The Butt Ugly Weblog

I heard about Red Men by Matthew De Abaitua first through my Twitter feed (probably through Mr. Jones), and I figured it might be a good read. Turns out Twitter was right.

Red Men is a story about a post-singularity world, where humanity is trying to cope with an artificial intelligence that seems hell-bent on replacing humans with simulated versions of them, but has also figured out the commercial aspects of such an endeavour: If you could have a copy of all your best workers working tirelessly inside the computer, wouldn't that just make economic sense for any large corporation? The main character, Nelson, is just a family man with enough wit to be important, but not enough of a bully to be a manager - so he works hard in the crosspressure of corporate life, bosses with issues, an AI nobody really understands, and family. For a scifi novel, it's surprisingly easy to identify with. In fact, I think I had a few flashbacks to Nokia...

The book has film rights already sold, and there's a pretty cool short film of the first chapter already out there (watch it!). The slightly weird bit is that the different editions of the book have been through quite a bit of editing, so the version you read may not be the same as what other people read. I read the Gollancz edition on Kindle, but based on the excerpts some people might enjoy the earlier edition more.

(And yeah, this was a deliberate attempt at writing a bit more. I'm on vacation, so I'm getting more rest and clarity, though of course any free time from work is immediately enveloped by family. It is a bit easier though when you only have three people vying for your attention instead of a dozen.)