Queen of Angels
In a world of wonders, wealth, and "perfect" mental health, a famous poet commits gruesome murder. Why? That crime, that question, leads a policewoman to a jungle of torture and forgotten gods; a writer to the bohemian shadows of a vast city; and a scientist directly into the mind -- the nightmare soul -- of the psychopath himself.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
4people
2012–2024years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If not Neuromancer (although I feel differently) then Queen of Angels (Greg Bear). It's the most fascinating take on AI I've ever read - the entanglement with the themes of justice and punishment is thought-provoking.
The Turing Option (Harry Harrison, Marvin Minsky). I can't stress strongly enough, do not read this book. It's terrible. But it does exist.
- For those interested in considering alternatives, I recommend giving the sci-fi book "Queen of Angels" by Greg Bear a read. [1]
That novel follows a police detective trying to solve a crime. A major source of tension is that all of the quasi-public data (public cameras, citizen movements, credit card use) is in the hands of a separate institution called Citizen Oversight. If I remember rightly, it was a separate, quasi-governmental (or non-governmental) body, broken down by region and with separately elected commissioners.
In the novel, the main focus is the relationship with the police, which was very tense; Citizen Oversight was very stingy with data. But you could easily imagine it having jurisdiction over corporate behavior around individual data. And having an active regulator whose job it is to enforce broad principles would have advantages over detailed rule-making fixed in laws. Especially so if they were part of a legally independent body.
It was definitely interesting to think about. And given that it came out in 1990, surprisingly prescient on the topic of data and privacy.
- The next few decades will be a time of progress & disparity. No doubt that technology and innovation will flourish, but access to that technology and its benefits will not be well distributed.
Greg Bear's "Queen of Angels" (and "Slant") set up a great example of this world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Angels_(novel)
- It's good to see here that one part of the government is calling another part to account. But I have to think that's unusual, and I'd love to see a better balance of responsibilities here.
In Greg Bear's novel "Queen of Angels", set in 2047, their solution to the conflicting needs of privacy and crime prevention was a separate organization called "Citizen Oversight". All the digital-trail data (cameras, financial records, etc) flowed into Citizen Oversight. If law enforcement wanted data, they had to ask for it and demonstrate need on a case-by-case basis. In that world it wasn't a perfect solution; if I recall rightly, part of the novel is driven by Citizen Oversight's swing from a too-loose era to a very stingy one. But I liked the idea of there being specific, named people responsible for protecting privacy.
- I'm reminded of the first time I read novels like A Clockwork Orange, or Greg Bear's Queen of Angels, where the fictional world's slang is used, but not explained.
