Sunrise Alley [Mass Market Paperback]

Catherine Asaro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 25, 2006

She was running from a ruthless criminal accompanied by someone more than human...When the shipwrecked stranger washed up, nearly drowned, on the beach near research scientist Samantha Brytons home, she was unaware that he was something more than human: an experiment conducted by Charon, a notorious criminal and practitioner of illegal robotics and android research. The man said his name was Turner Pascalbut Pascal was dead, killed in a car wreck. Then she found that Charon was experimenting with copying the minds of humans into android brains, implanted in human bodies to escape detection, planning to make his own army of slaves that will follow his orders without question. Samantha and Turner quickly found themselves on the run across the country, pursued by the most ruthless criminal of the twenty-first century. In desperation, Samantha decided to seek help from Sunrise Alley, an underground organization of AIs that had gone rogue. But these cybernetic outlaws were rumored to have their own hidden agenda, not necessarily congruent with humanitys welfare, and Samantha feared that her only hope would prove forlorn...

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School - Samantha Bryton, a brilliant young biotech engineer working on machine intelligence, has retired because of unresolved ethical issues concerning how the industry uses her work. On the beach near her secluded cabin, she finds a shipwrecked man, and it quickly becomes apparent that there is something unusual about him. It turns out that the original Turner Pascal is legally dead, but he has been brought back to life in a technologically enhanced but human-appearing body by the shadowy scientist Charon, who uses illegal and amazingly advanced technology. Self-aware, independent AIs (called EIs if they evolve to that state) are extremely rare and prone to psychological instability, and Sam is one of the few people in the world who understands and can work with them. It is no coincidence that Turner has ended up on her beach in his attempt to escape from Charon. As they flee villains who want to acquire Turner's technology, the two try to unravel the mystery of the identity of Charon and the true nature of "Sunrise Alley," a secret society of escaped EIs who may pose a threat to humans. Through many trials and adventures, friendship and sexual attraction gradually develop between Sam and Turner (though she worries about his nonhuman characteristics and dubious legal status). The plot is an epic chase across a near-future landscape, enlivened by twists, complicated puzzles to solve, plenty of intriguing technology, and a strong element of romance. - Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Retired biotech engineer Sam finds the wreckage of a yacht, and its lone, male passenger, on her private beach. She is understandably curious about the man, Turner, who, though his body and brain are artificial, insists, on the basis of his memories, that he is human. Unfortunately, the man he recalls is legally dead. That gets Sam's attention. She retired over ethical disagreements with biotech firms, and Turner is a walking bioethics controversy, created by criminal mastermind and rogue bioengineer Charon, who thereafter captures Turner and Sam, intercepting them as they take refuge with Sam's high-ranking military friends and imprisoning them at his Himalayan fortress. Thanks to Turner's cybernetic enhancements, their incarceration doesn't last long, and they then take temporary refuge in a hideaway, Sunrise Alley, for escaped EIs (systems more advanced than AIs), which have developed in ways their human creators didn't expect. Eventually, they end up with friends and get on with the issues raised by Turner's existence. Asaro reinforces her reputation for combining high-tech adventure and romance. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Baen (July 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416520791
• ISBN-13: 978-1416520795
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,718,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Catherine Asaro: Renassaince Woman

Propped against the bookcase in Catherine Asaro's home office is the framed diploma of her Harvard Ph.D. in chemical physics. Nearby, dangling from the doorknob, is a bag stuffed with the tights and leotards she wears when she pulls herself away from her writing for ballet classes. A former professional dancer, this California native has little time for the ballet barre these days. Instead, she's fielding speaking offers and meeting deadlines for her novels.

Winner of the Nebula (R) Award for her novel, THE QUANTUM ROSE, and her novella, "The SpacetimePool," Catherine blends exciting adventure, science, world building, romance, and strong characterization into her fiction. Her latest science fiction novel is DIAMOND STAR (Baen), and her most recent fantasy is THE NIGHT BIRD (Luna). She also writes thrillers, including ALPHA and SUNRISE ALLEY.

DIAMOND STAR (is about a rock star in the future. The book's release is the culmination of what Catherine describes as "one of the most exciting collaborations I've ever done." Working with the Baltimore rock band Point Valid, she recorded a music CD that offers readers a soundtrack to the book. Starflight Music released the CD, also titled Diamond Star, performed by Point Valid--Hayim Ani, Adam Leve, and Max Vidaver--with Catherine as a guest artist. Catherine wrote the lyrics for most of the songs, and Hayim wrote the music with Point Valid. Catherine also composed several cuts on the album, and Hayim offered her several of his original compositions.

After Point Valid dispersed to college, jazz pianist Donald Wolcott joined the project as the accompanist for Catherine's vocals. Asaro and WOlcott perform and book conventions and other venues, doing selections from the soundtracks to Catherine's books as well as jazz and pop songs.

Catherine's short fiction has appeared in Analog magazine and various anthologies, including "Walk in Silence," "A Roll of the Dice," and "Aurora in Four Voices," which all won the Analog Readers Poll for best novella, and were nominated for both Nebula(R) and Hugo Awards. Her novella, "The Spacetime Pool" (Analog, March 2008), is currently up for the Nebula(R). Catherine has also published reviews and essays and authored scientific papers in refereed academic journals. Her paper,"Complex Speeds and Special Relativity" in the The American Journal of Physics (April 1996) forms the basis for some of the science in her fiction. Among the places she has done research are the University of Toronto, the Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She was a physics professor until 1990, when she became a consultant and writer.

In Catherine's youth, the arts were her focus. She studied ballet from age of five, trained in classical piano, and spent hours curled up with books. She successfully pursued London's Royal Academy of Dance syllabus through the first professional level and enrolled at UCLA as a dance major. Then she discovered she loved math and science. "I hadn't studied it much in high school, but at UCLA I ended up taking a lot of science and math," she remembers. "I struggled at first and sometimes I felt like I had no clue. Then one day I read the chapter in my chemistry book on quantum theory--and I was hooked. It felt more right than any other subject I had studied." She went on to earn a BS with Highest Honors from UCLA, a masters in physics from Harvard, and a doctorate in chemical physics, also from Harvard.

Catherine attributes her ability to entertain a broad reading audience in part to her upbringing. "My father is one of the four scientists who postulated that a comet hitting the earth caused mass extinctions, including the demise of dinosaurs. My mother was a student of English literature who loved to write, so from the beginning I was influenced by both the sciences and arts." While pursing her degrees, Catherine continued to dance, founding the Mainly Jazz Dancers and Harvard University Ballet. Perennially on deadline, she now focuses more on her writing than research, but she often speaks on the intersection of science and art at venues such as the Library of Congress and Georgetown University.

Catherine is also proud to coach the Howard Area Homeschoolers, whose students have distinguished themselves in numerous national math programs, including the USA Mathematical Olympiad, MathCounts, and the American Regional Mathematics League. She has served two terms as president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (SFWA).

Born in Oakland, California, Asaro grew up in El Cerrito, north of Berkeley. A challenger of rules since her childhood, she explores the boundaries of genre fiction in her novels. "It's like stretching different muscles for dance class," she says, adding that dancing and math aren't as dissimilar as people may think. "There is a beauty in seeing a math problem come together just as there is in performing a ballet. And the discipline it takes to do ballet well is similar to that needed to do math." But no matter what the style of her novels, she writes from the heart. "The flashy adventure is fun," she says, "but the characters mean the most to me, both as a reader and as a writer."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Turner Is a Person, July 4, 2006

By 

Arthur W. Jordin (Smyrna, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sunrise Alley (Hardcover)

Sunrise Alley (2005) is the third novel in the Near-future SF series, following The Phoenix Code. Samantha Abigail Harriet Bryton is a topline researcher in biomechanical constructs, an EI shrink, and a world famous bioethicist. She had protested the violation of ethical standards in the industry, but was ignored in her own company. Finally, she quit her job with Bioll Corporate Labs and is living quietly in her house on a northern California beach.

In this novel, Sam is walking on the beach in the fall of 2033 when she discovers debris on the strand and a wreck offshore. She finds an unconscious man on a raft among the wreckage and pulls the float back to the shore. When she checks the body and talks to the man, he suddenly regains consciousness.

When she examines the man in her lab, Sam learns that the man has biomechanical limbs and implants and a neural mesh instead of a brain. Sam checks his identity on the World Mesh and discovers that he is dead. Obviously the body is a forma, an android construct, but the person disagrees. He insists that he is a man who has been dissected, imaged and reconstructed as an android.

Turner Pascal says that he has been reconstructed by Charon, an underground figure, but Sam does not recognize the name. She checks with a close friend and learns that Charon does exist and has quite a reputation as a criminal. Sam still doesn't fully believe Turner, but is attracted by his upright personality.

Turner does not want her to contact anyone else, so they leave the house in her hover-shadow car and head for San Francisco. When her car is followed by another, she fights off its attacks, but decides to call the NIA immediately. A Redbird helicopter picks them up and delivers them to an airfield where they are met by a Rex hypersonic transport. However, the plane crew are henchmen of Charon and they are kidnapped to the Himalayas.

This novel explores the legal implications of self-aware emergent intelligences who can pass the most stringent Turing tests. Everyone initially treats Turner as an android, yet Sam is professionally impressed by his naturalness, empathy and stable personality. Although sometimes exhibiting problems with personality integration, Turner is far beyond the computer-based EIs with whom Sam has worked.

In many respects, this novel is similar in concept to the story "Jerry Was a Man" by Heinlein and other SF tales regarding civil liberties for non-humans. Asimov also addressed this subject in The Caves of Steel with R. Daneel Olivaw, the humanoid robot who acts as the partner of Elijah Baley. Unlike this story, R. Daneel displays all the aspects a sentient creature, yet is never invested with the status of citizen.

The title of this work is the cognomen of an underground society of EIs who have disappeared from research labs and other high security sites. Most of humanity are very leery of all EIs, yet they are too useful to just deactivate and throw away. To make things even worst, some EIs in Sunrise Alley possess top secret military information. They have already fled their builders, so how can they be trusted?

Highly recommended for Asaro fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of intrigue and exotic romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally scifi that is beyond fantasy..., March 18, 2005

By 

Cyber Malt - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sunrise Alley (Hardcover)

I like Asaro, I like the slightly cheezy dime store romance element that she brings into her novels. But I wouldn't buy a book for a dime store romance element. I would however buy a book which took what's currently known about comp sci and projected it a decade or two into the future.

What's great about the near future that Asaro builds up- is that it is not fantasy. Its consistent with the laws of the universe, she beats relativity in the Skolian series with a cute Mathematical trick- but here she doesn't have to.

The story isn't about the characters, its not her strong point- she has a stereotype boy meets girl, they fall in love approach- which works for her.

The story is about the concept. Slicing a brain into a cybernetic conciousness: the idea's been done before, but rarely as well as this. Her background in tech helps, she doesn't have to bend over backward to make up funny words to represent the stuff of the future. She's fluent enough with the language used in science today.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent romantic sci-fi thriller, October 13, 2009

By 

Mrs. Baumann - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sunrise Alley (Mass Market Paperback)

Plot Summary: Dr. Samantha Bryton has resigned as the lead biotech engineer when her firm began cutting corners to maximize profits. She's retreated to her home on the California coast to escape technology, but it literally washes up on her beach. Sam finds Turner Pascal floating on some wreckage, she pulls him to shore, and then learns that their meeting was no accident. Turner is trying to escape a mad genius named Charon, who copied Turner's mind into an android body after he died in a car accident. Charon wants Turner back, and Sam vows to help Turner find sanctuary and establish his right to live as a man, and not a piece of property.

The cover drew me in, but it was the story that kept me entertained. This is a sci-fi romantic thriller all rolled up into one neat package. A good science fiction story should give the reader a juicy ethical dilemma to chew on, and this one is a doozy; if artificial intelligence is self aware, should it have the same rights as humans? What happens when a human and a machine become one? Can such a being be owned by a human? The questions go on and on, but at the heart of the story is Turner and Sam, and their mutual devotion. Without their love, this story would have all the tension of a bland academic inquiry.

Most of the plot features Turner and Sam on the run, and it reminded me of the movie, "The Fugitive." Well, except that Turner had all these mad skills, like running super fast, or turning his hands into weapons. His brain evolves so much during the story, it's like he's a completely different person by the end. Sam must adjust to Turner's changes, both physically (yeah, the cover image is just the tip of the iceberg) and mentally too. I thought her reactions were authentic. Every time Sam's brain wanted to say, this is too much, and back away from her feelings, her heart took over and she fell for the guy who defies classification.

There was just one flaw. The story is set around 2033, and I argue that's not far enough into the future to have `smart-thread' clothing, or androids that can pass for human. If this was set in 2133 I'd have no problems, but I don't see these kinds of advances happening in a mere 20 years.

I will definitely look up more books by Catharine Asaro, and incidentally, there is a sequel to this novel called Alpha (Sunrise Alley).