Review Tour + #Giveaway: Little Computer People by Galen Surlak-Ramsey @GoddessFish

Little Computer People

by Galen Surlak-Ramsey

GENRE:  SciFi

BLURB:

When Gabe created the world’s first sentient program, Pi, he thought things couldn’t get better.

Now he’s pretty sure things couldn’t get worse.

After a colossal error on Gabe’s part, Pi turns into a binary monster along the lines of HAL, GLaDOS, and SHODAN. As she goes on the rampage, the only thing rendering her mostly harmless is the fact that she doesn’t fully understand the physical world...yet.

But she’s learning.

And unless Gabe quickly finds a way to rein her in or shut her down, the next time Pi starts a fire, it won’t just be his empty house that goes up in flames.

If you’re a fan of Douglas Adams, Christopher Moore, or Terry Pratchet, then this is a novel for you.

Excerpt:

The first program I ever wrote was called Pussy Cat Divides. It was six lines of Basic goodness I wrote on my Apple IIe that allowed the user to input two numbers and the computer would then divide them, spit out the answer, and say, “How do you like that, Pussy Cat?” Yes, it was a glorified calculator, but since I was five, I was so in awe at what I had done I might as well have parted the Red Sea. From there I went on to program anything and everything I could dream up. Text adventures. Submarine games. Flight sims. You name it. I made it. And I managed to squeeze all of those programming gems in between elementary school, soccer practice, and developing a budding, but dangerous, understanding of chemistry thanks to my PhD-wielding father.

One sunny, summer afternoon, the garage caught fire. As I stood there watching the firemen pour untold gallons of water on the smoldering remains of our house, I had an epiphany. I realized that while I could easily test the stickiness of homemade napalm on the surfaces of garage ceilings, I could not, whatsoever, control the subsequent fire. And that wouldn’t have been too horrible if I could’ve at least erased the results of that minor oversight and kept my little sister, Courtney, quiet. But alas, that too was beyond my powers (and I’ll be damned if the fire marshal wasn’t a better investigator than I’d anticipated). So I had to admit that I didn’t actually own the universe in which I lived. I couldn’t shape its laws or make it conform to my will. I couldn’t add snippets of code to ensure things went my way, or hit that wonderful backspace key to correct a typo, stray pointer, or bug-ridden function call.

But I could do all of that with a computer. Anything I programmed had to obey me, had to follow the laws I set forth. I could make a world where gravity was non-existent and watch virtual objects float about. Or if I felt malicious, I could design a virus that went on its merry way and multiplied like a dozen cocaine-snorting, Viagra-popping rabbits. And if I could do all of that, I could create Life, the Universe, and Everything. All I needed to do was convince my parents not to kill me outright so I could hammer at the keyboard until my fingers bled.

My Review:

Gabe Erikson likes to think of himself as a God to be a creator and has created the world’s first AI, a computer program representing a girl he calls Pi and he thinks of her as his daughter. But like all children Pi misbehaves and rebels. She starts to think of Gabe as a bad program and wants to get rid of him so she starts search the internet for him and ways of getting rid of him.

During her search she has contracted a worm, malware which Gabe deletes. When Pi discovers what he has done she gets very upset with Gabe telling him that he deleted the love of her life and that he was going to pay. Gabe is losing control of Pi very quickly he decides that the best thing to do may be to sell Pi but in his heart he knows that is the wrong thing to do not matter how much she acts up.

It doesn’t take Gabe long to realize his mistake in selling Pi and tries to come up with a plan to get her back. Gabe enlists the help of his best friend Jim by promising him a date with his sister Courtney to help him rescue his daughter Pi and bring her home without going to jail that is.

Little Computer People opens up your eyes to a whole new world of computer programs. On one hand it would be so cool to have a computer program that could think, learn and feel for its self. But on the other hand it could be very dangerous with all the things that it could do and would have access to. That would be one very smart computer. I know that a computer only knows what a human puts into it but if you think about it that is the intelligent of many as one and that sounds very dangerous.

I loved the world building in Little Computer People. I loved the characters like Pi, Gabe, Jim, Courtney and Kimiko. Little Computer People is a great little read filled with lots of twist and turns that will keep you hanging on until the end.

I love computers so when I read the summary for Little Computer People I just had to read and I am so glad I did. If you are into computers and even if you are not then I still think you should give Little Computer People a try, why? Well because it is a great little story that will keep you entertained from beginning to end. 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

When not writing, Galen Surlak-Ramsey has been known to throw himself out of an airplane, teach others how to throw themselves out of an airplane, take pictures of the deep space, and wrangle his four children somewhere in Southwest Florida.

He also manages to pay the bills as a chaplain for a local hospice.

Drop by his website https://galensurlak.com/ to see what other books he has out, what’s coming soon, check out the newsletter (well, sign up for the newsletter and get access to awesome goodies, contests, exclusive content, etc.)

Buy Link:

Amazon

Giveaway:

$10 Amazon/BN GC

a Rafflecopter giveaway