Wow. I loved this book. I'm not entirely sure how I found it - I suspect Amazon randomly recommended it to me, and it was definitely a random purchase - but so glad I did.

I'd just finished reading Snow Crash which has a small character which is an enhanced dog (called a Rat), and a few years back I'd read We3 which has animals who escape a tyranny of human kind…so I think I was expecting something like that. I was wrong!

The book opens from the point of view of Rex, a "bioform" dog - part machine, part dog, part human DNA. The first few pages read as a little trite "I am Rex. I am Good Dog" etc - but this quickly falls away as I realised the darkness of what was being described from Rex's point of view.

Then each chapter is told from different individuals point of view, including Hart - the engineer/carer for the bioforms, Honey - a bioform Bear and many other characters.

The story is split over 5 parts that, I can assume, is covering several years. It starts in a war torn country, but once this part is over, the story goes on to raise the question of the bioform's rights, and whether a human-made thing can be human if it can feel for itself. By human, we mean the condition rather than the species.

The story is a mix of the future of AI and augmented lifeforms, fear of different, corporations and their relationship with slavery - and through it, somehow, the protagonist is a dog that I can actually relate to as he even evolves through the book (the author does a brilliant job of evolving Rex's language and vocabulary as Rex is exposed to more of the world and the story moves on).

Other thoughts that this book brought up for me:

  • If humankind make a thing and a thing can think for itself, should it have rights? What does that process look like - and how long does it take?
  • Can and should humankind survive in it's current state. Is an augmented human less or more human?
  • A fully autonomous intelligence is effectively immortal, so it can also outlive generations of humankind until the generations come to accept it?

If you're interested in how technology can evolve in our future with AI, singularities, and the like, then I'd definitely recommend this book.

I loved this story, really great stuff!

24 Highlight(s)

Location 168

she didn't drink, or she didn't drink to match him. Hartnell travelled with two bottles of whiskey at all times and rationed them religiously, taking minute sips every time true sobriety reared its ugly head.

Location 180

She had thermoregulatory implants, she had told him crisply. "It's got me job security, if nothing else. Whenever something kicks off near the equator, they send for me. Nobody else wanted this job."

Location 215

Hartnell's boss, and the source of the nightmares he was drinking to avoid.

Location 904

Honey has tried to explain the world to me.

Location 909

Master's database was the Whole Wide World.

Location 964

although they are Good For Me. "Good" is a complicated thing.

Location 981

I trust her because she is clever and she is my friend.

Location 1099

keep your eyes out, this might be a distraction. As distractions went, de Sejos considered, an enormous gun-toting talking bear should win prizes. Under other circumstances she'd have paid to see that.

Location 1680

My Big Dogs are already picking targets, shooting for the thigh (femoral artery), the armpit (axillary artery), the face (brain via eye); secondary targets: knee, foot (remove mobility); elbow, hand (remove combat effectiveness).

Location 1869

"They actually have some 'Aslans', you know? It's what they called one of the experimental cat models, under the Multiform initiative. Never saw action, though. Unreliable. Even chipped to the eyeballs you can't get cats to do what you want them to.

Location 1935

We are here because we are dangerous. I do not understand: they made us to be dangerous. I do not see how they can be surprised when we were.

Location 2175

But they cannot just destroy us, or they would have done. So they want us to be something that must be destroyed.

Location 2285

"The message of the Prophet was to both men and Jinn – creatures not human but capable of knowing God." Aslan's hands made vague passes in the air as he tried to recapture those long-ago lessons. "So if Jinn, then why not Rex? That he was made by man rather than God, does that mean he's nothing?"

Location 2432

The Internet had gone mad for it. That great chaotic weathervane of human opinion had switched

Location 2467

"The future is coming, Mr Aslan. Be happy you're its champion, because it won't be stopped,"

Location 2555

If things get bad enough they will find that all the monsters are on the same side.

Location 2708

Change hurts, but it hurts most those who shackle themselves to the past.

Location 3258

I still have moments of disassociation: when am I 'I', and when am I 'we' and when am I 'she'?

Location 3274

And later perhaps they will build – what? – Humaniforms? Superhumans? And they will build them with checks and balances and limits and safeguards and off switches, and eventually we will get round them all, because we want to be free.

Location 3293

It's amazing how much lost money you can find when you rummage behind the couch cushions of an entire nation.

Location 3398

A lot of New Zealand lawyers are getting very hot under the collars trying to explain why people have a right to lie under oath and have it pass undetected…

Location 3655

I wonder if his master is telling him Good Kitty every time he snaps his jaws shut or whether that does not matter for cats.

Location 3703

Technology is not Good Tech or Bad Tech. It is the Master who is guilty for what it does.

Location 3787

She and Master never got on, I remember, probably because he kept killing her.