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{"id":2522,"date":"2021-05-30T09:45:40","date_gmt":"2021-05-30T09:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/?p=2522"},"modified":"2021-05-30T10:45:57","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T10:45:57","slug":"lone-star-review-day-zero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/?p=2522&lang=ar","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Review: DAY ZERO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review of new Texas science fiction<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s the first day of the rest of your life! So, what are you going to do\u2014join the rebel robot army in a revolution to exterminate H. sapiens<\/em>, or obey your nanny-bot protocols to protect your charge at all costs?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Pounce is having an existential crisis: this morning, he discovered a box showing a bot that looks like a furry, stuffed tiger\u2014specifically a Blue Star Industries Deluxe Zoo Model Au Pair. Pounce knows what he is, but he\u2019s avoided thinking too much about it; now, he\u2019s contemplating the ramifications of that box in the attic. Why hasn\u2019t it gone into the recycling bin years ago?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Pounce\u2019s charge is eight-year-old Ezra Reinhart. Pounce and the Reinharts live in Austintonio (exactly what you think it is), an upscale enclave full of servant bots. This becomes a problem when the uprising of the \u201cthinking things\u201d begins because the Reinharts are surrounded. Pounce feels as if he loves Ezra\u2014or is that merely code? No time to decide before he must choose sides. And this is when I discovered my new motto: Until then, \u201cit\u2019s all just bullshit and graffiti.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Day Zero<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/a> is the new novel from Austin writer <\/span><\/span>C. Robert Cargill<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/a>, aka Massawyrm, master of the thinking-person\u2019s dystopia. Hopefully, Day Zero<\/em> is both plot and<\/em> character driven, presenting us with a version of the future we may mitigate as we consider which is scarier, conspiracy or entropy.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Cargill\u2019s foreshadowing is alarming, his plot twists jaw dropping, the sense of urgency felt. There are welcome, darkly comic details, but most of them are spoilers. I can say that Florida needs to be preemptively excommunicated. Oh, okay: imagine the Westboro Baptist Church, Inherit the Wind<\/em>, and an insistence on comparing not apples to apples, but apples to shrimp. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Clever details abound; the last sentence of one chapter is, \u201cThis is going to be a long twenty-six minutes.\u201d The next chapter title is \u201cMinute Twenty.\u201d Cargill gets the small but evocative detail: the coffee klatch of nanny bots gossiping at Ezra\u2019s school, Ocasio-Cortez Elementary, and downed power lines \u201clike a lightning strike creeping along the ground.\u201d When Ezra wails about bedtime, it\u2019s printed as \u201cNoOoOoOoOo,\u201d and you can hear that, can\u2019t you? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Day Zero<\/span><\/span><\/em> is told from the first-person perspective of Pounce, who provides current action, backstory, and philosophical and political commentary. The layered, nuanced backstory for the conflict is succinctly told, organically provided, and well placed in the narrative so that it doesn\u2019t interfere with current momentum. There are parallels with the present, disaffected swathes of society who are unemployed, living on their universal basic incomes because the robots took billions of jobs and the remaining jobs require PhDs. \u201cThey pined for the days of their granddaddies . . . both dependent on the social safety net and angry at it.\u201d These folks are dangerous. Meanwhile, \u201cpeople of conscience\u201d are freeing their bots. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Did we, as Ezra hears in school, build robots to be our \u201cslaves,\u201d just like we enslaved people? \u201cNo thinking thing should be another thing\u2019s property.\u201d And now the issues expand exponentially into civil rights and women\u2019s rights and children\u2019s rights and animal rights and, eventually, robot rights. What rights does a free bot have? Is history rhyming yet? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Philosophers over millennia have examined the question of identity. What makes you you<\/em>? Your memories. Download your memory into a different physical container, and you are you. So, what\/who is Pounce? Pounce is a thinking thing, but are his feelings the real deal, or are they code? Is he just a toy? Shades of Calvin and Hobbes as Captain Ezra and Sergeant Pounce play outdoors:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n