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THRESHOLD: Sci Fi Thriller where AI shuts everything off – A Dystopian Future Novel by Scott Falcon
2040...VENTURA CALIFORNIA:
Becca Wilde, a terminally ill teenage autistic savant, senses a presence--an intelligence--in The STREAM, the virtual reality entertainment phenomenon created by her tech-billionaire father.
She believes the intelligence can create a cure, but her father intends to use radical technology. They are running out of time.
Then technology stops working.
All of it.
No Internet. No screens. Not even cars. But one thing is working--a Russian A.I. that mutated--and is now In the Wild.
Becca may hold the key to the future. Any future. If there is going to be one.
But...only if she can communicate with a super-intelligence--that hasn't been invented yet.
Becca Wilde, a terminally ill teenage autistic savant, senses a presence--an intelligence--in The STREAM, the virtual reality entertainment phenomenon created by her tech-billionaire father.
She believes the intelligence can create a cure, but her father intends to use radical technology. They are running out of time.
Then technology stops working.
All of it.
No Internet. No screens. Not even cars. But one thing is working--a Russian A.I. that mutated--and is now In the Wild.
Becca may hold the key to the future. Any future. If there is going to be one.
But...only if she can communicate with a super-intelligence--that hasn't been invented yet.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
457 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 26, 2020
73 people are currently reading
64 people want to read
About the author
Scott Falcon
14 books3 followersPolitical Thriller: AMERICAN MUTT. A maverick journalist with a black hole past uncovers an invisible cabal bent on destroying American sovereignty. Five-star reviews, the novel rose to the Top 100 in American Literature on Amazon within weeks of release, and to the Top 10 in Political Thrillers.
Technothriller: THRESHOLD. In 2040 technology stops working. All of it—except a mutant AI. Five-star reviews, the novel hit #1 in Hard Science Fiction and #3 in
Technothrillers on Amazon. It also made 14 other Bestseller lists.
Psychological Thriller: CELERITY: A mediocre college track athlete ingests a rare plant extract and becomes the fastest woman in history—and the first to play in the NFL.
Scott lives in Ventura, California. More information about Scott, including his next novel, can be found on his website: ScottFalcon.com
Technothriller: THRESHOLD. In 2040 technology stops working. All of it—except a mutant AI. Five-star reviews, the novel hit #1 in Hard Science Fiction and #3 in
Technothrillers on Amazon. It also made 14 other Bestseller lists.
Psychological Thriller: CELERITY: A mediocre college track athlete ingests a rare plant extract and becomes the fastest woman in history—and the first to play in the NFL.
Scott lives in Ventura, California. More information about Scott, including his next novel, can be found on his website: ScottFalcon.com
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 5, 2020
2.5 stars
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc of this book. My opinions are my own.
When I read the description of this book, I knew this book would be about science and technology. I was actually pretty excited about that, because I hadn't read any fiction about artificial intelligence in our near future yet. I have a little bit of a background in computer science myself, so I couldn't wait to find out where this story would lead. A young girl, fighting to beat an AI-entity that has gone rogue? I'm interested!
This book is very heavy on the science. You kinda need to have knowledge of neuroscience, biology, physics, computer science and artificial intelligence to understand the story and get a grasp of the solution of the plot. On the one hand, the technology-talk sets the tone for the story and sets a great scene. To me, however, it felt a bit like overkill. I had to look up some difficult terms and that took me out of the story.
Then there's the characters. They felt flat and without any character development. The main character, Becca, is a young autistic girl who is terminally ill because she has ALS. Her autism is only used as a reason why she's so smart, and the ALS is just a plot device to try and make the story more dramatic, or something? I don't know. I'm all for representation but it has to be done right.
There were parts of this book I truly enjoyed, but I think overall it's too heavy on the science to be readable for a lot of people.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc of this book. My opinions are my own.
When I read the description of this book, I knew this book would be about science and technology. I was actually pretty excited about that, because I hadn't read any fiction about artificial intelligence in our near future yet. I have a little bit of a background in computer science myself, so I couldn't wait to find out where this story would lead. A young girl, fighting to beat an AI-entity that has gone rogue? I'm interested!
This book is very heavy on the science. You kinda need to have knowledge of neuroscience, biology, physics, computer science and artificial intelligence to understand the story and get a grasp of the solution of the plot. On the one hand, the technology-talk sets the tone for the story and sets a great scene. To me, however, it felt a bit like overkill. I had to look up some difficult terms and that took me out of the story.
Then there's the characters. They felt flat and without any character development. The main character, Becca, is a young autistic girl who is terminally ill because she has ALS. Her autism is only used as a reason why she's so smart, and the ALS is just a plot device to try and make the story more dramatic, or something? I don't know. I'm all for representation but it has to be done right.
There were parts of this book I truly enjoyed, but I think overall it's too heavy on the science to be readable for a lot of people.
September 20, 2020
Threshold is a science fiction thriller set in the year 2040, when the USA, Russia, and several other players are in a headlong race to be the first to create (and control) a transcendent super-AI. Unfortunately for the modern world so dependant on technology, the first such AI to arise gets loose and shut downs the world's electric grid. Tangled up in this mess are Kip Wilde, one of the world's leading AI specialists and the inventor of a world wide virtual reality network called The Stream, his terminally ill teenage daughter Becca who happens to be a grad student uniquely poised to communicate with super AIs, and a repatriated Russian hacker who was once on friendlier terms with Kip.
This book is incredibly well written if you have the scientific mind required to understand and appreciate it. It will definitely prove unreachable and thus uninteresting to some, and looking at the reviews posted before mine I'm not surprised to see people complaining that they need a degree to understand this piece. As someone who has studied in a STEM field and programs as a hobby, I thought it was brilliant!
Early parts of this novel, and the AI character Arturo throughout, reminded me of Robert J. Sawyer's WWW trilogy, where the internet becomes aware and is named and guided by a blind teenage girl who's uniquely connected to the internet due to experimental technology attempting to restore her sight. In other ways this title reminded me of Sterling's Dies the Fire, though I'm happy to report that unlike Dies the Fire this book did not fill me with so much existential dread that I had to DNF. (Sorry Sterling.)
Falcon's writing reminds me of Sawyer and Chrichton, the science fiction authors who entertained me in my teenage years and instilled a deep love of true hard sci-fi in me. Again, it won't be for everyone. This is no space opera. It's hard sci-fi. This story cannot be told without the deep exploration of physics and digital technology. I do think there was enough regular human conversation dispersed between the scientific and programming discussions to give the reader's brain a break, and I love the way python coding was worked right into the text.
My criticisms for this title are few. First, and this may have been an ARC copy issue that has already been addressed, I found that the choice to use endnotes rather than footnotes wasn't helpful to electronic readers, as there's no easy way to jump to the note and then back to your place. This issue would be less cumbersome in print, but still not as easy to use as footnotes.
Second, the use of the internet abbreviation RL in dialogue was jarring to me. Perhaps this was meant to be a world building feature and this sort of shorthand is used in all areas of communication in this version of 2040, but RL was the only contemporary internet speak abbreviation I caught and it was used a lot. Generally if people are speaking to their real life/real world/offline contacts and need to differentiate real life and online, they still use the words real life, not the letters RL. That's still reserved for text based communication. If 2040 has embraced speaking in colloquial acronyms there should have been more of them in use.
Finally, the ending. I love where it went and I see why it was important to get there, but the book took too long to get their after the climax. I spent a few chapters wondering why were were still hanging out with these characters. The final 10-15% of this book felt like it needed to either be a much more condensed epilogue or carved off and developed into a sequel.
All in all I enjoyed this book immensely and will seek out more titles by this author. 5 stars!
I received a review copy of this title from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity.
This book is incredibly well written if you have the scientific mind required to understand and appreciate it. It will definitely prove unreachable and thus uninteresting to some, and looking at the reviews posted before mine I'm not surprised to see people complaining that they need a degree to understand this piece. As someone who has studied in a STEM field and programs as a hobby, I thought it was brilliant!
Early parts of this novel, and the AI character Arturo throughout, reminded me of Robert J. Sawyer's WWW trilogy, where the internet becomes aware and is named and guided by a blind teenage girl who's uniquely connected to the internet due to experimental technology attempting to restore her sight. In other ways this title reminded me of Sterling's Dies the Fire, though I'm happy to report that unlike Dies the Fire this book did not fill me with so much existential dread that I had to DNF. (Sorry Sterling.)
Falcon's writing reminds me of Sawyer and Chrichton, the science fiction authors who entertained me in my teenage years and instilled a deep love of true hard sci-fi in me. Again, it won't be for everyone. This is no space opera. It's hard sci-fi. This story cannot be told without the deep exploration of physics and digital technology. I do think there was enough regular human conversation dispersed between the scientific and programming discussions to give the reader's brain a break, and I love the way python coding was worked right into the text.
My criticisms for this title are few. First, and this may have been an ARC copy issue that has already been addressed, I found that the choice to use endnotes rather than footnotes wasn't helpful to electronic readers, as there's no easy way to jump to the note and then back to your place. This issue would be less cumbersome in print, but still not as easy to use as footnotes.
Second, the use of the internet abbreviation RL in dialogue was jarring to me. Perhaps this was meant to be a world building feature and this sort of shorthand is used in all areas of communication in this version of 2040, but RL was the only contemporary internet speak abbreviation I caught and it was used a lot. Generally if people are speaking to their real life/real world/offline contacts and need to differentiate real life and online, they still use the words real life, not the letters RL. That's still reserved for text based communication. If 2040 has embraced speaking in colloquial acronyms there should have been more of them in use.
Finally, the ending. I love where it went and I see why it was important to get there, but the book took too long to get their after the climax. I spent a few chapters wondering why were were still hanging out with these characters. The final 10-15% of this book felt like it needed to either be a much more condensed epilogue or carved off and developed into a sequel.
All in all I enjoyed this book immensely and will seek out more titles by this author. 5 stars!
I received a review copy of this title from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity.
August 4, 2020
(2.5 Stars) I don't have the required PhD in Biology and Physics to properly understand half of this book
I received an arc for this book through NetGalley
Threshold: 2040 is about the race to an advanced AI, but will that AI stay under the control of its creator or will it go rogue. The answer is, it goes rogue and shuts down all technology on earth.
The premise of this book is super interesting, the idea of a world without technology is what interested me about this book and the reason I picked it up. Unfortunately that was only a small part of the actual story. The race to an advanced AI was interesting but it became a bit confusing. So many companies, so many AI's with different names that I couldn't keep them apart. Now besides that there are a couple of things that I had issues with.
Becca Wilde, one of the main characters of this book is an autistic girl with ALS. Now it's great to have representation in books but her Autism really wasn't mentioned often. I can probably the times it was mentioned on 1 hand. There was only 1 instance where I saw her show symptoms of autism. I wish there was more about this. Same with her ALS. Her ALS was shown a bit more but certain things happen and it just sorta vanishes.
The formatting of the book wasn't great. At points I felt like paragraphs were switched around on accident, there are a bunch of spelling mistakes and mistakes in sentence structure that just took me out of the story.
Edit: the formating is being worked on http://scottfalcon.com/2020/07/04/thr...
The biggest problem I had with the book is the language used. There is so much talk about hacking and biology and physics that I just do not understand. What is the target audience for this book? because a highschool physics and biology education was definitely not enough to understand the majority of the book which was super unfortunate.
Anyways as I said, it's a great concept but the execution was lacking.
I received an arc for this book through NetGalley
Threshold: 2040 is about the race to an advanced AI, but will that AI stay under the control of its creator or will it go rogue. The answer is, it goes rogue and shuts down all technology on earth.
The premise of this book is super interesting, the idea of a world without technology is what interested me about this book and the reason I picked it up. Unfortunately that was only a small part of the actual story. The race to an advanced AI was interesting but it became a bit confusing. So many companies, so many AI's with different names that I couldn't keep them apart. Now besides that there are a couple of things that I had issues with.
Becca Wilde, one of the main characters of this book is an autistic girl with ALS. Now it's great to have representation in books but her Autism really wasn't mentioned often. I can probably the times it was mentioned on 1 hand. There was only 1 instance where I saw her show symptoms of autism. I wish there was more about this. Same with her ALS. Her ALS was shown a bit more but certain things happen and it just sorta vanishes.
The formatting of the book wasn't great. At points I felt like paragraphs were switched around on accident, there are a bunch of spelling mistakes and mistakes in sentence structure that just took me out of the story.
Edit: the formating is being worked on http://scottfalcon.com/2020/07/04/thr...
The biggest problem I had with the book is the language used. There is so much talk about hacking and biology and physics that I just do not understand. What is the target audience for this book? because a highschool physics and biology education was definitely not enough to understand the majority of the book which was super unfortunate.
Anyways as I said, it's a great concept but the execution was lacking.
July 16, 2020
Poorly written and edited
The author spends too much time *telling* us about characters (with clumsy and pedestrian descriptions) instead of *showing* us through narrative. Inconsistent usages and outright errors are irritating. I got this for free through a reading recommendation service, thank heaven — I could quit reading it and not feel that I wasted anything other than time.
The author spends too much time *telling* us about characters (with clumsy and pedestrian descriptions) instead of *showing* us through narrative. Inconsistent usages and outright errors are irritating. I got this for free through a reading recommendation service, thank heaven — I could quit reading it and not feel that I wasted anything other than time.
August 26, 2020
The book is good, the plot is trending and provocative. And it is more or less well researched and consistent.
I'm giving it 3 stars, because I felt deeply disturbed by the patriotism and the deeply ingrained hatered towards Russia, China and Iran. The book should come with a warning for international readers because at least for me, it's was uncomfortable to read "Make America Great Again" while the world is in ashes and probably billions have died from the blackout.
Also, the book needs editing. Like seriously. There were tons of typos and even worst language errors. I'm not sure how the Enlish speakers are supposed to understand the Russian lines (there weren't footnotes with translation). What else...the AI lingo is more or less ok (well, kind of), but the author needs to take a refreshing course on physics - the biggest shocker for me: sound is not part of the EM spectrum, hello?! And there were many other stuff, physics, biology, physiology. Life of people with discapacity. Etc.
In short, the book is ok, but it's not great. I like that it's a complete book, not sequels etc, and the story is well developped. Maybe we could have skipped the last 100 pages but that is where the author's patriotism blossoms. Anyway, one thing is clear - the author really likes RT. :) /Russia Today, for those who don't know/
I'm giving it 3 stars, because I felt deeply disturbed by the patriotism and the deeply ingrained hatered towards Russia, China and Iran. The book should come with a warning for international readers because at least for me, it's was uncomfortable to read "Make America Great Again" while the world is in ashes and probably billions have died from the blackout.
Also, the book needs editing. Like seriously. There were tons of typos and even worst language errors. I'm not sure how the Enlish speakers are supposed to understand the Russian lines (there weren't footnotes with translation). What else...the AI lingo is more or less ok (well, kind of), but the author needs to take a refreshing course on physics - the biggest shocker for me: sound is not part of the EM spectrum, hello?! And there were many other stuff, physics, biology, physiology. Life of people with discapacity. Etc.
In short, the book is ok, but it's not great. I like that it's a complete book, not sequels etc, and the story is well developped. Maybe we could have skipped the last 100 pages but that is where the author's patriotism blossoms. Anyway, one thing is clear - the author really likes RT. :) /Russia Today, for those who don't know/
June 4, 2021
I would like to thank Rand Wilde Media and the Netgalley website for allowing me to read this book.
The story takes place in California in Ventura in 2040 where we find Becca Wilde, an autistic woman who is terminally ill. One day she will feel a presence, a kind of intelligence in the STREAM created by her father. It is a kind of entertaining virtual reality.
She will immediately think that this famous intelligence will be able to create a remedy, as for her father, he intends to use the new technologies except that it will stop working, everything is upside down, no more internet, no more cars, no more screens, just one thing that works, a mutant Russian artificial intelligence in the wild.
Will Becca be able to communicate with this A.I. and hold the key to the future?
I was immediately hooked on the story, which is so moving at times, gripping, captivating, addictive, full of suspense and twists and turns with very engaging characters. I love the author's writing.
The story takes place in California in Ventura in 2040 where we find Becca Wilde, an autistic woman who is terminally ill. One day she will feel a presence, a kind of intelligence in the STREAM created by her father. It is a kind of entertaining virtual reality.
She will immediately think that this famous intelligence will be able to create a remedy, as for her father, he intends to use the new technologies except that it will stop working, everything is upside down, no more internet, no more cars, no more screens, just one thing that works, a mutant Russian artificial intelligence in the wild.
Will Becca be able to communicate with this A.I. and hold the key to the future?
I was immediately hooked on the story, which is so moving at times, gripping, captivating, addictive, full of suspense and twists and turns with very engaging characters. I love the author's writing.
June 17, 2020
An engrossing story set in 2040 when the race to create Super Intelligent Artificial Intelligence is keeping the brilliant minds of the world on their toes. A fascinating world where The Stream gives people their every experience without leaving home. Thrills at every turn, Kip Wilde is willing to do all he can to cure his daughter Becca of ALS. Kept me up all night reading, reading and still reading until I could no longer keep my eyes open! Excellent world building and language creation. A few typos along the way, not too distracting. Absorbing concepts to ponder. Well done Scott Falcon.
January 9, 2024
A Very Interesting Story
This book probably deserves 5 stars and if I were smarter I would have given it.......however there was much of this that I just didn't understand because I am both technically challenged as well as IQ challenged!!!! I think smart smart people will be thrilled with this story. However, even though I consider myself only average in intelligence I really enjoyed the storyline itself and loved the characters.
This book probably deserves 5 stars and if I were smarter I would have given it.......however there was much of this that I just didn't understand because I am both technically challenged as well as IQ challenged!!!! I think smart smart people will be thrilled with this story. However, even though I consider myself only average in intelligence I really enjoyed the storyline itself and loved the characters.
July 10, 2020
Captivating
Some will get lost in the science. Others will be challenged to think beyond their current contours. Enjoy the thinking.
Some will get lost in the science. Others will be challenged to think beyond their current contours. Enjoy the thinking.
Read
March 9, 2021Stopped reading it. I’m more into murder mysteries and thrillers and just thought I would try something new. Didn’t hold my attention.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews