Machine Intelligence

by Matthew Jarpe

The first spaceship to reach Alpha Centauri arrives with a crew of 30 maladjusted genius teenagers. The ship's computer that raised and taught them skimped on the former and overachieved on the latter. But the Thinker had never been designed to raise children. That had been a horrible mistake. Now Audrey Callico, the dumbest kid on the ship, must stop her siblings from starting an interstellar war. Matthew Jarpe is the author of RADIO FREEFALL, which Sci-Fi Weekly called "One of the first truly new cyberpunk visions in recent years."

Nook

First published February 21, 2011

About the author

I was born in St. Joseph, Michigan in 1966 but I grew up on a "farm" in Los Lunas, New Mexico. I use the scare quotes because we didn't actually raise much food, we just kept farm animals as pets. Well, we did eat the pigs and the chicken's eggs. I have a BS in Biology from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, a well known party school in the Big Ten (where Big Ten refers to the ten biggest mining schools, of which there are actually only two, and they're not that big). I have a PhD in Biochemistry from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and I use that PhD on a daily basis as Director of Biology at Acetylon.

I wrote Radio Freefall when I was working on my postdoctoral fellowship in Denver. I found writing to be a good way to relax after a long day doing experiments. I didn't know at the time how unlikely it was I would get it published. Looking back I realize how lucky I was to get input from published authors and professional agents, and how lucky I was to meet David Hartwell, who bought and published it.

You can find out more about me at my blog.

Reviews

[Kris Sellgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This fast-paced science fiction novel pits 30 teenagers, raised by a computer after all the adults die on their interstellar ship, against all the problems of colonizing another planet. But the deadliest challenges arise from internal disputes among these ultra-smart kids. The heroine faces killer robots, fights space battles, survives being thrown out an airlock, and fosters a mutiny. The author anchors his tale in fascinating speculation on possible space ship drives, the future of computing, and the implications of quantum gravity. An enjoyable read for fans of hard science fiction.