I expected to become clear (that weren't so clear in the second book) did - for example, why so many people in the books are deaf (random mutation, small population), and the origin and exact stances of the many

political groups. Other things were not really explained (why Red was in jail, anything having to do with his & Imre's very odd relationship.)
The main character here is Reverdy Jian, a starship pilot and part of a team with Imre and Red. Their agent is approached by a wealthy woman who wishes to hire them for a job - but she's a little mysterious and cagey about the exact nature of the venture, which will definitely involve both testing an experimental ship's computer and searching for her missing brother - who is variously rumored to be a brilliant programmer, crazy, and/or dead.
Not wanting to get into anything more than they can handle, the team goes behind their new employer's back to try to get more information about what's actually going on. Slowly, but suspensefully, they uncover a complex web of crime, underground programming secrets, big companies that will do a lot to get their hands on those secrets, and questions about the nature of the Spelvin constructs - computer personalities without which starships would be impossible to fly."

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