darrenwhite
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Free Stuff
  • Memes of Loss and Devotion
  • theFomalhautPlague
  • Land of Fear
  • glorious
  • Out of Time
  • Other Work
    • Development Hell >
      • LMOE
      • Ratslips
    • Screenplays >
      • LMOE
      • Firewall
      • Glorious
  • Blog
  • News
  • Contact / Newsletter
  • Gallery
    • YouTube
  • Polls
    • Closed Polls
  • Links
  • FAQ
  • Press Kits

The Robots are Revolting!

5/1/2014

1 Comment

 
Picture
A ‘topical’ review of the novel 'Robopocalypse' by Daniel H. Wilson, just two years after it was originally released!

3.5 out of 5

I don’t usually write reviews on my blog, well not requested reviews anyway, and I don’t intend to start – I’ll leave that to bloggers  with much more of an interest in that sort of thing than me - but I have to right a bit of a wrong, especially now that I’m a published author myself.

In 2012 I wrote an Amazon.co.uk review of Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse, a book about a future robot uprising against humanity, led by a super villainous Artificial Intelligence called Archos, and how we, or rather a handful of mostly Americans, fought back to eventual victory.

Daniel obviously knows his stuff when it comes to robots. He has a PhD in Robotics, a Masters Degree in AI & Robotics, and a BSc Degree in Computer Science. He builds a plausible future populated by all manner of servant robots. I have previously read earlier works by Daniel and enjoyed them immensely. Hell, I’ve even bought another of his books while I wrote this. Remarkable, he even sold the movie rights to Steven Spielberg no less, before the book was even released!

So, I had high hopes for this book. Very high hopes, indeed. I’d just read the socio-political, but deeply emotional masterpiece that is World War Z by Max Brooks, and hoped that that this would be a ‘ bad robot’ version of that book. Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe I wanted an exact replica of WWZ, but I was ultimately bitterly disappointed and gave it a bit of a kicking in my original review. I think that I need to readdress the balance a little.

Warning, spoilers abound!

Firstly, what’s good about the book:
The near future world he builds, populated by a multitude of servant robots is detailed, plausible and well-constructed. This is an area in which he excels.

The scene where the AI is activated in cautionary isolation, kills the human ‘operator’, then finds an ingenious way to connect to, then escape into the wider world is pure genius. It’s really inventive and masterfully written. It also chillingly demonstrates the advantage that faster thoughts, actions and communication would give the AI over us. This could be a prophetic warning about our own future, although I believe that true AI will immerge from augmenting our minds, and we’ll be the Skynet / Archos of the real future, and therefore not very likely to slaughter ourselves out of existence.

There’s a great scene of puny humans versus metal and plastic serving robot engaged in hand to hand combat, in which the humans are mercilessly mangled by the robot. This shows just how painfully vulnerable we’d be.

The Terminator series could learn a lot from this book. Killing machines don’t have to be elaborate and intelligent, or even vaguely humanoid. There are some gruesomely effective, but elegantly simple killing ‘bots in here, like exploding devices that initially burrow into your body along your bloodstream. Beat that ‘Terminator: Genesis’.

(Warning Super Spoilers) The AI ‘installs’ itself into a frozen, inhospitable, snowy wasteland, many miles from humanity, thereby providing a simple, but effective, organic protection and cooling system. To create this ‘lair’, the AI tricks humans into boring into a deadly radioactive nuclear test cavern, from which they die of radiation sickness, thus disposing of them and providing a defence against any future human attackers. The AI, and its legions of robot defenders, are utterly impervious to this radiation threat. This is well thought through, and exactly how an inhuman, super intellect might behave.

The book has received considerable criticism for a lack of jeopardy, due to a narrative which starts in a post war world, in which the victorious survivors recount the events of the AI’s creation and subsequent conflict. I think this is unfair. Apocalypse stories are now old hat and ten a penny. This book avoids telling a story we all know and instead concentrates on personal stories and goals from the conflict, and attempts to mine them for the required jeopardy.

However, building a novel from a patchwork of personal accounts of the events is difficult. Having a character speak the story would be a resounding car crash and at some point you have to switch into an archetype present-tense narration of the action. In this respect I think that the book actually does quite a decent job, even if each flashback is preceded by a dreadfully clunky, contrived introduction, which is a terrible way to stitch the action together. The problems really only start with the unrealistic characters, poor dialogue and badly explained action within each flashback. The lack of jeopardy actually stems from characters we don’t care about doing things we can’t believe.

What’s not so good:
The murderous, hyper intelligent AI that orchestrates the worldwide slaughter only exits in one location – it’s not a distributed system and it doesn’t even make a single copy / back up of itself. I can’t believe that an intelligence thousands of times greater than our own doesn’t practice even the simplest of disaster recovery precautions, and I really can’t believe that the author didn’t consider it either. I can only presume that logic was secondary to servicing the highly unlikely plot.

The characters and treatment of non-American, especially UK protagonists – see the original review below for more information.

None of the characters sound authentic. They all seem to speak with the same voice, even the non-American ones (unforgivable!) and they’re basically the cast of the Village People with a few borderline racist stereotypes thrown in to delineate the world wide scale of the uprising.

The big bad AI is named after the rubbish French budget tablet I wasted my money on during the Christmas 2012 holidays. (Ok, this is a personal niggle.)

My greatest issue with Daniel’s writing is that none of it feels organic. Implausible situations arise to service the plot, people are paper thin caricatures who behave without logic, and talk like supporting characters in a brain-dead Hollywood blockbuster. Worse, obstacles are overcome by the most contrived ‘deus ex machinas’ possible. Even, the AI’s motivations for attacking us, and its love/hate relationship with us, is muddled, confusing and deeply unsatisfying.

Ultimately, this book disappoints in a way that is all too familiar in our lowest common denominator, anti-intellectual 21st century world. There are no great truths to be unearthed here. This is not a sophisticated analogy for any human trait or foible. It’s all bang and bluster. It’s ultimately about nothing but itself and seems to only exist on its own singular superficial level.

It is unfortunately exactly what it initially appears to be – a detailed outline for a particular low-brow, ‘park your brain in neutral’, noisy, summer blockbuster movie. Given the authors background, you would be entitled to expect something more intellectually stimulating, or at least something that has additional levels for those of us who enjoy unearthing hidden depths.

I’m not saying this to be elitist or demonstrate how clever I am. But a book like this getting so much attention (and sales!) is indicative of the world we now live in. Book sales are in free fall. Movies get dumber and shallower every year. Televisions is full of reality shows populated by celebrated morons. Our children have attention deficit syndrome. Our young adults, the so-called Generation Y, can’t make decisions for themselves and ignorantly don’t have the patience to learn lessons from history. For a story about the Rise of the Robots, it could unintentionally teach us more about the Rise of the Idiots.

If it is intentionally about anything, then it’s a warning about not being lazy and in too much of a hurry to offload our drudgery onto robots, and to be mindful of the unintentional consequences. If we start to sub-contract manual labour, or even simple chores to automatons then putting our thinking out to tender may not be too far behind, and we really have to proceed very cautiously before we enter that territory.

Strangely, the book doesn’t seem to give us technology for its own sake. It doesn’t fetishize technology in any way, as you might expect given the author. The future tech on display appears only to serve the story. Unfortunately, this only makes it feel like a less than totally complete and convincing exercise in world building. Maybe I’m just nit-picking.

Judging the book with the greater perspective that the passage of time affords, I would now give it 3.5 out of 5 stars, instead of the original woeful 2 out of 5.

World War Z went on to be an appalling, soulless (boring!) bloodless, mess of a movie. What’s the betting that in the hands of Spielberg, Robopocalypse will spawn a triumphant human story of personal adversity set against spectacular worldwide genocide, if and when it ever gets made.  (It’s currently on indefinite hold because Spielberg considers the current scripts too expensive to film.)

Anyway, here’s the original 2012 review in full:

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Read World War Z instead, 19 Feb 2012
Amazon Verified Purchase(What is this?)
This review is from: Robopocalypse (Paperback)

I so wanted to love this book. I thought that the writers background, Spielberg's buying of the movie rights from galleys, and all of the great reviews, would guarantee a technological & emotional roller coaster, a magnificent world striding tour de force - in short, a modern sci-fi classic. What we got instead was a small, largely badly written, jingoistic, borderline racist, "isn't America the greatest country on Earth" movie treatment; and not a very good one at that!

Admittedly, the robots are far more imaginative than anything the Terminator movies dreamt up, but it all feels very small and lacking in any real jeopardy. With the whole world to write about the entire story involves a small handful of people whose lives are intertwined in the most contrived ways possible - then written about in the most mundane way possible. The writing is so poor that at times you can't decipher what's being described.

Oh, and if you're British, prepare for a London where Trafalgar Square has FIRE HYDRANTS and hoodies say things like "see you in the funny pages". You can tell where all of the writer's research went!

The final straw for me was reading about how the Indian, Chinese, Russia & Eastern European armies failed in their attempt to destroy the AI because they didn't wait for a handful of American's (the world's saviours, yet again - YAWN!) to show them how to do it. Not that it's any old Americans - no, it's Indians being led by cowboys! (Note: America, your history may seem like a long time ago to you, but to us it's the blink of an eye and has been done to DEATH! Get over it. It's now very, very tired to the rest of us.)

If you want to read a book of true worldwide conflict, human suffering, adversity and courage, then do yourself a real favour and read World War Z instead.



To receive notification of future blogs by darrenwhite, join his email contact list here.


darrenwhite is the author of the science fiction short story collection "Memes of Loss and Devotion".

1 Comment

How I became US Tax exempt in 11 minutes…I think.

14/10/2013

3 Comments

 
As you probably know, Amazon deducts US tax at a rate of 30% from all Amazon Kindle eBook sales, regardless of your nationality. You are then supposed to fill in a tax return to claim the money back. Filling in the tax return requires an Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN), and that’s where the problems start. Apparently, getting that ITIN requires all sort of certified copies of a picture ID, which in turn requires sending passports etc. to the US or visiting the US embassy in London.

There is an alternative – instead you call a dedicated US tax office in Philadelphia and simply ask for an alternative form of ITIN called an Employer Identification Number (EIN) for a foreign entity. But wait you say, you’re not an employer. Well, it works just as well for sole traders / proprietors.

I called the US IRS on +1 267 941 1099 via Skype on my laptop and the 11 minute call from the UK cost me 20p, although I’m told that you can call for free from Google Talk. They will ask you for your phone number so be sure to give them your landline / mobile. Follow the automated options (it was 1 or 2), wait in the queue and then when answered tell them that you want to apply for an Employer Identification Number (EIN) for a foreign entity.

The nice lady I spoke to (she even called me sir in that marvellous American way) asked if I had completed a SS-4 form. She was disappointed when I answered “no” but admitted that it was not mandatory. Then I had to spell out my information (name, address, phone number, country etc.) and confirm it when she read it back.

She then asked if it was for ‘compliance with withholding’ tax. I confirmed that it was and she asked what it was for. When I told her it was for selling eBooks she wished me luck and then read out my EIN. I made a note of it and kept it very, very safe. She said that that they would send me a conformation letter but so far I’ve not received it.

Then all you have to do is complete the Amazon on-line W8-BEN form and give them your brand spanking new EIN number, and that’s where it all went wrong for me. 

My Amazon KDP account said “Submitted. Your tax information has been submitted and is under review by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Tax information cannot be changed during this time. Your account status will be updated if further information is necessary.” They then contacted me to say that they had no record of it or I had filled the form in incorrectly or something. 

I resubmitted my info, got the above message again and waited for confirmation. Except that now I’m left in limbo, as the US government immediately stopped processing tax information due to the US Federal shutdown.

Those lovely people at Amazon saved the day by promising to withhold my royalties until my 0% tax rate had been confirmed. This means that I could go ahead and launch my sci-fi / horror anthology “Memes of Loss and Devotion”.

So, that’s how I sorted out my tax with just one 11 minute phone call. Maybe.

3 Comments

Not really a blog…

9/3/2013

2 Comments

 
This is not really a true, proper blog entry – the next one proper will come soon – instead this is a sort of diary update on what I’ve been doing since the first blog back in Oct 2012. (Was it really FIVE months ago when I last blogged? Sorry about that.)

I decide that the anthology book of my short stories should come first because I mistakenly thought it would be the least work of the two. So, I halted work on the ‘Fomalhaut’ novel to start the anthology, mainly because a new section from the book had become a short story in it its own right (“Seduction Games”), and also because a completely new story (“Death Ship”) was screaming to be written.

Back in November, the short story collection didn’t even have a name. Then one day in mid November, when driving to work, it just came to me - "Memes of Loss and Devotion". (Tell me what you think of the title!) ‘Meme’ because I hope they become mind worms. ‘Loss’ because a lot of them seem to be about loss, especially the noble agony of break ups. Finally, devotion because it took a lot of devotion to create this book and because some of the characters display it.

Around this time I created my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/darrenwhit3). Why have only 21 of you liked it? I then stupidly announced that “Memes”would be released later in November. Which at that point gave me just 12 days to write the new stories, brush up the existing 13 stories, get them edited, make a cover, create a kindle account, convert the file to .mobi etc, etc. I didn’t make it. In the next month I did write three new stories though, two of which are amongst the best things I’ve ever written…

A month later I came to the inevitable conclusion that I’d have to push the release date back into the ‘New Year’.

A month later, over the xmas break, I finally, finally completed all 15 pre edited versions of the stories. This weighed in at well over 65,000 words. Almost a novel length in its own right. I finished them then did absolutely nothing with them for over six weeks. Mainly, because I spent the whole time working the ideas behind a new short - "We Love The Legacy". It’s no exaggeration to say that the concepts and ideas from this story could possibly completely reset the context of "Memes.." and even the "Fomalhaut" novel. When will I learn to stop tinkering? So far, I’ve not made any changes to the shorts, but I will definitely make changes to the novel.

I have a vague plan to use “Legacy” as a competition entry to gain publicity for my other writing. We’ll see if it’s good enough...

At the start of February, I pulled my finger out, and decide to find an editor (more to come about that in the next proper actual blog). Twelve short days later I had an editor and they had the first two of my stories delivered to them for editing.

Just two weeks later (25th Feb 2013), the first edited story, "Hope", had been returned by the editor, covered in red pen, and I had re-written the story, revising it from the editors notes. Along the way, I’d lost 200 hundred precious, hard-fought words. It felt like killing your children but the story was better for it and every single change was fully justified. (Like I said, I’ll tell you more about how this felt and the editing process in my next blog). I even gave away the story on my website (http://www.darrenwhite.co/free-stuff.html) as a free Kindle file sample. Please let me know what you think of it. That felt like real progress, and maybe I could start to think about light at the end of a very long tunnel? Oh well, that’s one short story down, and just fourteen more to go...

At the beginning of March, I uploaded the short story "Hope" to 5 websites. (Bookrix, Booksie, FreeStoriesCenter, ShortStories101 & Wattpad – you can find links in the News section of my website - http://www.darrenwhite.co/news.html ). It had at least 60 reads in the first day alone! Which was great but it would be even greater if I could get a comment/feedback, a Facebook like or even a new mail list member from this! So far it’s had over 200 reads as per 8th March 2013. On one site the current stats are: 204 reads and 5 stars from 2 people. (http://www.shortstories101.com/science-fiction-short-stories/hope-3203.html).

I then added the Free Stuff section (freebies, downloads, samples, excerpts, etc.) to the website. (http://www.darrenwhite.co/free-stuff.html) There’s still more to come... In fact, if you look closely, there’s even an entire short film script hidden somewhere in the site…

My second edited short story ("Seduction Games") was returned by my editor at the beginning of March. Once updated, I decided that I’m going to also give this one away as a free sample in the Free Stuff page of my website, because I'm nice like that. Delayed by many changes to the website, I finally completed the re-write three days later. This is a new story and there was a lot less to correct, so ultimately it was just five words shorter at the end of the editing process. Although, I added and removed a lot more than just 5 words! I immediately posted it to my website. That’s now two down, thirteen to go... Come on editor, keep them coming!

And that’s where I’m at. Rest assured that I’m working as hard and as fast as I can to get these stories out to you as soon as possible. My next couple of blogs should also be far more ‘meaty’ and more than just a diary updates, but I wanted to let you know that I’m still working, and also how long and hard the process is.

Anyway,
I just wanted to keep you in the loop.

KEPRSURUCVXD

2 Comments

 My journey to ebook author starts here...

15/10/2012

0 Comments

 
This is where it publicly starts. It's not the start of the road but it's not the end either. I can't wait for people to start reading my stuff but I'm not quite there yet.

Let me explain. While at uni in the early 90's I started writing short stories on a house mate's PC. I'd written short stories at school and my English teacher had even suggested collecting them together.The person sat next to me liked to read them, but that was a far as it went. I've since lost everyone of those hand written stories. 

But the difference now was that I was saving them electronically, and I would never lose them again. (Although I did have to buy a USB  3.5" floppy drive to access some of them recently!). I wrote about 12 good ones in the next few years.

Fast forward a few more years to the summer that I graduated from Uni and in the 6 weeks I spent hunting for my first post grad job, I wrote a ~80k word sci fi novel, called "theFomalhautPlague". I touted it around a bit but got no where, i.e. no one wanted to publish it or represent me. So I forgot about it and instead turned to screenplay writing for the next few years (with some very, very minor success).

So, this novel languished on my hard drive for a few years, until near the end of the 90's when I picked it up again and gave it a minor re-write. Again I tried to get it published but to no avail.

I forgot all about my lifelong ambition to be a writer and concentrated on my career. Towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century I started to become aware of ebooks and that some (traditionally) unpublished writers found an audience via them. I mulled this over for (quite) a years, but did nothing.

Earlier this year (2012), I decide enough was enough. I had a finished novel which a few people even told me they liked. I'd re-written it twice. All I'd have to do is pat it on the bottom and send it out into the world as a ebook. So I started the tiny process of just 'checking it over'.

I found structural problems, a sci fi novel with dated or none existent technology, unclear themes and God awful names. So I started correcting it in the spare time when I wasn't working. Six to seven months later I'm approximately two thirds of the way through with some new scenes to write to fix a timing issue.

While fixing the novel I got my short stories together and thought they'd make a decent second ebook. I've even written a really good new one with the idea for another one driving me crazy daily. I'll have to reread and edit them too. I have no idea how long that might take.

In the meantime I started searching the internet for anything else I'd need to do  before I could finally give public birth to my (problem) child. To my dismay, I found that I'd needed a proof reader, a pro cover, a Facebook page, a website and a blog. All of this scared me half to death and I forgot it and just kept on writing.

But there it was - niggle, niggle. niggle. So this weekend I made a website  then late one night I wrote my first blog, which you're just finishing reading.

Oh, and the novel? Well, it's still months away. But this weekend I broke through two important barriers. And as I said, my journey to ebook author starts here...


I'll keep you in the loop.


0 Comments

    Author

    darrenwhite - sci fi author, film buff & SAFC fam

    Archives

    June 2020
    May 2020
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    March 2013
    October 2012

    Categories

    All
    Diary
    Ebook
    Editing
    Free Samples
    Independent
    Indie
    Info
    Literary
    Novel
    Publishing
    Review
    Robopocalypse
    Robot
    Sci Fi
    Short Story
    Tax
    Terminator
    World War Z

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    RSS Feed


    Blog Directory
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.