I’m gonna review the book and also I have a couple of questions about the ending. I liked the book and rate it 4.5 out of 5 stars.
In this book, the galaxy is divided into 4 zones based on the intelligence of the creatures that live and the level of technology that works in each zone.
A group of scientists from straumli realm go to the outermost zone, the transcend and accidentally awaken an ancient power that wreaks havoc in the galaxy. A family of four escape with the countermeasure to the tines world in the lower beyond the zone before transcend. The tines world is inhabited by dog like creatures that work in packs of 4-6. A group of dogs is considered an individual and a single dog is considered a member. The parents are killed and the kids are trapped along with the countermeasure.
A rescue team consisting of humans as well as aliens is traveling to the tines world to retrieve the countermeasure and rescue the kids.
what really happend at the end? What did pham do? Is the galaxy now just the unthinking depths and a massive slow zone? Is the perversion even eradicated ? If not what was the point of doing whatever they did?
It’s worth mentioning that this book was massively influential in AI policy.
All the people like Sam Altman that like to talk about super intelligent AI taking over are worried about exactly what’s described in this book.
The ancient power was the equivalent of a futuristic computer virus. The other power that the computer virus attacked and destroyed essentially programmed Pham with the antivirus, but because human are so simple, it overwrote his personality and used him like a computer to destroy the virus entity. Pham was in a fugue state for so much of that last trip because his brain was doing stuff that human brains aren’t really designed for. I forget if this word is actually used in the book, but I have heard the term, “god shattered”, to describe this state. So Pham was programmed with the antivirus and sent off to stop it, which he did, but he was basically destroyed in the process.