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Sarah Anne Zettel

Fool's War Kindle Edition

by Sarah Zettel (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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A New York Times Notable Book from the author of Reclamation: A young woman must face off against an alien force within her starship’s computer.

Katmer Al Shei has done well with the starship Pasadena, cutting corners where necessary to keep her crew paid and her journeys profitable. But there are two things she will never skimp on: her crew and her fool. For a long space journey, a certified Fool’s Guild clown is essential to amuse, excite, and otherwise distract the crew from the drudgeries of interstellar flight. Her newest fool, Evelyn Dobbs, is a talented jester. But does she have enough wit to save mankind?

In the computers of the Pasadena, something is emerging. The highly sophisticated software that makes interstellar travel practical is playing host to a new form of artificial intelligence, a living entity. And it will do whatever it takes to survive . . .

Displaying “the influence of Asimov’s robot stories and C. J. Cherryh’s elaborate, sophisticated spaceship adventures,” this is a science fiction masterpiece that asks the thought-provoking question, “What if the next great life-form with which we must contend isn’t from the stars but from our hard drives?” (Publishers Weekly)

Print length

467 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Publication date

May 21, 2013
File size

2449 KB
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Darcie Wilde
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Sarah Zettel
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Reclamation established [Zettel] as an exciting new talent able to work on the largest scale without losing her bearings. Her Fool’s War is even more successful.” —The New York Times “Wrenchingly real.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “This thought-provoking tale offers an energetic plot and a cast full of appealing characters.” —The Plain Dealer

About the Author

Sarah Zettel is the critically acclaimed author of more than twenty novels, spanning the full range of genre fiction. Her debut novel, Reclamation, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Her second release, Fool’s War, was a 1997 New York Times Notable Book, and the American Library Association named Playing God one of the Best Books for Young Adults of 1999. Her novel Bitter Angels won the Philip K. Dick Award for best science fiction paperback in 2009. Her latest novel, Dust Girl, was named as one of the best young adult books of the year by both Kirkus Reviews and the American Library Association. Zettel lives in Michigan with her husband, her rapidly growing son, and her cat, Buffy the Vermin Slayer.

Amazon.com Review

Sarah Zettel's first novel (Reclamation) showed her to be an up-and-coming author with promise. She delivers on that promise with Fool's War, a book that is never what it seems. The main character--Dobbs--is a modern Fool, someone who serves as both entertainer and psychoanalyst for the ships that ply the stars. When the ship on which Dobbs is serving accidentally delivers a rogue artificial intelligence to an unsuspecting planet, a secret that has held the galaxy together will threaten to tear it apart. This is a grand, fast-moving story with delightful characters and insightful social commentary. And darn fun to read. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In "alien contact" science fiction, the aliens come from far off, light-years away. But what if the aliens were closer to home? What if the next great life-form with which we must contend isn't from the stars but from our hard drives? In Zettel's second novel (after Reclamation), Katmer Al Shei, owner and engineer of the starship Pasadena, and her crew become pawns in an elaborate scheme to bring human beings and artificially intelligent life-forms into deadly conflict. But the real protagonist ends up being Evelyn Dobbs, the ship's Fool, who, hired to amuse the crew for its long voyage, finds herself trying to contain the threat of war. The influence of Asimov's robot stories and C.J. Cherryh's elaborate, sophisticated spaceship adventures are both evident here. But while Zettel's skills as a teacher of technical writing are very handy when it comes to computer terminology, her human characters are less well developed. Still, Zettel's story has a lively pace and gains more than enough momentum to keep readers from noticing the time.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

For 500 years we have carried our ancient hatreds and millennia-old wars into interstellar space. With them have gone the seeds of new self-aware lifeforms mutating from artificial intelligences, technoviruses, and info-flow. Beings with no bodies and no limits, evolving to leap from cyberspace to outer space. Beings born to be our rivals...

Katmer Al Shei, owner of the starship Pasadena, does not know she is carrying a live entity in her ship's computer systems. Or that the electronic network her family helped weave holds a new race fighting for survival. Or that her ship's professional Fool is trying to avert a battle that could destroy entire worlds. And when Al Shei learns the truth, all she'll really know is that it's time to take sides...

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00CM17QMK
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy (May 21, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 21, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2449 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 467 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,051,481 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #646 in Add Narration for $3.99 or Less
- #2,523 in Galactic Empire Science Fiction eBooks
- #7,892 in Space Opera Science Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
63 ratings

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Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5

63 global ratings

5 star		32%
4 star		47%
3 star		7%
2 star		8%
1 star		6%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Spoon

A Good Story Almost Ruined by Poor Editing (Kindle version)

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 9, 2014

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Dobbs is a Fool, a jester, typically contracted to starship crews for long voyages, her job being to help maintain crew sanity during the trip. She has contracted to a data packet ship for two years as the ship makes a data run from Neptune to a far colony. While at the colony, they download some software updates for a local hospital, which is where the fun begins.

Turns out that Dobbs is also a troubleshooter for the Fool's Guild, watching out for any sentient AIs that may pop up, and getting the AI into a safe environment where it can't mess up the local computer systems, ships, or ecologies. A new AI has formed at the colony, maybe because of what the ship downloaded, and Dobbs has to make a first contact and isolate the AI. Things go all to hell, of course, as the ship's crew, Dobbs, and the Fool's Guild all try to control the situation.

This is a well-done story, and should be of interest to any hard sci-fi fan or computer weenies. It's easy to get invested in most of the characters, and the book is easily one of Zettel's best efforts, with a lot of twists and turns and a number of not-so-good guys.

Finally, this book (Kindle Version) has hundreds of typos, misspellings, and grammar mistakes that should be embarrassing for any author. I many times had to go back one or more pages to figure out what was being said or why a character's name was spelled differently. Ms. Zettel needs to get on the phone to her editor and rip him or her a new one. I checked some of the errors in a paperback copy of this novel and the errors weren't there, so whomever edited the Kindle version did a really lousy job and should go back to slinging burgers.

5 people found this helpful

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John M. Ford

One Ship's Fool is Another Ship's Folly

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 3, 2010

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There are three stories interwoven in Sarah Zettel's readable space opera. There is Captain Katmer Al Shei and the truly diverse crew of her starship, the Pasadena. The interacting personalities and backstories alone would make a better-than-average book. There is also the ominous, driving plot of an impending war between humans and self-aware artificial intelligences. And there is Evelyn Dobbs, the Pasadena's "Ship's Fool"--a cross between a court jester and a savvy ship's counselor. Dobbs' relationship with the Fool's Guild she belongs to is complex and an interesting puzzle-solving exercise for the reader. Good stories, all three.

The real value of the book is its imaginative portrayal of artificial intelligences, some of which "go rogue" and head off into the connected universe with their own agendas. They have different, believable and fascinating personalities. The effects of the processors they run on, the bandwidth they travel through, and other aspects of their experiences are convincingly portrayed. Readers are left with a feel for why such intelligences have priorities and goals than human beings cannot easily understand.

This book is recommended for fans of space opera, artificial intelligence and of a good, hint-driven mystery in an unconventional setting. It is a worthy addition to your bookshelf or to the electronic reading device of your choice.

2 people found this helpful

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AntiochAndy

A Good Book -- No Fooling

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 4, 2003

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FOOL'S WAR is one of the best scifi books I've read in the last couple of years. No humans with far-fetched mental powers. No apocalyptic ending. Just a good, fast-paced story with some engaging (and generally believable) characters and a plot that keeps you guessing. Not all the plot twists were entirely unforeseen, but there were enough surprises to keep it interesting. Also, the technology was mostly plausible and understandable for the casual (scientifically challenged?) reader. The book is a little hard to get into at first, but this is true of many books. It can be unclear at first how seemingly unconnected people and events relate to each other. A little patience is well worth the effort with FOOL'S WAR.
I had never read anything by Zettel before, but this book kept appearing in my "recommendations" from Amazon, so I gave it a try. I'm definitely not sorry. Kudos to Amazon and I'll be reading more of Ms. Zettel's work in the future.

6 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Enjoyable, but needs some professional editing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 25, 2016

Verified Purchase

I enjoyed the book - it has several interesting twists and seemingly well thought out characters.

It has the usual editing errors - is it thirty-six or thirty-eight hours; lose not loose, etc.

I'm knocking it down a star because there is one glaring problem - a lack of visual clues when a scene transition occurs. Usually within a couple of lines you realize this has occurred, but the normal convention is a few blank lines or some dashes or other typographical convention. The one that really caused me to deduct the star is when E is talking to S and T shows up.

"Yes, I do know what's going on," she said quietly. "But you're going to want to sit down before I tell you."

The characters are face to face and the scene shifts and that lose end in never addressed... the book continues as if nothing was said.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

DickStanley

Wonderful tale, but, oh, the text errors

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 22, 2011

Verified Purchase

This is a wonderful story, marred only by occasional repetition (characters show tension so often by running their hands through their hair that I finally decided they all needed a change of shampoo) and, in the Kindle edition, at least, enough typos, misspellings, and grammar mistakes to make an honest proofreader turn to drink.

Seriously, folks, the price is just right, the story very surprising and well done, but the publisher should be mocked for this many text errors in one file. I suppose they consider the ebook a throwaway, which is remarkably shortsighted, even for a mainstream book publisher. It's also a pity because the author deserves praise and respect for her intriguing tale of machine intelligence run amok.

But no reader deserves to have to wade through so many mistakes in a text, particularly in the last half of the story. I was constantly trying to decide which missing word or tense was intended. Even the character's names are repeatedly misspelled. Not even a homicidal AI would be so cruel!

7 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Dr. P. H. Dear

Great story - lousy Kindle edition.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 1, 2018

Verified Purchase

This had me gripped all the way through, but the Kindle edition is so full of typos that it makes you wonder if anyone proof-read it. This seems like a minor quibble, but every error (and there's one every few pages) is a distraction that takes you out of the story for a moment. I presume that the hardcopy of this book has been better produced, but I resent paying money for an electronic copy that looks like the publishers just pressed the "scan to Kindle file" button and waited for the money to come in.

Mr Happy Douglas

A thoughtful perspective on humanity

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 10, 2016

Verified Purchase

I suppose this is an odd title for a review, but I felt that it fitted. I have read this book so many times over the years, and always come back to the story. Written from a different perspective to most sci fi, a fresh approach. I will not say too much, but let the plot unfold.

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