Threshold

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on BN.com Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 01 Apr 2020 | Archive Date 07 Oct 2020
Rand Wilde Media | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles

Talking about this book? Use #Threshold #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

2040…VENTURA CALIFORNIA:

Becca Wilde, a terminally ill teenage autistic savant, senses a presence—an intelligence—in The STREAM, the virtual reality entertainment phenomenon created by her tech-billionaire father.

She believes the intelligence can create a cure, but her father intends to use radical technology. They are running out of time.

Then technology stops working. All of it.

No Internet. No screens. Not even cars. But one thing is working—a Russian A.I. that mutated—and is now In the Wild.

Becca may hold the key to the future. Any future. If there is going to be one.

But…only if she can communicate with a super-intelligence—that hasn’t been invented yet.

2040…VENTURA CALIFORNIA:

Becca Wilde, a terminally ill teenage autistic savant, senses a presence—an intelligence—in The STREAM, the virtual reality entertainment phenomenon created by her...


Advance Praise

"How you explore foreseeable future scenarios goes beyond entertainment. Such important exploration is essential for all of us to ride this exponentially shifting reality."
--Capser P.

"A very intense start to the narrative. I felt cold, desperate, afraid, and rooting for Becca. The staccato style and choppy sentences are interesting and reflect something like chattering teeth and freezing."
--Jason M.

"How you explore foreseeable future scenarios goes beyond entertainment. Such important exploration is essential for all of us to ride this exponentially shifting reality."
--Capser P.

"A very...


Available Editions

EDITION Ebook
ISBN 9781734147339
PRICE $0.00 (USD)

Available on NetGalley

NetGalley Shelf App (EPUB)
Send to Kindle (EPUB)

Average rating from 5 members


Featured Reviews

Threshold is a science fiction thriller set in the year 2040, when the USA, Russia, and several other players are in a headlong race to be the first to create (and control) a transcendent super-AI. Unfortunately for the modern world so dependant on technology, the first such AI to arise gets loose and shut downs the world's electric grid. Tangled up in this mess are Kip Wilde, one of the world's leading AI specialists and the inventor of a world wide virtual reality network called The Stream, his terminally ill teenage daughter Becca who happens to be a grad student uniquely poised to communicate with super AIs, and a repatriated Russian hacker who was once on friendlier terms with Kip.

This book is incredibly well written if you have the scientific mind required to understand and appreciate it. It will definitely prove unreachable and thus uninteresting to some, and looking at the reviews posted before mine I'm not surprised to see people complaining that they need a degree to understand this piece. As someone who has studied in a STEM field and programs as a hobby, I thought it was brilliant!

Early parts of this novel, and the AI character Arturo throughout, reminded me of Robert J. Sawyer's WWW trilogy, where the internet becomes aware and is named and guided by a blind teenage girl who's uniquely connected to the internet due to experimental technology attempting to restore her sight. In other ways this title reminded me of Sterling's Dies the Fire, though I'm happy to report that unlike Dies the Fire this book did not fill me with so much existential dread that I had to DNF. (Sorry Sterling.)

Falcon's writing reminds me of Sawyer and Chrichton, the science fiction authors who entertained me in my teenage years and instilled a deep love of true hard sci-fi in me. Again, it won't be for everyone. This is no space opera. It's hard sci-fi. This story cannot be told without the deep exploration of physics and digital technology. I do think there was enough regular human conversation dispersed between the scientific and programming discussions to give the reader's brain a break, and I love the way python coding was worked right into the text.

My criticisms for this title are few. First, and this may have been an ARC copy issue that has already been addressed, I found that the choice to use endnotes rather than footnotes wasn't helpful to electronic readers, as there's no easy way to jump to the note and then back to your place. This issue would be less cumbersome in print, but still not as easy to use as footnotes.

Second, the use of the internet abbreviation RL in dialogue was jarring to me. Perhaps this was meant to be a world building feature and this sort of shorthand is used in all areas of communication in this version of 2040, but RL was the only contemporary internet speak abbreviation I caught and it was used a lot. Generally if people are speaking to their real life/real world/offline contacts and need to differentiate real life and online, they still use the words real life, not the letters RL. That's still reserved for text based communication. If 2040 has embraced speaking in colloquial acronyms there should have been more of them in use.

Finally, the ending. I love where it went and I see why it was important to get there, but the book took too long to get their after the climax. I spent a few chapters wondering why were were still hanging out with these characters. The final 10-15% of this book felt like it needed to either be a much more condensed epilogue or carved off and developed into a sequel.

All in all I enjoyed this book immensely and will seek out more titles by this author. 5 stars!

I received a review copy of this title from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity.

Was this review helpful?

Readers who liked this book also liked: