Book Review: ab initio by Jacob Terracina, as part of SPSFC-5


4.5/5 stars. This novel, set in the near future, about a small startup company that is working to develop a sentient machine learning ‘brain,’ is the debut novel from Terracina, a Silicone Valley tech employee. I am certain that some of this story is about his own experiences, but there is so much more. This novel is about relationships, mental and cognitive illnesses, how age affects the human body, and what the consequences of developing a true A.I. brain might mean for humanity.

 I read this story as part of the Fifth Annual Self-Published Science Fiction Contest (SPSFC-5) that was originally started by Hugh Howey as the sci-fi equivalent to Mark Lawrence’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) competition. It is one of the best hard sci-fi novels that I have read in some time and is similar in some ways to the writing of Greg Bear, but with a decidedly modern flourish. Terracina’s writing skill is well-developed, especially for someone writing their debut novel.

This story contains two distinct timelines, one about the people/company working on development of the new machine learning model, using evolutionary biology as their primary target path to A.I. sentience; and the other about a court case involving the company and their proprietary hardware & software models. The back and forth of the two timelines was at first a bit hard to enjoy, but after about the 10% mark, I started to enjoy both timelines and looked forward to returning to each one. The company timeline counts down from three years before the court case to eight months prior, as we follow the process that led to court. A unique storytelling technique that I readily enjoyed by the end.

I highly recommend checking out ab initio, especially if you enjoy sci-fi and are interested in the consequences of continued A.I. development! I also look forward to more novels from Jacob Terracina.

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