Customer Reviews

Dreamships

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Melissa Scott's Dreamships is one of my favorite novels and I return to it from time to read it again. However, if you are looking for fast paced action adventure this is not the novel for you. Scott's work is more character and idea driven, and I find her people and thoughts fascinating.

When Reverdy Jian and her co workers Imre Vaugn and "Red" agree to pilot the starship "Young Lord Byron" to an asylum planet called Refuge they get more than they bargained for. Not only is their employer less than honest about the nature of their voyage, but as events play out their trip will catalyze massive social unrest when it is learned that they may have a true artificial intelligence on board.

In a sense the book is not so much about artificial intelligence as it is about how the discovery of true AI might impact a society. So Scott takes her time building up our sense of the culture and world her characters inhabit. And to me, at least it is an intriguing world. Persephone where most of the action is set is a planet with a rotation of four standard days so that temperatures on the surface are always either too hot or too cold for comfort. The majority of the inhabitants live in an underground city which inverts our ideas of prestige and power in that the wealthiest classes live far below the surface. Scott has created an equally complex social and political world. The planet is owned by an offworld government, but actually governed by a corporate cartel and the political tensions created by this situation play out as the story unfolds.

Also as a person who grew up in Southeast Asia I have a great appreciation for the multicultural aspect that Scott weaves into her tale. So many science fiction novels I have read are simply projections of American culture into the future. While Reverdy Jian and her partner Imre Vaughn are "Yanquis" (caucasians) the majority of Persephone's inhabitants reflect a mixed Asian background, and Scott melds many elements together so that we are left with the sense of an authentically different culture.

Another aspect of Scott's work which I find apealing is her willingness to explore what everyday life might be like in a future society. Her characters have real jobs and do real work and Scott doesn't shy away from taking time to explore this aspect of things. Obviously this is not everyone's cup of tea, and I can understand how someone expecting a more plot driven story might be disappointed. On the other hand, I find that when the action beats in the story occur they feel much more real and generate much more tension than they would otherwise.

On the whole though, I think it is the people who draw me back to this novel again and again. Scott creates lifelike characters with real problems, hurts and needs. Although the people in the story occaisionally act heroically, they are not heros. They are ordinary working class people who are caught up in events that are momentous and beyond their control. Scott then sets them into her densely layered future world and the result is in many ways an extraordinarily touching story.

If you are interested in an intelligent well written thought provoking work of entertaining science fiction I highly recommend Dreamships and its companion novel Dreaming Metal.

I had read "Dreaming Metal" before I read this book and picked up "Dreamships" in anticipation. I was a little disappointed. I felt the book moved slowly at the beginning, although I liked the concept of piloting a ship using virtual images. I knew from reading "Dreaming Metal" what some of the plot had to be, and found the confrontation between Reverdy and Manfred to be tamer than I had expected.

Overall, the technology and the relationships between the people in this story kept me interested enough to finish the book.

At first blush, I was intrigued by the situation this book presented. I was looking forward to a really good read, but unfortunately I was disappointed by the way Scott handled her plot. The action plodded when I wanted it to move quickly, and then sped through a lot that I thought needed more attention. The last fifth of the book, in my eyes, deserved four-fifths of the page count, and vice versa. To balance all that, I did enjoy the descriptions of the technology for the most part, and the environment in particular. The overall plot was good, even allowing for the odd expansion/compression mentioned above. As a whole, however, it just wasn't enough to draw me all the way in.

A book that deals with the politics of Artificial Intelligence. The major question is whether or not Artificial Intelligences that pass the Turing Test should have the same rights as humans, or not.

A pilot and her crew basically are on an adventure mission, and her ship's computer just might qualify as an AI, so they become embroiled in the controversy.

Melissa Scott creates a fantastic and compelx world in Dreamships, where hard science fiction meets dynamic social commentary. Scott weaves together characters and plots in a way that implies you are viewing only one sliver of a wholely realized world that could be explored for years to come. Scott's technology also has amazing sustaing power years later - her futuristic concepts still hold up as interesting and engaging, unlike other sci-fi that easily ages as technology passes by most author's dreams.

Melissa Scott did an excellent job examining aspects of society and technology. Once you get past all the technical terms you can get so much out of it. I love the ironic ending as well. I had to reread it just to make sure I had read it correctly. I highly recommend this book to people who enjoy challenging their minds to comprehend things they've never even thought of before.

Melissa Scott did an excellent job examining aspects of society and technology. Once you get past all the technical terms you can get so much out of it. I love the ironic ending as well. I had to reread it just to make sure I had read it correctly. I highly recommend this book to people who enjoy challenging their minds to comprehend things they've never even thought of before.

Melissa Scott has won a shelf full of awards and pulled in heady praise from serious science fiction critics. Perhaps her other books are worthy of it. "Dreamships", however, lacks even the most basic building blocks of a good novel. Where to begin. That's Scott's problem to be sure. The plot, involving a spaceship's management software gaining sentience and a mysterious social activist who believes that thinking computers deserve legal and social recognition, doesn't even get started until the book is half over. The first hundred pages are the ship's crew wandering around a space station talking to various people. After that, we get almost another full hundred of space flight, and the main character admiring the ship's fancy decorations. Look, here's the problem. Bi' Jian and her comrades just aren't interesting. If you want to write a book about a living computer, then you have to write a book about a living computer. Tagging on five chapters of filler before the book's main issue comes up will sink just about any project.

Beyond that, the discerning reader will notice something else missing: style. The Titans of cyberpunk, William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, are not universally liked; some folks find them long-winded. However, it's tough to argue that they don't have attitude. "Neuromancer" and "Snow Crash" both deploy a tidal wave of frantic prose to match their frantic storylines, and scathing dialgoue for their scathing characters. "Dreamships", in this regard, totally fails to deliver. It's clear that Scott has ideas. She has a picture of a highly concentrated, highly stessed futuristic society. But her writing just doesn't get that picture across to the reader, and the characters have no voice whatsoever.

The folks at Tor certainly aren't doing Scott any favors by hyping her as comparable to Robert Heinlein and Alfred Bester. At its best, "Dreamships" looks like a typical freshman effort by an author with a handful of ideas but insufficient experience. And at its worse, well, that's best left unsaid.