The Turing Option

As far as I know this novel is the only collaboration between Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky. And given the quality of this book I find that truly sad. Harrison is of course one of the most prolific writers in the field of Science fiction and Minsky is a scientist with MIT, working in the area of A.I., who is more used to writing scientific articles than fiction. The two together bring a great story to life in an extremely believable way.The "Turing Option" is set in the near future and concentrates on the experiences of a brilliant scientist who has just suffered a major brain trauma. His own cybernetic researches help doctors to bring him back to life and allow him to pursue his murderers. This pursuit leads him back to his research into artificial intelligence which it seems was the motivation behind the first attack.The plot and story telling, whilst top notch, are not what prompted me to include the book on this page. No, it was the A.I. or M.I. (Machine Intelligence), that I became fascinated with. As far as I am concerned, the concept of a robotic entity has never been explored so well as in this novel. (yes I have read all of Asimov's robot stories). If you are at all interested in this area of science, then this book must be read.

I was not really interested in reading a Sci-Fi book but when I turned to an arbitary page and read a few lines I was snared. This presented ideas and complex material in a manor that most anyone could enjoy. Being a Computer Science student working on my M.S. I found this to be interesting, exciting and not very predictable. I recommend this to anyone in computer related field that enjoys Sci-Fi writings. I like Clancy, but I loved Marvin Minsky. I am recomending this reading to all that I come in contact with. I obtained this book at the public library and must have it for my personal library.

I have read a lot of science fiction, and I believe that this book tops the list for me. It was beautiful complex, knowledge permiated through this book, but most of all was if machines have a right to chose what OS they use, and I believe they say "I choose linux".

Great book. I consumed it during a week in the middle of tax season (I'm a CPA). I have read the Society of Mind ("SOM") and this book provides a good intro to the concepts described in SOM (also a very good book, with many idea that mesh very well with what a person can observe in the development of their own children's intelligence). I recommend both books. The novel is flawed with a lot of typos, but nothing that takes away from the read. Also, given its future setting, the $ amounts noted in the story are very low (even by today's standard).

This adventure novel explains some of the theories in my non-fiction, "The Society of Mind."To find more about how the robot Sven was created, there are additional chapters at http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/minsky/minsky.html or ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/minsky/option.chapters Best wishes, Marvin Minsky, MI