I Still Dream by James Smythe

While still a teenager at school, Laura Bow develops a computer program, called Organon, to share her secrets with, vent her frustrations at, and generally play the role of best friend. She maybe doesn't realise its full potential at this point but it's her passport to an internship with a major computer development company in the US. As Laura's skills improve, so does Organon, but both the company she works for and its competitors are developing other artificial intelligences, without the moral safe-guards Laura believes are an intrinsic part of her creation.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. From the publisher's blurb, I hadn't really expected it to appeal to me at all, let alone the amount it did. A few pages in and I was finding it compelling reading - I wanted to discover where Laura's life would take her, and how Organon would develop.


It was the writing style that continued to hold me as it isn't really a plot driven story - more a character study of Laura and her artificial friend, as their lives entwine over the years - and as the end approached I found myself a little disappointed that something more dramatic hadn't occurred.

There are a lot of similarities to be made with other stories of attempts to create artificial intelligences, or of the interaction between humans and computers, so often there's a feeling of this being nothing new (partly why I've rated it 4 stars rather than 5). It is very readable though, and rest assured, Organon is a nice AI, not evil like 2001's HAL.



Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Harper Collins (The Borough Press)
Genre - Adult fiction, sci-fi