Dreamships

Scott, Melissa. Dreamships. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, [1992]. "A Tor Book."

A kinder, gentler, more spacefaring çyberpunk novel than those associated with W. Gibson et al., but definitely cyberpunk in its examination of implants, rule by corporations, and the question of the personhood and rights (although not the godhead) of a computer program that might have broken the Turing Barrier (239) and achieved true AI. Esp. significant for a strong Humanist assertion that a real, living human being has greater value than a copy of all that human's data (300-302), for erotic scenes of the woman/machine interface between the female hero and her computerized spaceship (ch. 5), and for the suggestion in the last paragraph of the book that implants and prosthetics are tools that change the users (cf. transition from Australopithecus to Homo in A. C. Clarke's 2001, D. Knight's "Masks," and C. L. Moore's "No Woman Born"). (RDE, 27/01/93)