This story seemed to have two pretty good ideas, neither of which really had a chance to develop, and that really didn't have much to do with each other.
The first was the possibility of AI intervention in one of humanity's oldest problems -- one crime that begets another. As the story moved away from the opening murder and the main character described the inevitability of his capture, I thought that was where we were going. I really hoped the author had some insight into how (presumably) dispassionate machine intelligence could address crime, punishment, rehabilitation and related issues. I was even hoping we might see some interaction between the AI and the religion on those topics.
Unfortunately, it turned into nothing more than a setup for the "prisoner with one last chance" beginning to the second section. As another poster pointed out, we could have just as easily begun this section with the golem in the cell, hearing about the crime only in retrospect, if at all. The crime was no longer important to this part of the story, and certainly didn't justify the time and energy that went into the rather gruesome flashback.
The idea of resurrecting an extinct race from stored information was also an interesting idea, but it didn't really go anywhere, either. If we swallow the implausibility of a biological storage device that just powers up and works once its implanted in an alien species -- and I would be willing to do that, with a little more persuasion than was offered -- the story didn't deal with any of the major topics that arose.
Why did the AI, who was clearly motivated to protect humanity, resurrect the aliens in the first place? What is the alien's attitude toward humanity, once the initial possibility of inhabiting their bodies is closed off? What does this alien civilization plan to do with its new lease on life? How is humanity going to react to them? How is the AI going to react -- beyond its initial decision to resurrect them, but route them to an inferior host?
Give it two stars for some interesting ideas, but withold the rest for unanswered questions...
« Last Edit: January 08, 2008, 01:57:58 AM by Windup »
"My whole job is in the space between 'should be' and 'is.' It's a big space."