Night Sky Mine

Night Sky Mine

In Night Sky Mine, Scott weaves a complex future society, rich in political and economic detail, that contours the life of young Ista Kelly, the only survivor of a pirate raid on an asteroid mine. Ista is now a teenager, hip and computerwise. In fact, Ista spends a lot of her time in cyberspace, where AI programs reproduce themselves like rabbits and chickens and cats and sometimes like dinosaurs and mythical monsters. Scott has taken the cyberpunk subgenre of SF to another stage in Night Sky Mine, to a universe of cyberspace rich in self-replicating programs in danger of evolving out of human control. This is the story of Ista's quest for her true identity in a future where you cannot live without an official identity. She must leave the security of her home on a trading ship and return in secret to the isolated mine where she was discovered as a baby. There she encounters and must overcome a menace hidden by the huge interstellar Night Sky Mining Corporation. Ista, found abandoned as a two-year-old on an asteroid mining platform?the Night Sky Mine?searches for her identity. The 14-year-old hooks up with two undercover patrol officers, out to solve the string of attacks on mining ships. Scott creates a bleak world of caste stratification crossed with a cyberspace containing artificial intelligence straining to break free. One of the better cyberpunk novels; highly recommended. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Scott's complex, vividly imagined novels often feature fascinating previews of humanity's future in virtual reality. Her latest cyberspace variation involves a series of "wild programs" that are materializing suddenly in the "invisible worlds" (as cyberspace is known) and threatening to cause a second great crash among Federation citizens and the workers of the Night Sky Mine Company. When Federation police detective Tarasov learns that Mine Company employees have been mysteriously abandoning their ships, ostensibly fearing piracy, his investigation crosses paths with Ista, a Night Sky space station citizen and novice "hypothecary" programmer whose parents were killed long ago by pirates. Tarasov's promise to help discover Ista's true identity--crucial in a society in which identity counts for everything--elicits Ista's pledge to track down a lethal wild program and expose a Federation scandal. Scott builds layer upon intricate layer of futuristic cultural details, including living computer programs known as hammals. Another ingeniously rendered entertainment from one of sf's leading voices. Carl Hays Scott's Shadow Man (1995) seriously probed the basis of sexual identity and politics, to the relative neglect of character and plot; the author's new venture, a solidly crafted far-future cyberspace yarn, begins on planet Bestla, where cops (and lovers) Justin Rangsey of External Affairs and Sein Tarasov of the Technical Squad, are assigned by Devora Macbeth of the elite Patrol to investigate why an orbiting mine complex was abandoned, puzzlingly, by its crew. Local cyberspace, the ``invisible world,'' has spawned evolving, reproducing, independently interacting programs called ``hamals''; these, charmingly, mimic the behavior and appearance of plants and animals. Rangsey and Tarasov proceed, undercover, to the Orbital Agglomeration, where they meet Ista Kelly, an orphan found on another abandoned mine years ago. A series of such incidents has occurred, it emerges, with the details having been suppressed by the Night Sky Mine Co. Ista, an apprentice ``hypothecary,'' trawls through the invisible world in search of programs that can be tamed, neutered, edited, and put to work--but all hypothecaries fear the eventual appearance of a ``demogorgon,'' an AI precursor program so powerful that it will gobble up the invisible world and any other computer net it has access to. The investigators discover that a highly placed conspiracy within NSMCo is using the captured mines to breed feral programs; and, so Ista suspects, they may have already accidentally created a demogorgon. Mature, balanced, absorbing work, with a richly detailed, enchanting backdrop: something of a breakthrough in overall technique, and Scott's best so far. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.