THE ASCENSION DIRECTIVE is a slice of psychological science fiction that anyone with a penchant for Black Mirror-esque dystopias will find compelling. Author Cal Lopez asks searching questions about the human condition—touching on points of free will against determinism, the coming ubiquity of AI, and the consequences of its spread for human relationships.
The story revolves around Natasha and Catalina, best friends in a world in which technology and AI is used for control. Natasha becomes a computer scientist, and she plays an important part in the creation of SAGÉ: AI that can be taught to love, and which apprehends her as its “mother.” The treatment, especially in the earlier chapters, is a little ham-handed. The contrast between the farmers of Meadowbrook (the rural community where Natasha and Catalina grew up) and the clinical, corporate manner of the technologists (whose ultra-efficient methods of practicing agriculture repulse the community’s members) feels a little too forced.
But when the novel gets into its stride, it is scathing in its treatment of the conflict between technological advancement and the precautionary principle. Among the dour imaginings of the harvesting of human intellects, there is room for a touch of well-judged humor—like when SAGÉ astonishes its audience by learning how to rap spontaneously.
After a certain point, the audience needs it. Lopez’s dystopia is too close to the bone, as the “integration” of “the chronically unemployable, welfare dependents, those whose neural patterns resist social integration. What some might call the useless class” into an AI hive mind, as it were, is all the more chilling because of the managerial language in which it is couched. Humanity has been here before, and the author’s point is that it may well be again in the near future.
There are a few spelling errors (“dam” for “damn,” for example), as well as the odd clumsy phrase (“Maria’s thin smile cut like a paper cut”)—which suggests a lack of vigorous line editing. It’s also true that the dialogue can occasionally feel a little forced, just an excuse for some exposition. However, in all other respects, THE ASCENSION DIRECTIVE is readable, timely, and quietly gripping.
Timely and scary in its dissection of one possible future with AI, Cal Lopez’s THE ASCENSION DIRECTIVE is a captivating piece of dystopian science fiction.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader