100 books like Kill Decision

Of all of Clarke’s works, this one had, for me, the grandest sense of adventure and mystery. We never do find out who the aliens are or what their goals might be, but we get to join them for part of their journey.

There are puzzles to solve, wonders to behold, and dangers bravely faced. I first read the book when I was nine years old, and it communicated to me just as clearly then as it does today.

A Firby-like robot pet becomes an international fad, where a “keeper” buys a little wheeled robot and is randomly paired with a “dweller” who teleoperates the robot. The robot has only a camera and microphone, but no audio output, and the identity of the keeper and dweller are hidden. The game is that the keeper is entertained trying to figure out why the robot does what it does, while the dweller is entertained by exploring a new place. What could go wrong?  Lots. Lots! Little Eyes absolutely terrified me, much more than any Stephen King novel because there is nothing supernatural, it could really happen.

You and I may already have one foot in this near-future world with its chilling look inside the warehouse of a retail giant: Amaz… uh, Cloud. The company is named Cloud. Can powerful bosses possibly be benign overlords? Is a miserable existence good enough in a wretched world? Hmm, maybe not.

I loved the characters – a reluctant hero and a cold-blooded spy who join forces as an unlikely couple searching for the truth behind a colossal global company. I never guessed the ending, and that's always a plus.

The second in his entertaining detective series in a near future where 2% of the population is paralyzed and has to teleoperate robots in order to interact with the world (interestingly, it was written before the pandemic). The protagonist, Chris (we never are told their gender, making for a delightful guessing game), is an FBI agent investigating a murder and along the way faces the kind of casual discrimination that the disabled undoubtedly face every day. Chris maintains a wry sense of humor through it all, adding an Elmore Leonard or Donald E. Westlake vibe that makes me laugh out loud. 

As ever more powerful AI-based tools are created, Russell asks the question (and provides some answers) as to how we can ensure that we stay in the control of our creations. In particular, what safeguards are needed to protect us from something that will potentially be more intelligent than ourselves? Some might argue that this is all just science fiction and, even if it’s possible to build machines that are more intelligent than we are, it’s a problem for the distant future. However, there are many areas where AI is already making the key decisions about how we are treated. For example, whether or not to offer you a job or if you should get that loan you applied for. Consequently, I found this book to present a compelling case that controlling AI is something that we need to address as a matter of urgency, sooner rather than later.

Dr. Rana el Kaliouby is an Egyptian-born computer scientist and tech entrepreneur who co-founded the company Affectiva based on her pioneering work on Emotion AI, a subfield of Artificial Intelligence.

Emotion AI is designed to understand, respond to, and simulate human emotions. Rana believes this technology has profound implications across various sectors, including mental health, education, transportation, and robotics. It can enhance our digital interactions, create empathetic robots, improve road safety by monitoring driver attention, and aid in mental health diagnosis and treatment.

I recommend this book because what’s not to love about building empathy and emotion into technology!

I love this novel. I read it well after my own came out, but the strong, badass, stoic female main character reminded me a lot of Delia from What Branches Grow (despite Brittle being a robot). The often dark and gritty scenes interspersed with moments of emotion and laugh-out-loud absurd humour turned a story that could have been depressing into one that was a helluva lot of fun. The raiders in this novel also fit the trope in the same homage to Mad Max/Fallout that mine do in What Branches Grow, albeit in a way I didn’t expect. The novel is also a quest through the wasteland with a ragtag group that culminates in a final battle, which is a similar trajectory to my novel (and a plotfline in this genre I very much enjoy).

Ruby hates robots and artificial intelligence. She desperately wants to join an expedition to the outer reaches of the solar system, where humans do the work, rather than computers. But she’s still too young and needs to finish her degree. Determined to make her own fate, she sets off to join, but of course, she’s abducted by space-faring robots with some very strange flaws…

A really fun book, with robots that are all too human, and an endearing main character. 

I fell in love with Murderbot in the first paragraph. Every book afterward in the series just made me love it more.

The hero of the Murderbot Diaries is part robot, part humanoid, and all done-with-everyone’s-crap. Everyone seemed to think that if a construct like it gained its freedom, it would rampage around killing everyone. Instead, it just wanted to be left alone to watch some good shows, and read a book or ten. Been there.

I cracked up at the sarcasm, got pulled in by the action, and felt the compassion that drove Murderbot to jump into the mouth of a deadly creature to save a human’s life. I went through the angst of Murderbot learning how to connect with people without compromising itself, and identified all too well.

Haunting and beautiful, it gave me a new perspective on what science fiction can accomplish: Ishiguro’s book is subtle, humane, and deeply concerned with the troubles of the real world.

This story of Klara, an “artificial friend” purchased to keep a sick little girl company, takes up questions of eugenics, artificial intelligence, and, ultimately, what it means to be a human being.

Along the way, the book explores the gulf between economic and social classes with as much care and compassion as Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy—Klara and the Sun is some of the most inspiring science fiction I have ever read.