Over the last couple of years, I’ve reviewed a few strange books, those that are somewhat difficult to parse and write a review about. None of these books, however, have been as perplexing as Guy Immega’s Super-Earth Mother (or, if we’re to use its unwieldy full title, Super-Earth Mother: The AI that Engineered a Brave New World). While the story itself isn’t as strange as some of those other books, it is difficult to decipher the author’s intent with this story.
This is a novel that is equally engrossing and confounding as it tells a story that begins approximately two hundred years in the future and ends more than twenty thousand years later. In doing so, the book eschews the tropes of storytelling in some intriguing ways. But in doing so, the result is a story that’s difficult to connect with. It tells the story of an artificial intelligence, Mother-9, who embarks on a mission to save humanity by recreating the human race on an alien planet. From here, Super-Earth Mother tells an intergenerational tale about the humans Mother-9 has created.
Throughout its 272 paperback pages (274 in hardcover as well as the eBook version), Super-Earth Mother leans as heavily into literary fiction as it does science fiction. However, as literarily as the book’s story is written, it doesn’t come together. The plot is loosely written, necessitated by the story Immega is telling. However, the book often reads as though it is building towards a major moment, but these peter out into nothing as the story makes way for the next event. Despite this, the pacing itself works wonderfully; it just feels as though it’s pacing towards very little.
Despite a reasonably short length, Super-Earth Mother feels like a longer book. It’s densely written, ensuring the reader pays close attention while reading it. While the denser read isn’t for everybody, it works well in setting the book’s world and atmosphere. Adding to the density is the book being broken into six parts—plus a prologue and epilogue—rather than traditional chapters. The prose is split between first person narration told from Mother-9’s records, and third person articulating the story’s events. It’s an enjoyable approach, and Mother-9’s narration adds a wonderful sense of character to the story. The third person prose is written cleanly, but feels somewhat sterile. For a book where the major character is an AI, the sterility works nicely, however. I enjoyed the first person narration more, and think the book could have been elevated by using this throughout it. Otherwise (and somewhat ironically, given my enjoyment of the first person), I would have liked to see the weighting shift to a majority of third person, with the first person perspective to have been used to stress points.
If you’re a regular reader of these reviews, you may recall my stance that characters should have different voices and sound unique from one another. With the exception of Mother-9, however, Earth-Mother 9’s characters all sound the same. This is a great example of how rules should be broken; these characters having similar voices gives them an uncanny valley feel to them. They may be human, but they’re humans who belong to a new race, created by an AI. They all read as human, but there’s something a little off in the way they interact with one another.
The characters throughout Super-Earth Mother are thinly drawn. While this may be by design, and it may be because the bulk of the book tells a story about multiple generations, it remains difficult for the reader to connect with them. A book told from the perspective of artificial intelligence is an interesting idea, but the book doesn’t follow through on the potential. Mother-9 tells the reader early on that she is unable to feel emotion and is only programmed to replicate this, yet the prose written from her perspective is full of emotive language. The question of whether an AI has true feelings is an entertaining one, but the book doesn’t follow through on the idea.
Whether it’s through the darker elements of the story (a word of warning: these moments do get fairly dark), the scientific facts packed into the story, or its plot, Super-Earth Mother is a serious book. Yet it finds humour in strange places, particularly when it comes to the names of the human characters; for example, Attom and Eva, Dik and Jain, or Lois and Clarke (the only pairing, per the book, that explicitly states the origin of their names, and for some reason, breaking free of the more alliterative titles). The names all feel a bit twee, and the book would have been served better by not giving them cute names.
Super-Earth Mother is an intriguing book packed with unique elements. As a whole, though, many of the disparate elements don’t quite click into place. With its characters and word, it feels different to most other books,
Favourite Passage
The sudden rise of the human intellect is a mystery. No other animal needs to be hyperintelligent to survive. There were no brainy dinosaurs, despite having more than 150 million years to evolve superior cognition. Homo erectus lived for more than 1.7 million years, used fire, and made crude tools, but nothing more. Neanderthals had bigger brains and existed on Earth more than twice as long as modern humans. They must have been smart, but developed scant symbolic or material culture. It wasn’t until Homo sapiens that true intelligence appeared.
Super-Earth Mother: The AI that Engineered a Brave New World, Part 3: “Searching For Sanctuary”
Super-Earth Mother: The AI that Engineered a Brave New World was provided by Booksirens for the purpose of an honest review.
Super-Earth Mother is available in paperback, hardcover and eBook from retailers, including—but not limited to—to Amazon.
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Super-Earth Mother: The AI that Engineered a Brave New World
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