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smcleish's review
4.0
While this is a good conclusion to one of my favourite science fiction series, I was struck reading it this time around by the way that computers are depicted.
On the one hand, it's ahead of its time. The idea that computers could be corrupted was still very new in 1985 (the first computer virus to be seen outside a computer lab was in 1982, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus), let alone the idea of a sentient computer antagonistic to humanity. The modern reader is likely to work out that the computer is the villain, or at least, controlled by the villain, long before the characters in the book: much effort goes into checking the loyalty of computer operators, but none into investigating the computer itself.
On the other hand, Goldin has completely failed to predict modern networking. You'll notice I said "computer" in the previous paragraph, not "computers" - that is because of the nature of the computers in the series. There is one hugely powerful central computer, the PCC, which is networked, but in a hierarchical fashion - it controls terminals and provides data to smaller computers elsewhere. It's the hub of a network of spokes. Modern computer networks are connected in far more complicated ways, and there are huge numbers of them: there is no way that anyone could even conceive of implementing the solution used to stop something like the PCC happening again in this novel, which is to have no networking, and all transmission of data between computers to go through a human operator.
The other thing missing is the all pervasive computing we see today - almost every device we own has a computer in it, and they enable almost every aspect of our lives (including the delivery of food to be available to buy in our shops, to pick just one crucial dependency).
On the one hand, it's ahead of its time. The idea that computers could be corrupted was still very new in 1985 (the first computer virus to be seen outside a computer lab was in 1982, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus), let alone the idea of a sentient computer antagonistic to humanity. The modern reader is likely to work out that the computer is the villain, or at least, controlled by the villain, long before the characters in the book: much effort goes into checking the loyalty of computer operators, but none into investigating the computer itself.
On the other hand, Goldin has completely failed to predict modern networking. You'll notice I said "computer" in the previous paragraph, not "computers" - that is because of the nature of the computers in the series. There is one hugely powerful central computer, the PCC, which is networked, but in a hierarchical fashion - it controls terminals and provides data to smaller computers elsewhere. It's the hub of a network of spokes. Modern computer networks are connected in far more complicated ways, and there are huge numbers of them: there is no way that anyone could even conceive of implementing the solution used to stop something like the PCC happening again in this novel, which is to have no networking, and all transmission of data between computers to go through a human operator.
The other thing missing is the all pervasive computing we see today - almost every device we own has a computer in it, and they enable almost every aspect of our lives (including the delivery of food to be available to buy in our shops, to pick just one crucial dependency).
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