Infinity Born

For me, this book is a huge disappointment. I have read several of the authors books ( I particularly liked Split Second) and would have expected him to mature as a writer but he seems to be going in reverse. First his knowledge of English grammar is so poor that is off putting .This makes him seem not so very bright. Paragon Press should have fixed this for him. Maybe they don't have a command of English grammar either. Richards has a lot if information at hand but uses it poorly. His characters are shallow and make stupid decisions. His main character, Isaac Jordan, supposedly the worlds greatest intellect, blows up a large city while overlooking the fact that setting off a bomb there will kill a lot of people. Stupid character. Stupid writing.

He opens up with a kinetic weapon, a large tungsten rod, falling from space on a high tech city in California. His explanation of this shows that he has no understanding of the Law of Conservation of Energy or the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The energy available from his weapon is a tiny fraction of the energy needed to put it into orbit. That energy would be much better used in some other way. He drops this weapon from a satellite. You don't drop anything from a satellite. It has to be retrofired to take it out of orbit, and there is no mechanism for this with the weapon.. This is really stupid.

The main characters shake off horror and trauma like minor disappointments. I'm reminded of Starship Troopers where Denise Richards is stabbed completely through from the back with a 3 inch diameter spike from an Arachnid. Minutes later she is laughing and smiling with her comrades. This book has the same level of preposterous reactions to horrible violence.

This book has the tone of something written by a seventh grader who has been given a lot of factoids that he must use to assemble a story. I see that the book has been getting good reviews. Who can the audience possibly be?

I bought this book based on mostly positive reviews and the author's reputation, but was shocked at the amatuer writing style. I was almost embarrassed to continue reading it.

The dialog is so unnatural given the characters' circumstances. Richards fails to convey any sense of emotion and instead just states it explicitly.

All of the characters are masters of everything and have no flaws. This makes them unlikable and annoying.

Basically, it seems like an imaginative mind developed an interesting story, and then handed the concept off to a teenager for the writing; who then fleshed out the story with whatever technology headlines we're in the news each day.

I REALLY wanted to love this book. It's got a bunch of fascinating concepts, a couple surprises, an intriguing concept of the very near future and what AI looks and feels like... but it just doesn't quite get there as a cohesive story. I kept waiting for the moment when the plot came together to make a really meaty story. Richards opts for a fast-paced action book with some AWESOME concepts that he never really dives into. You get a couple pages of discourse on the decisions made by the characters and everybody just nods and says, "Yeah. That's a good point." and moves on. There's very little conflict and very little growth and it's SO CLOSE TO BEING AWESOME... but it's not quite there. If this book were longer and the characters more fully dynamic and fleshed out, this could be Stephenson-level awesome. Instead it's just really pretty decent.

Think of it as a really good fast food burger. It's not awesome but it's great for what it is. Hope that makes sense

I made it 20% of the way in and gave up. I do not understand the positively gushing reviews. This book was disjointed and poorly written. Utilizing the same word multiple times in one paragraph, inserting tired cliches, relying on heavy and awkward transitions, and the attempts at humor were absolutely not funny. In other words the writing style is lacking. Then there is the constant introduction (and often killing off of) new characters. And characters that are described as perfect but actually lack depth. I have no idea what this book is about and absolutely no compelling reason to keep reading. I have already wasted 40 minutes of my time that I am not getting back. I am not wasting anymore.

The hot topic of the moment is artificial intelligence. The topic is hot because cognitive science has arrived at a crossroads of sorts. There are those experts who draw a distinction between artificial intelligence (or AI) and artificial general intelligence (AGI or ASI–where the “s” stands for sentient). It has taken congitive science roughly twenty years to get here and it may take another twenty years before they refine the distinction even farther between passive intelligence–fact and figures, reduction and synthesis–and active intelligence, the latter being simply emotions acting upon passive intelligence.

In INFINITTY BORN, Douglas Richards constructs a near future world in which one brilliant scientist speeds through the cross road and arrives at real ASI. The consequences are disastrous and we spend the remainder of the book learning how he makes amends.

The entire premise of the book is thoroughly engaging and informative. In the aptl nameed “Author Notes & Bonus Content”, Richards discusses the research, providing sources, he did in putting the story together. It is the putting-together of the story that I ran into a problem.

In a later chapter in the book, after devoting three immediately preceding paragraphs describing how one of the main characters is attempting to sneak past a group of bad guys, we encounter the sentence: “He spotted the three Russians nearing the house, but he made sure to stay out of sight”. I highlight this sentence because it exemplifies a pattern of wordy redundancy which I find very annoying. The scene has already been perfectly set by the preceding three paragraphs. This excessive wordiness occurs throughout the book.

Another annoyance I have with the novel, not as serious believe-it-or-not, is that there are some events which are just plainly discordant with the flow of the story. Depending on the ability to suspend belief, inconceivable events like a seasoned federal agent being overpowered by a twenty-something year old untrained woman is passable as fiction.

Despite the annoyances with the story, overall it is well worth the time to read and intellectually digest. Just the research and issues raised makes INFINITY BORN a valuable contribution to any discussion of intelligence and human consciousness.

Obligatory Ethics Line: Too many 1-line, 5 Star reviews for this book or others in the series; they are all spam from what I've seen. It's unfortunate because I don't believe the author or publisher (whoever is doing it), needs to. Ignore the 1 star reviews also; this is not a bad book. The truth is, it's another "easily consumed" serial tech-adventure novel from another author looking for a TV or movie deal (IMO).

I say that because the plot plays out like an action-adventure movie, and the dialog feels like a typical action-adventure script (i.e. not much substance, a lot of buzz-words and bullets flying). To be fair Richards does do his homework on the tech he writes about, and the storylines areinteresting enough to keep you reading — Infinity Born is no exception. There are enough plot twists here that this book qualifies as a "page-turner" in my opinion. It's a good book for a long flight or a lazy weekend.

That being said...

***SPOILER ALERT***
Conceptually I find the entire premise of this book to be somewhat off the wall. The idea that any one business tycoon would have enough money and access to societal resources to finance not just a team that builds rockets and puts them into space, but has an entire fleet of space ships in orbit (presumably they were assembled there)... complete with kinetic weapons that can level a city and targeted to hit within meters of an intended target... to be only slightly less implausible than an AI that's so powerful it can jump physical barriers and get into a person's head. Jumped the shark more like.

Example: think about how much money Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have... billions each, with huge capital resources at their disposal... and how difficult has it been for them to design a relativelty simple rocket and put it into space? Really difficult. Musk is just now reaching a point of repeatable success for the simplest of missions. Put another way, designing rockets that can achieve orbit is rought enough, but orders of magnitude simpler than designing "space ships" like the ones we see in Star Wars, the new Lost in Space, etc. That's why the human race has never built one, only imagined them in movies. : )

Moving beyond that, if we totally suspend disbelief, there are elements of this story that are pretty cool and make for a good read. After initially being outed as the source of all evil early in the story, the tycoon turns out to me more grey area than you think, and is wrapped back into the story in interesting ways. Some of the scenes involving what I'll call "time-shifting" or "stop-motion time" are pretty compelling and show the author really gave some thought into how these things might actually feel to a human being in the moment. And ultiamtely the way the tycoon's daughter (and chief victim, but by no means a helpless one) ends up evolving in terms of her feelings towards her father, is also not as predictable as you'd expect, given the horrific events at the start of the story. So there are some interesting takes and twists on the typical action-adventure characters.

Don't want to give away more; suffice to say, if you take this book for what it is — a decent book to get you through your next long flight and probably better than whatever movie they're playing — then you're good. If you're looking for something deeper, something you'd want to read twice, this isn't it and I'd venture to say none of these books from Richards, Grumley, Riddle et al. are that. They're all basically variations on a simple formula. Come up with a far-fetched plot that involves lots of science and technology buzzwords, throw in a likeable bloke (or lass) with high intelligence and some element of being victimized, possibly some commando skills or a love interest with commando skills, rinse repeat. Remember those "Most Interesting Man in the World" ads from Dos Equis? He doesn't always save the world, but when he does, he looks a lot like the heros in every Richards, Grumley, Riddle, et al novel every written. ; )

That said, these authors are giving us "what we want," or else we wouldn't be buying so many of these serial novels. Question is, is this what we *should* want? For my part, search continues for an author whose books I'd be willing to buy more than two of. I've purchased two from each of the authors above and others, and so far I'm not compelled to buy "the full series" from any of them (as some of our beloved 1 line, 5-star reviews casually suggest). Who's next?

There were some good idea nuggets here interspersed with some one dimensional action plotting. The characters would have fit right into Skylark Duquesne or the Lensman books. So, some readers will enjoy this. I finished it, and I enjoyed parts of it, but there were some plot artifices that weren't consistent with how 'smart' the lead characters were supposed to be. YMMV.

Personally, I would rather be a Sheldon and have my consciousness embedded in an indestructable robot, but Infinity Born sounds almost as good. I rather prefer Jordan's seeding project over having the world discuss for eons how to go about using his technology. Too many cooks can spoil the dinner. Just as too many gods have spoiled religion, so too would giving everyone the power of a god and have endless do-overs and opinions. But I am a mere mortal. Loved the book and great action and characters as usual. You can't go wrong with a Douglas E. Richards book!

The dialogue is terrible, almost laughable - except when they're trying to be funny. The characters are barely believable, with their behavior and conversations wooden and stilted, almost uncomfortably bad. The writer attempts to connect you with the characters thoughts and motivations, but the result is a long and winding road of self-talk that is more wearisome than revealing. Each of the characters gets this treatment at least once in the book, but after that they are reverted back to their cardboard, one-dimensional placeholders.

Outside of the characters, the plot/writing stumbles along in a disjointed fashion, with each "twist" signaled well in advance, and in some cases making little sense in spite of the advance warning. The writer intentionally creates plot holes to justify the story arc, and even though there are profound science fiction elements that are addressed, none of them are used to justify these plot holes - making coming to terms with these plot holes an act of willful ignorance, rather than imagination.

All of this seems to be acceptable to the writer, however, as it seems his higher goal is to postulate and discuss (via in-book character dialogue) the virtues and vices of Artificial Intelligence and the proliferation of the human race into the cosmos. Comprised of one or two chapters wherein the stories and ideas that are discussed are far more interesting than the rest of the novel, this section is perhaps the sole part of the book that has any weight or gravitas. This however is not to the book's credit, as it highlights the disparity between what 'could have been' and 'what is' with spotlight efficiency, so that as soon as the brief respite is over you are once again thrust back into the jostling, eye-roll inducing dialogue and narrative.

In the end, the writer should have made his story 'about' Artificial Intelligence, instead of a platform to 'discuss' Artificial Intelligence (albeit vicariously through his characters). Instead, it feels more like a pretentious excuse to hear himself talk, with the goal of appreciating his own intellect.

Doug's imagination is so incredible he is a genius! Usually I read a book and forget about it a week later but his books stay with me and months later I can still describe to my friends in vivid detail the the plot lines and the stories. Keep up the great work!