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Beatless: Volume 1
Boy meets girl... you know how it goes. But while the boy (Arato) might be a typical 17-year-old, the girl (Lacia) is a beautiful android equipped with an enormous black device that defies human understanding.
Set 100 years from now, BEATLESS depicts a familiar yet futuristic vision of Japan in which society is run by incredibly human-looking robots, known as hIE. Most people regard them as mere convenient tools. Yet some hIE–like Lacia–now appear bearing technology that far surpasses anything regular humans can produce.
Humans and ultra-advanced artificial beings: who is the master and who is the servant? Who made Lacia, and what ties her fate together with Arato? Bewildered by the turmoil of danger and mystery that Lacia brings into his life, Arato will find himself forced to make choices with profound implications not just for himself, but for all of humanity.
Set 100 years from now, BEATLESS depicts a familiar yet futuristic vision of Japan in which society is run by incredibly human-looking robots, known as hIE. Most people regard them as mere convenient tools. Yet some hIE–like Lacia–now appear bearing technology that far surpasses anything regular humans can produce.
Humans and ultra-advanced artificial beings: who is the master and who is the servant? Who made Lacia, and what ties her fate together with Arato? Bewildered by the turmoil of danger and mystery that Lacia brings into his life, Arato will find himself forced to make choices with profound implications not just for himself, but for all of humanity.
- GenresLight Novel
407 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 25, 2019
15 people are currently reading
50 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 6, 2022
Beatless, is great novel slightly held back by it's complexity, which is also it's greatest strength.
In this volume, we are introduced to much of the world of Beatless where much of the world's industry and lifestyle are automated by Human Interface Elements, which I will henceforth refer to as hIEs, that is governed by an autonomous Super A.I. which process data from hIEs to interpret situation and program hIEs with the appropriate reactions.
With this bit alone, I believe it's relatively obviously how technical and complex the world and themes of Beatless can be.
Volume one explores the story of 5 separate experimental hIEs with self-decision making capabilities and a ton of cool not too important gear escape from containment and the ways each of these machines' impact on the world around them, though mostly viewed through the eyes of the protagonist, Arato. Arato is entered into a contract with one of these hIEs, Lacia, and his life starts to be interrupted by more strange events which will force him to reconsider how the world around him is being affected by the integration of hIEs in almost every facet of life in this alternate future.
With the bare summary out of the way, I think I can get to the reason I feel this novel is amazing and how it's so good, even a computer nerd like me can find this absolutely confusing.
Let's get the easy stuff out of the way firsts: the story, while write to be engaging with the romantic relationship of Lacia the hIE and Arato the human at the forefront, is somewhat interesting at best and falls flat at worst. Definitely not the strongest points of the novel.
However, the questions about subliminal suggestions, impression manipulation, A.I. ethics , Super intelligent A.I.s, politics and social economics of an A.I. dependant society and other higher concept question hidden beneath the surface of the plot really do strike home as question that may be worth asking 20~30 years into the future, maybe more, are this series and novels' greatest strengths. Though it is also in this that lies it's greatest weakness: you would definitely be lost on your first read through and most will never make it till the end and grasps it's bigger picture, or even if they do, they'd be too burnt out by it's length to consider the situation and questions proposed to the readers.
In summary, I'd recommend this novel to read for any who would like to have a deeper and more meaningful read about A.I. and our reliance on them in a hypothetical future, with a dash of robot girl meets guy romance on top of the large number of real world questions it brings to the table.
On another note, I'd also recommend re-reading the work again a few days/weeks after your first read. It'd be a good experience ;)
In this volume, we are introduced to much of the world of Beatless where much of the world's industry and lifestyle are automated by Human Interface Elements, which I will henceforth refer to as hIEs, that is governed by an autonomous Super A.I. which process data from hIEs to interpret situation and program hIEs with the appropriate reactions.
With this bit alone, I believe it's relatively obviously how technical and complex the world and themes of Beatless can be.
Volume one explores the story of 5 separate experimental hIEs with self-decision making capabilities and a ton of cool not too important gear escape from containment and the ways each of these machines' impact on the world around them, though mostly viewed through the eyes of the protagonist, Arato. Arato is entered into a contract with one of these hIEs, Lacia, and his life starts to be interrupted by more strange events which will force him to reconsider how the world around him is being affected by the integration of hIEs in almost every facet of life in this alternate future.
With the bare summary out of the way, I think I can get to the reason I feel this novel is amazing and how it's so good, even a computer nerd like me can find this absolutely confusing.
Let's get the easy stuff out of the way firsts: the story, while write to be engaging with the romantic relationship of Lacia the hIE and Arato the human at the forefront, is somewhat interesting at best and falls flat at worst. Definitely not the strongest points of the novel.
However, the questions about subliminal suggestions, impression manipulation, A.I. ethics , Super intelligent A.I.s, politics and social economics of an A.I. dependant society and other higher concept question hidden beneath the surface of the plot really do strike home as question that may be worth asking 20~30 years into the future, maybe more, are this series and novels' greatest strengths. Though it is also in this that lies it's greatest weakness: you would definitely be lost on your first read through and most will never make it till the end and grasps it's bigger picture, or even if they do, they'd be too burnt out by it's length to consider the situation and questions proposed to the readers.
In summary, I'd recommend this novel to read for any who would like to have a deeper and more meaningful read about A.I. and our reliance on them in a hypothetical future, with a dash of robot girl meets guy romance on top of the large number of real world questions it brings to the table.
On another note, I'd also recommend re-reading the work again a few days/weeks after your first read. It'd be a good experience ;)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 2, 2020
What an amazing example of how people deal with a changing world in different ways. Even though I watched the anime before reading this (and my thanks to the anime studio for keeping to the story without leaving parts out) I still loved the book. The sheer emotions of the characters and how they interact is hard to put on a TV screen.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews