Emergent Properties

This novella was excellent.

Scorn is an emancipated AI investigator who has lost ten days of memory and is trying to retrace zir steps and figure out what story ze was trying to track down. It's a short quick to read novella with some noir detective pastiche, a lot of worldbuilding and characterization packed into its short length, and a lot of fun.

This is going to be compared to Murderbot a lot, so I'm just going to get that out of the way first. There are certainly some moments where Scorn and Murderbot have a very similar wry tone. It's third person perspective and not Murderbot's first, but it's very much in Scorn's head (or whatever body metaphor makes sense when Scorn doesn't have a head). However, Scorn is much more in tune with zir emotions (and can tune said emotions). Unlike Murderbot, ze has a complicated family relationship with zir two mothers/creators (who are fighting with each other) and a brother ai. It's also got a similar dystopian capitalist corporate future, although here artificial rights for bots and lunar autonomy are the big political issues of the day.

I wouldn't go so far as to call this a trans story at all, but there's definitely a few whiffs of this here. (Yes, yes, I hear you yelling in the back about Murderbot book 2.) This book is not really about gender, but Scorn has changed zir name, gets deadnamed by various mothers, and also has disappointed said mothers' expectations in who ze has decided to become, so it's hard not to feel some of this.

If I had any complaints, it's that it's over way too quickly. Scorn certainly does a lot of work on zir investigation to follow leads, but in the end it feels like too much happens at zem rather than because of zir actions. Regardless, I would have read an entire novel of this or ten more novellas.