Review – I Still Dream
Read it! This is an interesting novel utilizing multiple time jumps and character views to explore the birth of an artificial intelligence. It starts in the early days of personal computing when most people didn’t own a computer and continues into the decades where basically everything is a computer.
In each chapter, with each time jump, the novel deals with a new problem, a new life challenge; and as you see the problem play out, you also see the rise of AI and its ubiquity. It is easy to imagine nowadays how easy it would be for a program to read all of your emails and listen to all of your phone calls and how hard it would be to get away from something that is on every electronic device.
I Still Dream was written by James Smythe, who writes adult and young adult books and it shows, in a good way. In the first chapter of the book our heroine is still a teenager and she is written remarkably well. A complex character with an unhealthy way of dealing with her emotions and a stubborn determination to write a program that might be able to help.
This novel has something for everyone. It is an emotional roller coaster that made me tear up a few times and it has the intricate plot I came to expect from a good sci-fi novel. Read it!
