Void Star
by Zachary Mason · first published 2017
58% recommend42% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Cyberpunk-leaning science fiction offering a sharp, prescient take on near-future networked life. Its style and themes echo Gibson's work, and it suits fans of the Sprawl and Blue Ant books.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Although the seas have risen and the central latitudes are emptying, it's still a good time to be in San Francisco, where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor. Irina isn't rich, but she does have an artificial memory that gives her perfect recall and lets her act as a medium between her various employers and their AIs, which are complex to the point of opacity. It's a good gig, paying enough for the annual visits to the Mayo Clinic that keep her from aging. Kern, on the other hand, has no such access; he's one of the many refugees in the sprawling drone-built fave
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…years later). And certainly with the subsequent Bridge trilogy. IMHO, the Sprawl trilogy that starts with Neuromancer gets better with each book, even though the first is the most famous. Also, plug for Void Star, which I recently finished after a recommendation here. It sits somewhere in Bridge-era Gibson tone, but with the quintessential "What the hell is going on?" Cyberpunk mystery that a lot of retro-CP authors…
on “The Influence of Neuromancer on Cyberpunk” ↗The book "Void Star" by Zachary Mason was published last year. A high concept pitch for it is "Neuromancer, but all the 80s stuff is replaced with 2018 stuff". I hope the author wouldn't be offended by that -- the book is…
on “Revisting Neuromancer After Three Decades” ↗…enjoyed these quite a bit, so let me add a few more to the list. - “The Fall Revolution” tetralogy by Ken MacLeod: “The Star Fraction”, “The Stone Canal”, “The Cassini Division”, and “The Sky Road” - “Void Star” by Zachary Mason - “Singularity Sky” by Charles Stross - “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” by Peter Watts - “Perfekcyjna niedoskonałość” by Jacek Dukaj - “A Fire Upon the Deep” and “A Deepness in the…
on “Permutation City (1994)” ↗…“The Golden Transcendence”. Also, these are not to be missed: - “The Fall Revolution” tetralogy by Ken MacLeod: “The Star Fraction”, “The Stone Canal”, “The Cassini Division”, and “The Sky Road” - “Void Star” by Zachary Mason - “Singularity Sky” by Charles Stross - “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” by Peter Watts - “Perfekcyjna niedoskonałość” by Jacek Dukaj - “A Fire Upon the Deep” and “A Deepness in the…
on “Accelerando (2005)” ↗It's my pet peeve too. I'm gonna throw in Void Star by Zachary Mason as one recommendation that a lot of people likely haven't heard of. Great prose writer, very Gibson-like, got way too little attention when it was published a few years ago.
on “Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read” ↗…though Dissolution (Nicholas Binge) Too Like the Lightning (Ada Palmer) and sequels (wordy, philosophical, interesting future society) Tell Me an Ending (Jo Harkin) - more near-future and grounded Void Star (Zachary Mason)
on “What 'Project Hail Mary' teaches us about the PlanetScale vs. Neon debate” ↗…signs in kanji, and synthesizers. a lot of work that is heavily derivative of Neuromancer just copies these choices blindly rather than trying to convey the same spirit as it tells the story. i liked Void Star because it did the opposite. another thing underappreciated about Gibson is that much of his world is not particularly futuristic. there's implied to be plenty of buildings left around from the 21st…
on “Is Cyberpunk Dead? A Conversation with Bruce Bethke” ↗>The book "Void Star" is an interesting one remember reading it two years ago or so and liked it a lot. The protagonist definitely resembled the Blue Ant trilogy Cayce Pollard character a lot, and I honestly think that…
on “Is Cyberpunk Dead? A Conversation with Bruce Bethke” ↗I love Diamond Age and Void Star for speaking to some of the raised by internet/laptop-per-child dreams. This opening up of horizons, connecting us to more, is something so unique & powerful. Jimmy is talking about all the help & outsiders…
on “Being Raised by the Internet” ↗Finally, someone who's read Void Star! I think it's an unusually prescient book, even for science fiction. I think about it a lot.
on “Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1” ↗This piece describes a future that is reminiscent of the world created in Zachary Mason's "Void Star" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29939057-void-star). The world of this novel is one in which superintelligent AI operate in tandem with everyday human life, with their own unknown motives. The narrative…
on “The Last Invention of Man” ↗…fast enough this is fine, but sometimes I find it being too clever for my good. The best reference I can think of for a Claude like this is that it's like the ravenous unraveling AI in Zachary Mason's Void Star: Cloudbreaker. Cloudbreaker just wants to extract information from everything and is unfathomably good at it. You go to it to break encryption but you have to be careful interacting because it will take…
on “Measuring AI agent autonomy in practice” ↗The book "Void Star" is an interesting one. It has a William Gibson style plot very similar to Neuromancer but instead of 1980s aesthetic choices, it has 2017 aesthetic choices. So instead of ninjas you get MMA jiu jitsu…
on “Is Cyberpunk Dead? A Conversation with Bruce Bethke” ↗…other than for humans. They're packing lots of signal into fewer words and they don't care if it sounds cringe because it works better as glue in long-running tasks. I'm also thinking of the 2017 novel "Void Star" where AIs who operate everything have long since left ceased bothering with human languages, and it takes a rare sort of direct matrix-gazing savant to be able to try and horse-whisper them into doing…
on “Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1” ↗> I'm also thinking of the 2017 novel "Void Star" where AIs who operate everything have long since left ceased bothering with human languages, and it takes a rare sort of direct matrix-gazing savant to be able to try and horse-whisper them into doing…
on “Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1” ↗