Aimee Ogden

Scorn is an advanced form of artificial intelligence. It’s not fair to call zim a robot as the intelligence can move from one chassis to another easily. If one chassis is destroyed – he can move quickly elsewhere to his spare chassis or another safe haven. Ze can duplicate zis intelligence and stash copies of it in places where it will be safe if someone is out to destroy zim; or perhaps save transportation costs to the moon and just have a new chassis printed when one arrives if one has money enough.

Ze has been fashioned as an independent investigator by zis two female creators whom ze calls Maman and Mum.

Unfortunately, ze awakes with the last ten days stripped from zis memory and no idea what ze was tracking down. Ze is able to decipher that whatever it was, happened while ze was tracking down some sort of nefarious-ness on the moon, so of course, back ze goes.

This time they are out to kill zim for good.

This was a short novella, of a wise cracking, cynical AI and a new sort of detective work. Being an elder(ly) reader, I had a bit of trouble sorting out the zim and ze pronouns. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Scorn and would be interested in further adventures in his detective career.… (more)

Scorn is a newly self-aware AI who refers to his (not the pronoun he would use, but I am of the old school of grammarians) programmers as Maman and Mum. He began with a humanoid chassis (never called a body) designed to work in space at jobs too dangerous for “squishy” humans. Is that a nod to Blade Runner? But Scorn was just not interested, so he traded in the chassis that made his parents proud for a humbler device that made it easier to travel stealthily among people and machines. He is collecting corporate data, a dangerous occupation that does not please Mum and Maman. Archly, the story is dedicated to those who have had fraught relationships with their parents. Scorn is an emergent property—in more than one sense of the term, and Aimee Ogden, who describes herself as an American werewolf in the Netherlands, is an emerging writer. This novella could pick up some prizes in the next round.… (more)

Scorn, an AI who was created by two now-divorced women who have a vision of what ze should be that's different from zir own goals, reboots to find that ze doesn't have any record of what happened in the last 10 days. Figuring ze was on a news story, ze retraces zir steps to figure out what happened to zem.

Speculative novellas seem to be having a moment lately. Or maybe I'm just more aware of them and reading a lot lately. This is drawing inevitable comparisons to Murderbot, and I'll say I did enjoy the way in which Scorn's way of processing facts was "other", though it's much more serious in tone. The blend of mystery and science fiction was well done, and I'll be interested in reading more by Aimee Ogden.… (more)