Hella, by David Gerold, 2020
Good book, good writer. [link]
Classic scifi novel about living on an alien planet. Here's some notes --
On waiting two generations before naming a place after a person: None of the places on Hella are named after people. The First Hundred established that rule. They didn't want half the places on the planet named after them. They said they wanted names to represent the spirit of the place. They were quite adamant about it. They didn't want to have future generations saddled with shallow memorials, for people they didn't know or barely remembered. They made a rule for themselves that they wouldn't name any place after any living person, and they would wait 50 years after the person's death so that at least two generations of people could decide if that person's contributions ended up being much more important than anyone might have realized at the time. (p137)
On Intelligence Engines: There's this thing about people. If an intelligence engine says it, people think it's true. ... But if an intelligence engine has its own agenda, then it isn't telling you what you need to know. It's telling you only what it wants you to know and that's where trusting it starts to get dangerous. (p197)
After the main character gets a change to his brain chip, during a post-recovery session, he asks the robot if he passed the test (which is like a reverse Turing, and we're already there actually w captchas etc. but still, well done). (p344)
After the main character has his chip taken out, which gives him access to the network, if you will, and now he's describing his experience with a regular brain -- "I do miss being able to know stuff just by thinking." And so we get real Isaac Asimov's "the computer is in my head" vibes, a classic. Good work again. (p422)
About the Author - David Gerrold has been writing professionally for half a century. He created the tribbles for Star Trek and the Sleestaks for Land Of The Lost. His most famous novel is The Man Who Folded Himself. His semi-autobiographical tale of his son's adoption, The Martian Child won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and was the basis for the 2007 movie starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet.
