Among the labels you could attach to William, the new novel by Mason Coile, one you can’t properly use is “science fiction.” It’s tech-based and on the cutting edge and involves research (often a sci-fi giveaway), and it qualifies as a thriller, probably horror and maybe a ghost story, and a character-driven psychological study as well. But it fails the sci-fi test because all or nearly all of it sits squarely within today’s reach of tech capacity.
Whatever it is, it’s the most striking, provocative and haunting new slice of fiction I’ve read this year.
Coile (actually the pseudonym of veteran novelist Andrew Pyper) wrote this one short and compact, just a couple of hundred pages – one blurb said it was a single-sitting read. And that’s about what I did with it, not only because of the efficient length but because, as a good thriller will do, you’re compelled to find out what happens next; not only with the characters and in the story, but also to find out what the story is actually about. There I won’t be too specific, because there’s a large twisty stinger at the end that shouldn’t be spoiled.
William centers on artificial intelligence, or AI, and a researcher named Henry who is breaking through several barriers in his home laboratory. The whole of the story takes place at that house, roughly over the course of one day, and it gallops in what feels like real time. The driver is the increasing activity of an AI creation- named William – in that attic of that house, and what happens when William starts to understand his (or its) creator a little too well, and displays a highly active id.
You might say that Isaac Asimov’s idealistic three rules for robots do not figure into this story.
Things get a little juicer when William starts to gain control of the house, accomplished because the house is a smart house – a very smart house. One of the book’s chills is in the recognition that nothing here (excepting maybe some of the AI elements relating to consciousness) is beyond our current ability, and in nearly all cases is in use, in some fashion somewhere.
The fact that the reach from our everyday existence to what Coile presents here is so slight, makes the novel hard to shake.
It does get me to think again, and a little harder, about how much and what kind of tech advances I want in my living space.
There are larger questions here too, including a good basis for considering what it makes to think and to be alive.
Start your read relatively early in the day. There’s no point to losing a night’s sleep over it, which could happen even though the reading process isn’t all that long.
But if this description sounds at all appealing, do read it.
Share on Facebook
