The Lifecycle of Software Objects [Hardcover]

Ted Chiang (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 2010

What's the best way to create artificial intelligence? In 1950, Alan Turing wrote, 'Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried.'

The first approach has been tried many times in both science fiction and reality. In this new novella, at over 30,000 words, his longest work to date, Ted Chiang offers a detailed imagining of how the second approach might work within the contemporary landscape of startup companies, massively-multiplayer online gaming, and open-source software. It's a story of two people and the artificial intelligences they helped create, following them for more than a decade as they deal with the upgrades and obsolescence that are inevitable in the world of software. At the same time, it's an examination of the difference between processing power and intelligence, and of what it means to have a real relationship with an artificial entity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Is science fiction a literature of ideas, or of characters? Works that focus on the former often neglect the latter, and vice versa. It's very difficult to examine complex abstractions and simultaneously articulate the mechanisms of fiction: most writers who attempt this balancing act end up throttling back on the ideas, or fail sideways into technical writing. So Chiang's novella--the second piece he's ever published that's long enough to stand on its own, following the 2007 Hugo- and Nebula-winning The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate--is a welcome surprise: a triumphant combination of the rigorous extrapolation of artificial intelligence and artificial life, two of the high concepts of contemporary SF, with an exploration of its consequences for the ordinary people whose lives it derails. Ana Alvarado is a former zookeeper turned software tester. When Blue Gamma offers her a job as animal trainer for their digients--digital entities, spawned by genetic algorithms to provide pets for players in the future virtual reality of Data Earth--she discovers an unexpected affinity for her charges. So does Derek Brooks, an animator who designs digient body parts. The market for digients develops and expands, cools and declines after the pattern of the software industry. Meanwhile Ana, Derek, and their friends become increasingly attached to their cute and talkative charges, who are neither pets nor children but something wholly new. But as Blue Gamma goes bust and Data Earth itself fades into obsolescence, Ana and the remaining digient keepers face a series of increasingly unpleasant dilemmas, their worries sharpened by their charges' growing awareness of the world beyond their pocket universe, and the steady unwinding of their own lives and relationships into middle-aged regrets for lost opportunities. Keeping to the constraints of a novella while working on a scale of years is a harsh challenge. Chiang's prose is sparse and austere throughout, relying on hints and nudges to provide context. At times, the narrative teeters on the edge of arid didacticism; there are enough ideas to fill a lesser author's trilogy, but much of the background is present only by implication, forcing the reader to work to fill in the blanks. (Indeed, this story may be impenetrable to readers who aren't at least passingly familiar with computers, the Internet, and virtual worlds such as Second Life.) Fortunately, sheer conceptual density keeps the story solidly real. The life cycle of the software objects in question is viewed through the prism of the human protagonists' own life cycle, and this skeleton is the armature on which hangs that very rare thing: a science fictional novel of ideas that delivers a real human impact. Reviewed by Charles Stross. Charles Stross's novel The Fuller Memorandum is due out from Ace in July.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Ted Chiang has made his bones in SF as a master of the short story, so a much longer work than is customary comes as a surprise. "The typical science-fiction depiction of AI is this loyal, obedient butler; you simply flip a switch, turn it on and it's ready to do your bidding. I feel like there's a huge story being glossed over," Chiang tells Boing Boing about the genesis of The Lifecycle of Software Objects. To be sure, the ethical issues that he raises and the depth of the technology (even for a novella) overshadow character development and some hasty plotting. Chiang's distinctive voice is evident here--a tech-industry insider, he's always been fluent in geek-speak and has a knack for translating heavy ideas into workable plots--and his first foray into the long form is a success. It would be his readers' good fortune if the author decided to take up novel-writing full time.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 150 pages
• Publisher: Subterranean; Deluxe Hardcover edition (July 31, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596063173
• ISBN-13: 978-1596063174
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #491,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The lifecycle of text objects August 14, 2010

By Alright Yeah

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Everything else I've read by Ted Chiang has been a slam-dunk work of genius, where all the conceptual threads get tied up in some amazing way. This book is not like that, which is both good and bad. The conceptual stuff here isn't as unique as in his previous work - this territory has been mined, in various ways, going at least as far back as the Asimov robot novels. Nonetheless, Chiang gives an interesting spin on it. The strength of the book is that it sets up a scenario that feels much more real and grounded in human emotion and motivation than his other works have been - more so than most contemporary science fiction, for that matter. The problem is, we don't actually get the character development that the story cries out for. This is a story that, unlike his previous stories, doesn't actually fully work as a conceptual sketch, despite the rich possibilities hinted at. Maybe Chiang has outgrown the short story format, and for some reason hasn't elected to take the plunge into a true novel, which this could easily have been, and a great one at that. So let me throw out some unsolicited advice: Ted, quit your day job and go for it. If this is what your sketch of a novel looks like, I'm already sold on the real thing.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A good taste, but a taste is all you get August 13, 2010

By oldtaku

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

If this were a Greg Bear or Vernor Vinge novel, _Lifecycle_ would be the prologue. Curtain would close and you would suddenly be 500 million miles in the future and everything is different but plausibly progressed from the initial conditions. If you're a scifi fan then that opening sentence tells you most of what you need to know. If Greg Egan wrote this book the rest would be... oh right, he did write that book: _Diaspora_.

First you need to get over the hurdle that this is a book about virtual intelligence and AIs when the idea is as worn as the hills now. 10 years? That's stone age. It'd be like writing a serious, thoughtful book about vampires. But I think Chiang manages to pull it off. He's a more 'human' writer than most of the hardcore scifi writers - they care mostly about the tech and the AIs, but _Lifecycle_ cares more about the people and it has more of a sensitive touch. There are no answers here, but plenty of more human questions about what it means to be intelligent and from there, alive.

The book itself is marvelously produced. The materials are top quality, it feels good, and the illustrations and mind maps are gorgeous. At Amazon's price I feel I got my money worth from the whole experience. Come at this gently and I think you won't be disappointed - but I think this is only going to appeal to a narrow range of people who can sit between Clement and LeGuin. If you're in that zone, grab this immediately. And think about it when you're done.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful story by a master August 10, 2010

By rbnn

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

It is difficult to overstate the profound skill with which Ted Chiang wields the written word. He writes at such a higher level than just about any other contemporary author that it's hard to discuss his work except by reference to itself.

Chiang burst on the scene with an extraordinary collection, Stories of Your Life, one of the best short story collections ever written. The hallmark of Chiang's craft is his fusion of each facet of the story - its prose, its pacing, its imagery, its plot, its ideas - to create a single, polished effect. Yet his stories are always undergirded by logic and close observation.

Since that anthology, Chiang has published a couple of superbly crafted stories. The Merchant and the Alchemist is one of the better time travel stories ever; and Exhalation enchants with its prose.

"The Lifecycle of Software Objects" approaches iconic themes from AI in an interesting and carefully crafted way. The title is taken, for those who are not familiar with programming, from object-oriented programming, where particular software entities called "objects" undergo specific technical phases. It's a clever title, even brilliant, reminiscent of Gibson's title "Count Zero" but much more thematic.

The prose is more spare and somewhat less intense than in most of his stories (sentences are shorter, syntax is simpler), a change probably chosen to mirror the clarity of the software artifacts being described, or perhaps to try and make his famously subtle prose more accessible to modern readers (I was disappointed that even Chiang, one of the best prose stylists out there, finally succumbed to the modern de rigeur inclusion of profanity in any work of fiction, although at least in this case it's not gratuitous and it's limited to one page). The ideas are discussed with complete plausibility - Chiang is superb at writing about the milieu of people who work with software. Chiang here is tackling a pair of ideas on software that had been best approached probably by Greg Egan in the first chapters of his wonderful novel "Diaspora", in Egan's "A Kidnapping" in his collection Axiomatic, and earlier by Asimov in Bicentennial Man. Chiang updates and infuses new ideas into this.

The pacing was not as taut, I felt, as some of his stories. I wanted to learn a bit more about the office milieu where Derek and Ana worked, and more troubling, some of the ideas toward the end were discussed expressly rather than residing seamlessly and implicitly into the fabric of the plot. Moreover, the slightly dull protagonist herself was less interesting than the brighter, edgy, but flawed protagonists in stories like "Understand" or "Stories of Your Life".

One minor complaint is that the illustrations, although executed with considerable skill in their own right, were at times inconsistent with the text to which they were juxtaposed. For example, one item is described as "obsidian" with a wraparound display (pages 22 and 24) is illustrated on page 25 in gray and without the display. The illustration on page 53 on the one hand almost functions as a spoiler for the events that transpire on its facing page 52, while at the same time getting a number of details completely wrong. So the illustrations are both too accurate and too inaccurate: they are too accurate to be called merely impressionistic (like those in the new editions of Salem's Lot, for instance), but they are too inaccurate to be representational for what, especially by their placement, they seem to be striving to illustrate.