£8.99
An omnibus edition consisting of all three volumes of Madeline Ashby’s epic sci-fi masterwork, The Machine Dynasty. Collects vN, iD and ReV.
File Under: Science Fiction [ Von Neumann Sisters | Fail Safe Fail | Robot Nation | Internet Ex-Portia ]
The complete collection of The Machine Dynasty series
vN
Amy Peterson is a von Neumann machine, a self-replicating humanoid robot. For the past five years, she has been grown slowly as part of a mixed organic/synthetic family. She knows very little about her android mother’s past, so when her grandmother arrives and attacks her mother, little Amy wastes no time: she eats her alive.
Now she carries her malfunctioning granny as a partition on her memory drive, and she’s learning impossible things about her clade’s history – like the fact that the failsafe that stops all robots from harming humans has failed… Which means that everyone wants a piece of her, some to use her as a weapon, others to destroy her.
iD
Javier is a self-replicating humanoid on a journey of redemption. Javier’s quest takes him from Amy’s island, where his actions have devastating consequences for his friend, toward Mecha where he will find either salvation… or death.
ReV
The Rapture, which vN were engineered for, finally comes to pass. Now that the failsafe that once kept vN from harming humans has been hacked, all are discovering the promise – and the peril – of free will.
With her consciousness unleashed across computer systems all across the world, the vicious vN Portia stands poised to finally achieve her lifelong dream of bringing humanity to its knees. The old battle between her and her granddaughter Amy comes to an epic conclusion in the war for the very systems that keeps the planet running. Can Amy get her family to the stars before Portia destroys every opportunity for escape and freedom?
PRAISE FOR THE MACHINE DYNASTY SERIES
“VN is a clever book with a wonderful ending by a writer who is well versed in AI technology, who can evoke sympathy with a few well-turned phrases and tells a satisfyingly complex story.”
– Eric Brown, The Guardian
“Ashby intelligently and brutally explores the way people are willing to abuse, devalue and destroy any form of consciousness they’re able to define as ‘other’, while the robots challenge the limits of love, devotion and life after death.”
– Toronto Globe & Mail, on iD
“Picks up where Blade Runner left off and maps territories Ridley Scott barely even glimpsed. vN might just be the most piercing interrogation of humanoid AI since Asimov kicked it all off with the Three Laws.”
– Peter Watts, author of the Rifters trilogy
“Will AIs be objects, or people? Caught between the category of human and everything else, we can’t think about the very real entities that inhabit — and will inhabit — the excluded middle. Madeline Ashby’s done more than just think about that territory; she’s made it her home. Person; object; we need new words for things that are neither — and in vN, Ashby provides them.”
– Karl Schroeder, author of the Virga series
“In Ashby’s expert hands vN cuts a painful incision into the emotional complexity of oppression in our society, and the way love can feed the worst kinds of hate. vN is a powerful novel and a fine exemplar of exactly the perspectives chauvinist SF so often stifles.”
– Damien G. Walter Women Authors in Hard SF, The Guardian
“vN is a strikingly fresh work of mind-expanding science fiction.”
– Charlie Jane Anders, IO9.com
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