Customer Reviews

Sirat

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

A great book! Most books involving another intelligent being are much more simple than this one: the "other" is evil, we're the good ones. We kill it. End. "SIRAT" is different, far more realistic and when you've read it there's far more to think about!

David Gardiner's 'Sirat' will appeal whether you are a Sci-fi fan or not. Gardiner writes superbly well and draws us in with a well structured plot, possibly frighteningly closer to reality than many appreciate. The characters are expertly drawn, the pace is unrelenting and there are twists aplenty.

You won't want to put this down! The best read I've had in ages. I can't recommend it highly enough - get a copy!

This was a fun read and hard to put down but I find it hard to believe the extent of SIRAT's powers. You wouldn't think it would be that hard to get away from the internet so that SIRAT couldn't spy on you. How is it that he was able, fairly early on in the novel, to control a robot that presumably was not connected to any phone jack or even any electrical outlet? And if you don't have a microphone and camera connected to your computer, how would he be able to see and hear you simply because you are sitting in front of it? I do tend to disagree with other reviewers who state that there are no scientific errors in the novel, but maybe someone can point out my error.

Infantile, cardboard cutout characters reduce this novel to wondering what a good writer could do this this storyline. Also there could have been move of a technical explanation of what happened to allow SIRAT to "think". All in all this theme has been done better.

Science Fiction, indeed genre fiction generally, is so unoriginal and predictable these days, it's a pleasure to find a gem of the calibre of SIRAT by David Gardiner. No hackneyed plotting or over-the-top characterisation here - just a benign, yet frighteningly believable, 'man-made' protagonist, unleashed on the world, almost unwittingly, by a stressed computer programmer. But there's more! This story is also about people, ordinary humans with day-to-day problems, whose lives are irreversably changed by one man's devotion to his project against overwhelming odds.
The charcters are well drawn and the tale moves at a controlled pace (reminiscent of Frederik Forsythe), punctuated by surprise twists, to a fitting climax.
Most of all this is just a damned good read which I heartily recommend on two counts. Firstly I'm convinced Mr. Gardiner has devoted much time and research (nothing gooky!) to this novel. Secondly the story is more than just a SciFi tale - it's a literary tour de force.

SIRAT by David Gardiner was given to me by my mother (who had not read it). It was given to my mother by David Gardiner who is a long-standing family friend. OK, I know what you're thinking - this review will be totally biased. I suppose that it is, in that I would not have read SIRAT if I did not know David. However, since I knew the author I really didn't expect much. I was worried that it would be complete rubbish and I would have to try to say something pleasant to David about his book.

I was surprised to find that SIRAT is a really good book. Easy to read but thought provoking at the same time. And not littered with the obvious bloopers that detracts from so much science fiction. After I had read it I gave it to my wife who also found it excellent.

The basic story line is outlined in other reviews on this site so I won't repeat this information. It reminded me in many ways of "The adolescence of P1", authored by someone I forget and published quite a few years ago. After reading SIRAT, readers my want to compare it with P1.

What are the negatives? Just one small one. The production of the book was not great with lots of puntuation mistakes (caused by the printer, I am told).

'Sirat' is a book which deserves to rank in the grand tradition of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'. Like the Romantic poets, who were witnesses to the birth pangs of the first Industrial Revolution, we live in a time of extraordinary science; the gaunt spectre which haunted the Romantics, now disturbs our feasting, in a far more hi-tech and insidious form. Mary Shelley dreaded the coming of a 'new Adam'; the news which David Gardiner brings us, is of a new Jehovah. Good, or bad, news? Depends how much faith you put in what hitherto was viewed as "human rationality". Gardiner's own postion is that, whatever the evolutionary costs to us as a species, Reason should prevail. If this gives the impression that 'Sirat'is a book about nerds, and for nerds--nothing could be farther from the truth;it's a damn riveting read! The group of scientists, who inadvertently create an almost omnipotent--certainly ubiquitous--cyberGod, are no dry and dusty academics; in fact they are marred and scarred with all the frailties which make our sexy species such tragic fun; and Sirat too, manifests all the pettiness and favouritism -first encountered in the God of the Old Testament. Buy this book; and you'll save money in the long run; starry-eyed geeks are everywhere extolling the promise of Artifical Intelligence, don't let them get their hands on your taxes!