Nostalgious

by Mitchell Rycus

Nostalgious is a story about a family of mathematicians who spend their lives devoted to Artificial Intelligence (AI), and how that impacted them for over fifty years. Nostalgious also refers to remembering life’s’ occasions, but instead of with joy and happiness, with fear and trepidation—a cross between nostalgia and nauseous.In 1972 Jake Segal, who coined the term Nostalgious, started his doctoral studies in computer science, specializing in artificial intelligence with hopes of developing an AI model that would fight social injustice. AI had promised great strides in decision making, but aside from some novelty applications, like playing Chess, nothing of real substance had been developed. But by 1985 Jake’s company was developing operational AI systems. Unbeknown to Jake, his company’s owner, Ji-Hun Nae, created a human-machine interface that made him a cyborg. With that arrangement he became a potentially greater threat to the world than WMDs. When Ji died one of his senior scientists, Dr. Howard Park, took Ji’s place as the human counterpart of the cyborg and used the system to control the policies of the United States and the United Nations.

315 pages, Paperback

Published October 6, 2020

Reviews

[Charles van Becelaere · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rycus returns to form in this sf/political adventure. I'm not sure how he does it, but he makes his characters seem like people you would meet in the settings where they're placed.
The plot moves along smartly, and even the technical jargon is informed / educated enough to be believable - especially important when it's integral to the plot!
One of Mitch's better novels, in my humble opinion.
Give it a go!