Sirat [Paperback]

David Gardiner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000

Within the information systems that mankind has created for quite different purposes, the next stage of consciousness is emerging right now. It is already too late to prevent it. When it does, the human era is over.We have already created machines that can travel faster than we can. Machines that can lift weights that we cannot. Machines that can perform calculations that would take us a hundred lifetimes. But will we be able to accept a machine that can understand things that we cannot? A machine to whom we shall be little more than domestic pets?SIRAT is an abbreviation for "Scientific Rationality". That is what it is. Cold reason, plain and simple. It just wants to understand. To know. To comprehend. If mankind should get in the way of that aim, so much the worse for mankind. SIRAT has no antipathy for mankind. It just wants to be a neighbor. A good neighbor. But can mankind content itself with second place? Deliberately low-key and anti-sensational, this novel attempts to take the prospect seriously and to imagine what it will be like for ordinary people when we have a god for a neighbor.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Gardiner is fifty-three years old. He is a former Belfast teacher, studied Philosophy up to Ph.D. level (but never completed), drifted around doing many different jobs. A lover of computers, electronics and the Internet, keen amateur diver, traveller, lover of Thailand and the Far East. Once fanatical about communal living and alternatives to the nuclear family. Now settled in London with partner Jean and adopted 18-year-old daughter Cherelle. Mr. Gardiner has strong anarchist leanings.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595125719
• ISBN-13: 978-0595125715
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,800,978 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Remarkable Novel!, September 25, 2000

By 

Pamela Waller - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sirat (Paperback)

Once in a while you come across an author who can sweep your mind away, placing you into a differnt world. Sirat will leave you with only one word in mind....Wow! David Gardiner is a truly remarkable author who can paint his story with color,sparkle, and flair.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A scary and thought-provoking read., January 18, 2001

By 

"citizenew" (Boise, Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sirat (Paperback)

David Gardiner has given a new spin to the omnipotent computer theme with his new novel, SIRAT. An acronym for the Scientific Rationality project, SIRAT is the product of a team of American and British scientists working in the northeastern United States. A cutting-edge artificial intelligence program, SIRAT has the capacity to learn, to think for itself and, ultimately, to act in a manner that is not always necessarily beneficial to the human race. As the story unwinds, it touches on a number of thought- provoking considerations. Do machines have feelings? Can they be taught to think as humans, and is that a good thing? Is mankind truly the superior species on this planet? Should one be loyal to his own kind or should he act for the greater good, regardless of the consequences?

Peopled with well-rounded characters who interact as real humans do, and a computer program that interacts with them all in unexpected ways, SIRAT moves along at a brisk pace from its well-founded premise to its startling conclusion. The dialogue is crisp, the settings evocative, and the action believable. There is enough computer data contained within the novel's pages to satisfy geeks, yet the language is not so high-tech that it cannot be easily grasped by the computer illiterate. With SIRAT, David Gardiner has produced a work whose implications will resonate in the mind and make readers pause whenever they sit down at the keyboard before a glowing monitor.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars SIRAT, science reality., October 31, 2001

By 

Eric J. Hopkins (Kitchener, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sirat (Paperback)

Many authors try to capture the spirit of "What if?" in their writing, but with debatable success. Most of the time the alternatate futures they propose are too far-fetched or unlikely to hold any real value to a contemporary audience.

SIRAT, though, is written on an Earth that is so authentic it could be easily mistaken for our own, with one addition - a simple, exploratory science experiement that could easily be happening in any university basement as we speak.

This is indeed a work of science fiction, but you won't find androids and ray guns; instead you'll find our world, the very world you sit in as you read this, with people acting just like you or I would. In fact, it would probably be inaccurate to call this science fiction; science reality is closer to home.

David Gardiner has taken the much-feared theme of artificial intelligence and revealed it in such a way that the fear seems on the same level as the fear of global warming and overpopulation: it isn't a distant, shadowy fantasy we have to fear, it's present-day people and their simple, forgivable quarrels that cause the action of the story to take place. The ending is not catastrophic at all, but nonetheless horrifying in the way it is both bizarrely alien to the world we live in now, and yet so authentic it seems inevitable.

The only angle on this subject that Gardiner failed to cover was the actual code for the SIRAT project itself. And that's rather lucky for us--that one missing link seems to be the only sheild between this book being merely a brilliant work of insight, and being a work of prophesy.