In an effort to catch up on some of the new releases, I wanted to focus on books that seemed to place climate change front and center. One of these is Thomas R. Weaver’s debut Artificial Wisdom. Unfortunately, while it does ask some interesting questions in latter parts of the book, the build up left much to be desired.
Marcus Tully can’t let the truth go unpublished. The world is on the brink as climate change ravages the ecosystems of the world. Ten years ago, Tully’s wife was killed in a major heat wave that wiped out millions in the Persian Gulf and now the most consequential election is in the works. The governments of the world have decided it’s time to elect a “Protector,” a sort of climate dictator that would choose the course of action to marshall the resources of nations to prevent further catastrophe. The last two candidates are a former American President and an AI created to govern a small fleet of floating cities for rich Tech CEOs and their workers. While everyone thinks that the American will be a shoe in, Tully has been given a bombshell lead that could disrupt more than the election.
I have probably stated this before, but I generally have issues with mystery novels and when Artificial Wisdom turned into a murder mystery I knew I was going to be in for some personal frustrations. Oftentimes I find the unravelling of the mystery to be tedious as reveals and motivations become convoluted while the aspects of the story I find most interesting take a back seat to the plot. It wasn’t any different with this book as the mystery itself was a bit of a hydra with several different mysteries interconnected. I’ll give Weaver a lot of credit for finding ways to muddy the water on the motivation side. I didn’t necessarily buy into the methods he used to stir the pot, but I think that’s a taste thing for me. This was mostly accomplished by having Tully being the main POV, running the show for what feels like 70% of the book, with a few other characters filling in the rest. Where I had problems is that the other characters’ scenes felt designed to reveal information that could have been a background revelation that they could have brought to Tully. They weren’t quite deus ex machina, but they had the vibe that this was a piece of the puzzle he needed, and it would feel weird if someone just ran up to him with it. But at the same time, these scenes didn’t do a lot for the characters either and I often felt it would have been better if they magically appeared with the clue. I sort of hate saying it because the other POVs are also mostly women, but they didn’t really have much else to do on their own.
Tully himself I found a little droll. He often prioritizes the truth above all else, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but he also seems to be a poor judge of what is the truth at times. I think this is a decent character flaw, a sort of bull in the china shop, but I also think it could have been achieved without him throwing down his soapbox and standing on top of it every time his reasoning is questioned. This could have been cut down a little bit to make it less grating while still hammering it home enough to make his decisions as the book goes on a little more impactful. I did like his habit of picking up strays and that he has one major blind spot and that’s the death of his wife. It made him vulnerable to manipulation as the tension ramped itself up. This too was also a little heavy handed but the payoff still worked even as I was skeptical of it. The other characters, as I mentioned, felt as if they were there to round out the story.
I found the overall conspiracy bothersome as it gets in the way of some of the questions that the novel raised for me. Ultimately, the election is going to happen and as is most often the case, people are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to choosing between the two candidates. There’s the former American president, a republican who promised to put individual nation’s sovereignty above the goals of the protector and an artificial super intelligence, named Solomon, that has only been operating a short while, albeit quite successfully in its limited scope. There is a lot of jaw flapping around the idea of giving up freedom in order to save the human species, especially when it comes to giving power to Solomon. There are numerous side conversations with Solomon between the various characters, probing him on how he would handle the crisis and whether he would give up the dictatorship when he felt humans were ready to take the reins again. I found this line of thinking interesting especially since the book takes place in 2050 and hundreds of millions were wiped out in a singular heat wave event. Shit is already locked in for the worse and people are still debating whether they should relinquish their “freedom,” a concept within the world of Artificial Wisdom that relies on an American conception born out of the Cold War.
The interesting line of thought that I wish Artificial Wisdom took time to engage with is, what kind of freedom do we have when the climate systems are fucked up enough to cause massive systemic collapse? Do people truly have freedom when their lives are already on track to be ruled by chaos and whoever happens to have the guns and the resources? Not to be a fucking bummer, but what kind of freedom is there when “solving” climate change becomes a multi-generational project of resilience and turning back the carbon clock? The processes that have been disrupted developed over hundreds of millions of years and the concern is whether I would have enough “freedom” under a robot elected “dictator” to reorganize the world’s economies and borders to make life a little less fraught? I don’t necessarily support that exact choice, but I think it’s a discussion that’s worth engaging in. Doesn’t have to be a robot so much as a democratically controlled body that dictates the paths to go to reduce suffering and mitigate the worst impacts on quality of life for everyone.
Unfortunately though, this conversation is not really had within Artificial Wisdom. There are definitely hints that this could be on the table in the sequel, especially with the revelations that occur at the end of the book. But as it stands the novel is 90% murder mystery with some minor conversations about the ramifications of the election. I don’t mind a good setup, but I was put off by the repetitive nature of the story’s structure. There are several sections of the alternate POVs reviewing what happened before, with literal play by plays of previous conversations to clue in that particular character. It made the reading experience a frustrating one and it annoys me that my brain finally got some of the food it was starved of in the last chapters of the book.
There is a lot more I could go into that I had mixed feelings about. Several of the tech entrepreneurs felt analogous to real life folks in a way that was both entertaining and annoying. A lot of the tech in the book felt particularly scary but seemed infeasible given the state of the world. Artificial Wisdom probably offers something for people who are looking for a whirlwind murder mystery plot set in a semi-cyberpunk world on the brink due to climate collapse. Its noir aesthetics helped me soldier through it to get the tease of juicier nuggets at the end. The climate change stuff, while a major centerpiece of the conversations, was mostly background noise in terms of presence within the narrative which was also disappointing. I don’t know if I’ll pick up the sequel, but I’ll keep my eye on it in case I’m feeling another trip into Weaver’s apocalypse.
Rating: Artificial Wisdom – Beating someone on the head with a stick till they’re smarter.
-Alex
