‘Golden Fleece’ by Robert J. Sawyer — a sci-fi novel to think about

The lines from the short story by Jack London could well be put in the epigraph of Robert James Sawyer’s debut novel, Golden Fleece.

The plot of the novel is evolving on the Argo — a giant starship built and outfitted by the combined efforts of mankind. The Argonauts are ten thousand men, the best of the best, a research crew bound for Colchis (where else!), a planet orbiting Eta Cephei. Forty-seven light-years, four years of subjective time one way, on the ship. On Earth — more than a century.

The ship’s mind is Jason. The quantum computer, the latest generation of artificial intelligence, the all-seeing, caring eye. In fact, the author made quite an unexpected move by making Jason the main narrator in the novel. Therefore, we know from the beginning (no, this is not a spoiler, as it has happened in the book’s first pages) that Jason killed one of the crew members, the astrophysicist because she somehow obtained some forbidden knowledge. But what terrible truth kills?

All right, boys and girls. Golden Fleece is an excellent piece of the intellectual science fiction. In the relatively short novel (which separately can be considered an achievement while many authors tend to scribble 700+ paged tomes as if they were paid for the gross weight of the finished book), Sawyer managed to pack a whole bunch of different ideas and concepts. It has all the good stuff. The decoding of a message from an alien civilization. Building an artificial neural network, an almost perfect copy of the human brain (with a memory volume non less than one petabyte). And the very detailed and popular description of the Bussard ramjet — not the first but definitely best that I have seen in a science-fiction novel.

There is no doubt that Sawyer was heavily inspired by Kubrick and Clarke’s 2001: Space Odyssey. While managing the long space expedition, the main ship computer suddenly seems to lose its quantum mind. Despite a crew comparable to the population of a small city, this mad AI has only one antagonist — the second main character, Aaron Rossman, who will (or he thinks that he will) eventually solve the novel’s main problem.

However, Sawyer’s take on the theme turns us to another dimension compared to the 2001: Space Odyssey. Although the Golden Fleece, at first glance, appears to be an ordinary book AI takeover, in fact (and the author is leading the reader to this from the very beginning), the main idea of the book is totally different: it’s about a fundamental misunderstanding between the AI and the human mind.

Here is a minor spoiler (no significant disclosures, don’t worry): as for the AI, there were absolutely no plans of rebellion. Moreover, it acted exceptionally well-intentioned and strictly under its instructions. But it didn’t consider that people are neither the software products nor the self-organizing machine systems. And as a computer, he obviously lacked the intuitive feeling for the moral norms, so he wasn’t really aware of the road paved with good intentions and where it led.

Another thing similar to 2001: Space Odyssey is the novel’s slow, almost relaxed tempo. Except for a few episodes, the action unfolds almost exclusively in the mind and memory of the main characters. No one is rushing around on the decks of a giant ship, fiercely shooting energy pulses from blaster trying to fight off some crazy cyber guards. So don’t let the first few pages mislead you — it’s not yet another action-packed space opera. And that’s wonderful.

So if you want to stretch your intellectual muscle and see if the Argo eventually makes it to distant Colchis, read Robert Sawyer’s Golden Fleece.