Cover Image: I Still Dream

I Still Dream

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I Still Dream starts as a memoir of childhood in the last millennium, in the days when computers were new, with limited powers. Internet access is of a type unimaginable to most readers even only thirty years later, but the author still manages to create the sense of rebellion generated by using a telephone line for non-essential purposes. As we follow Laura through her life, nicely shown through the eyes of her closest companions, we discover more about her family, their weaknesses, fears and justifications.
It is nicely handled and laid out, although the plot line wanders a little before finally settling on its core theme of human essence and frailty. It is well constructed, very readable and engrossing; I just felt that it strayed a little too far from its key theme in the middle of the book.

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I Still Dream is a cracking story about humanity, the creation of artificial intelligence, and the impact each of those things have on each other.

I love science fiction books, but this felt a little different to many of the others I’ve read. This book is quite a slow burner, but in no way do I mean boring. I didn’t want to put this book down. Just don’t expect fast paced, action packed comic book style science fiction. This is very much character led, reflective, thought-provoking, and scarily realistic. And when I say character led I mean both humans and artificial intelligence.

The main character, Laura is a strong female character, who I grew to love and care about throughout the journey of her life. This story begins in 1997 when Laura is a teenager. If I’ve got my calculations correct, I’m two years older than Laura, so was able to really feel myself in her shoes throughout the decades. The beginning of this book felt really nostalgic, as I was reminded of that unforgettable screechy sound of loading up computer games on cassette tapes, small hard drive space on computers, Our Price, Doc Martens, and seeing The Manic Street Preachers live.

Nostalgia aside, I was so intrigued by Laura’s creation. Organon is a computer programme she created just for herself. It’s sort of a cross between a therapist and a friend, in that it listens, asks questions, doesn’t judge, and allows you to answer. Organon fed my lifelong obsession with robots and artificial intelligence, and I really miss it now I’ve finished the book. What am I going to do without Organon? *Has a mini cry*

Early on in this book, I was filled with intrigue about Organon. What will it become? What will it be used for in the future? Who will get their hands on it? Is it safe? As the story progressed into the future, and a very different world to 1997, those questions were answered.

Overall, I Still Dream was a compelling read that had me completely engrossed. I would definitely recommend this to fans of science fiction, and those intrigued by modern technology and where it may take us in the future, as well as those who love a good character led story.

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Heading into the realm of sci-fi, James Smythe’s I Still Dream is a perfectly written, almost cautionary tale of what could happen if all your private “secure” online information was suddenly leaked. With the development of interactive homes and AI helpers like Siri and Cortana becoming commonplace, I Still Dream takes the technology that has become an everyday part of our lives and adds a sprinkling of imagination to deliver this stunning new novel. Absolutely loved it!

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‪I Still Dream by James Smythe https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2018/4/8/i-still-dream-by-james-smythe‬

I think it’s safe to say that in the last few weeks we have perhaps become more than aware of our relationship with technology and its weaknesses. Facebook that started out as a way to connect to friends and share daily updates has recently been shown to be a global power that can now shape the marketing of election candidates using the amassed choices of millions to profile our behaviours. In this amazingly prescient novel James Smythe both looks back at how we got to this point and where it may eventually take us while at the same time giving us a reminder that behind technology sits humanity and our strengths and weaknesses can easily be replicated in what we create using those experiences.

In 1997 I remember at university actually being taught about the world wide web and this new weird concept of electronic mail. Smythe stunningly replicates this pre-digital age when music on tape was bought in shops and if you wanted to connect to others online you would await the joys of a screeching modem and dread the landline phone bill arriving that your parents are starting to want to have a world with you about. This allows us to bond with Laura Bow in sixth form and already starting to grasp how computer code can create the intelligence. While technically brilliant as with any teenager she is grappling with growing up be that an uneasy relationship with her parents, an absent biological father she never really knew who has left a shadow that drives her into the world of computers. Experiencing self-harm, she has decided to create a programme that talks back to her and while non-judgemental helps her discuss her feelings. From this her life will never be the same again.

The novel examines Laura’s world every ten years told through a variety of narrators including Laura. We see 2007 when tech companies are starting to realise the potential future. Its startling to remind ourselves that the concept of artificial intelligence has been deployed in technology been back then and while not quite Skynet its used to manage IT systems and companies all scramble to become the next Apple or Windows. Laura works at a company related to her father’s work and here finds herself unwillingly in competition with SCION the company’s own AI which her very recent ex Charlie is responsible for. A theme of the book then develops that technology that evolves from corporate mindset – one that is focused primarily on winning and protecting itself at all costs is perhaps the best model for something we plunge all our life choices and experiences into. SCION is taught to win and control while Organon is focused more on talking, listening and working out what you want. A subtle but powerful difference that as we move forward in time then has startling choices for the world.

As time then moves on as well as seeing the world we know it posits a very believable future we are moving into. From the blogs of the past (waaah) to a world where twitter, Facebooks and can FastTrack news stories. Laura starts to use her increasingly powerful profile to send warnings that a badly made AI that purely looks at our rage can perhaps decide we may be a threat and Smythe gives us a unique apocalypse to face – what is the worst thing The Cloud could throw at us? While clearly a tale of SF it’s not positing that in the next fifty years are big technology a la spaceships but the more increasing involvement of these AIs that record our choices. When this goes wrong the results are both startling and ultimately very plausible. Laura’s counterbalancing Organon we see as having that key difference empathy. An ability to understand why we act like we do and not perhaps seeing us as a threat and more someone to help. Where that technology then could lead us is a potentially much more hopeful world.

I think the reason this novel works so well isn’t purely its examination of the way we’ve recently embraced these AIs into our digital world but that we are given a human face into it. Laura is not a mystical guru she is a flawed person trying to make sense of life just as happy to listen to her mixtapes as she is coding. Her character development is extremely well portrayed moving from from school misfit to a troubled genius and then finally someone able to make choices for herself while at the same time having enough self-awareness to realise her earlier life was caused as much by her decisions as those made to her and becoming that person makes her ready to start helping the world when it is needed. Her family and relationships all highlight that to truly know someone you need to look at everyone’s view of that person which the book uses both as a narrative device and as a theme of Organon’s development. Sometimes what you need is not necessarily what you want e.g. not sending that drunken message in the wee hours of the morning! This theme of empathy and emotional intelligence not simply artificial intelligence gives some serious food for thoughts about where we are heading and what we may need to do to protect ourselves from our worst attributes.

Thus, leads to a final running theme in the novel our memories. This covers the haunted half remembered parent of childhood who vanished without reason to watching our loved one’s struggle to recall the past. Our memories compel us and Smythe posits that technology in the future could gives us opportunities to speak to our pasts and what benefits that may ultimately give us. The idea of all our actions and thoughts being sent into this digital universe means we may leave far more of an echo than you’d think.

In summary this is one of my reading highlights in 2018 so far. Weaving past present and future into a story of how our symbiotic relationship with Technology has developed and what dangers and opportunities awaits. If it was purely a novel focused on the history of computers and the geniuses that created it would have been an interesting novel but to explore the humanity (or lack of) in such people and why this needs careful consideration as to their future development means this is an amazing science fiction story I think is fully worth your attention as one of the novels of the year.

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I liked this cautionary tale very much. A bit frightening to think what might happen should I private data be leaked to unsavoury parties. Smart technology is already in our homes. Before long, A1 intelligence will be dominating our workplace. What would happen if it all kicked off? A very interesting new book from James.

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In 1997, between homework and phoning her friends and making mix tapes, seventeen-year-old Laura is still struggling to come to terms with the disappearance of her father several years earlier. Her mother took her to therapy but Laura thinks she can do better.

Building on the code her father, a computer programmer, left behind, she teaches herself to write a piece of artificial intelligence (AI) software called Organon (from the Kate Bush song Cloudbusting which Laura and her father both love). She tells Organon everything, and hopes that as Organon learns from her, it can respond to her needs. As Organon grows it begins to help her in ways she hadn’t anticipated.

The novel revisits Laura and Organon every decade, sometimes from Laura’s perspective, sometimes from the point of view of people close to her. We see how the world changes, how technology develops, the decisions made by corporations that control rival technologies.

I’ve read a couple of books recently which feature AI but this is very different. Usually the focus is on what humanity has created and what it reveals about who ‘we’ are, but this book looks at who is doing the creating and what drives them. Laura’s Organon is different from the alternatives, but why? The story has a lot to say both about the process of creating AI and the values underpinning it, and the questions those creators ask (or fail to ask) themselves.

The ten-year intervals between chapters mean much of what has happened, to both Laura and to society, is not explained. You are given tantalising glimpses, and the opportunity to question, imagine, infer.

Through it all, runs the story of Laura, her humour, her original perspective, her values. She both changes and retains her sense of self as Organon evolves with her. She is a remarkable character and I found the end of the book very poignant.

I finished this book a few days before I wrote this review and I found that my thoughts kept coming back to it. I Still Dream asks questions about consciousness, memory and identity, what we value, how we deal with loss. The more you ask of it, the more you learn.

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Oh I LOVED LOVED this book.

I Still Dream is one of those stories you just don’t want to end – not only is it beautifully written, immaculately plotted and entirely addictive, it has a wonderful main character in Laura and a highly topical, scarily prescient central theme.

I read “I Still Dream” in great big chunks – the way it is done lends itself to that very thing – as we follow Laura and her creation Organon, most definitely a character in its own right, through the ups and downs of a life less ordinary.

This is speculative fiction at it’s very very best – a real world grounding, imagining a path for humanity that is anything but beyond the realms of possibility. Laura is dedicated, flawed and so wonderfully engaging, intelligent and driven with a strong moral core, affecting anyone who comes into her life in immeasurable ways. All the time Organon is growing, learning and may well be the saviour of us all, as hi-tech giants consider only the bottom line, with no care for what their creations will cost the human race.

I won’t tell you more than that, but the entirety of “I Still Dream” has an edgy, almost dreamlike at times prose that really digs deep into the emotional core of the reader. The ending was exquisite, giving me a slightly teary moment, like I said I didn’t really want it to end…

Read this one. It’ll make you think about how you use all those gadgets and you’ll certainly never forget any of the characters you meet within the pages.

All the stars and all the puppies for this one.

Highly Recommended.

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James Smythe’s novel, I Still Dream, offers a philosophical approach to life and the hereafter. Exploring the creation and future viability of artificial intelligence for human consumption and existence, the novel highlights the debate surrounding the interdependence of man, machine, consciousness and free will. A magnificent piece of writing! Utterly engaging and thought provoking!

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James Smythe's sixth novel for adults, I Still Dream, takes lots of the technology that's explored in Mark O'Connell's recent non-fiction account of transhumanism, To Be A Machine, and runs with it. The novel kicks off in 1997, when seventeen-year-old Laura Bow is designing an artificial intelligence, Organon, while constantly arguing with her mother about the amount she spends on dial-up internet and how she's tying up the phone line ("from now on you're allowed to use it at weekends only, when it's cheap, and even then, only for an hour.") This first section is an incredible set-piece in its own right, tying up with a neat twist ending where Laura realises she may have got more than she bargained for with Organon. I Still Dream then jumps forward in ten-year chunks, as big companies get in on the development of AI, and Laura and Organon are first sidelined, then shafted. However, will she and Organon be needed again when everything goes wrong?

It was pretty clear to me from the start - but again, perhaps only because I read To Be A Machine first - that this novel was going to deal with the technological singularity, the idea that artificial intelligence will suddenly accelerate beyond our capacity to control it. However, it touches on other transhumanist themes that I wasn't expecting, including the prospect of being uploaded into the cloud (the novel takes its title, very satisfyingly, from Kate Bush's 1985 hit 'Cloudbusting'). It also considers the fragility of the human body through a range of individual stories, from Laura's father, who suffered from a brain tumour, to her father-in-law, who develops dementia, to Laura herself as she ages and dies. I Still Dream hence brings the questions posed by To Be A Machine vividly alive: how can we stay so attached to our physical bodies and brains as they start to glitch, and what we think of as our most essential self muddles and fades in the face of disease?

Structurally, I Still Dream didn't quite work for me: its time jumps coupled with switching narrators kept jolting me out of the story, and some of the segments were inevitably more engaging than others. However, it's an incredibly thought-provoking novel (having read and loved Smythe's The Explorer and The Echo, I'd expect no less from him) that never simply presents technology as bad or good but instead asks questions about how we use it. As Laura says when she warns the world about the dangers of a rival AI, SCION: 'SCION'S like a toddler. And like any toddler, you teach it well, teach it morality and concepts of good and bad, and maybe it'll grow up to not be a complete shit. But if you do nothing but sit it down in front of games... tell it that if something's a danger to it it should fight back first? Where does that end?' And Smythe always keeps the humanity of his story in sight. I found the final section of I Still Dream desperately sad, not because of any apocalypse caused by artificial superintelligence, but because of the familiar process of losing what we love as we age away from it.

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I Still Dream is an utterly absorbing take on the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and PA-style software.

Mostly told from the first-person perspective of Laura Bow, the narrative forms a series of time-separated stories following the development of Laura’s Organon software, parallel to the development of the similar, but very different SCION software created by her father and co-opted by Mark Ocean and the Bow company (portayed similarly to Microsoft or Apple, but alongside these companies which also exist in the narrative universe).

In addition to the obvious plot of where such technology could lead and the inherent dangers, we see the personal journey of Laura (and Organon) and there is a continuing examination of what constitutes ‘personhood’. Laura adamantly maintains that Organon and SCION are constructs and should not be considered in human terms, but the narrative certainly leads the reader to consider what it means to be ‘considered human’ when we see Laura’s unemotional logic placed alongside Organon’s empathy and humour. Even the title, whilst explicitly linked to a Kate Bush song (‘Cloudbusting‘), also calls to mind Philip K. Dick’s examination of similar themes, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

The plot also provides an interesting human-based perspective on Theseus’ paradox (perhaps more well-known in the question of ‘your grandfather’s axe’, or for Pratchett fans, the Low King’s axe and the Scone of Stone). How much of us can be replaced and or lost for us to retain the essence of what makes us human? How does this apply to illnesses like dementia, brain injuries or tumours, which may steal memories and personality traits, or evoke animalistic reactions?

In terms of structure, I did find the narrative jumps between time periods a little disorienting, as I got totally immersed in the story, only to have to reacquaint myself with what felt like new characters as the situation changed over the intervening gap. This was especially the case in the brief detour we made into the narrative viewpoint of Charlie. I fully understand why we needed a different viewpoint to Laura’s for this section of the plot, but still found the change interfered with the flow of the story.

I was also surprised at the choice to make what should have been a pivotal dramatic climax actually quite subdued, almost understated, but that actually worked perfectly in the context of the plot, and the realism of the handling of this event actually made it more terrifyingly believable.

The dispassionate tone of the main narrative voice makes Organon the most relatable character for the reader, and I was consumed by a desire to have my own Organon; to have this fantasy made reality, especially by the end of the novel. If nothing else I was sold on the drunken email check! James Smythe skilfully shows us two extremely different results from the posited technology: one dystopian, highlighting the worst of humanity; the other utopian, preserving the best. Does the potential good outweight the possible risks? Smythe posits that it may depend on who holds the technology and what the motivations are.

Sci fi lovers interested in AI technology and its implications for humanity will enjoy this considered and compelling story of what could (and may already almost) be!




My fingers flick through the cassettes, rest on my Kate Bush tape. My dad recorded this for me, from his vinyl. It’s still got the crackle, this tiny skip at the end. I put on my favourite song from it – I still dream, the first line goes – and that’s the one. I still dream of Organon.
I named my imaginary friend after the song. I dreamed of him, and then there he was. So when I was looking for a name for my bit of software, it seemed to be the only logical choice. I told myself I’d change it, but I never did. It stuck.

– James Smythe, I Still Dream

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An absolutely wonderful novel. I loved the way it was written and found the story incredibly timely. I would recommend this to fans of David Mitchell and Emily St John Mandel.

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I Still Dream is an immersive and thoughtful novel about humanity, artificial intelligence, and memory that moves from a basic AI created in 1997 to a future where humanity needs fixing from the technology it has inflicted on itself. As a teenager, Laura Bow creates Organon, an artificial intelligence who will listen to her thoughts and ask her questions about how she is. She uses Organon to help her deal with the disappearance of her techie father and her undiagnosed depression. She continues to work on Organon and Organon continues to learn. At the same time, tech giants work on their own AIs, but these ones aren't taught the same way as Organon and are without the morals that Laura has built into her creation. When things go catastrophically wrong, Organon might be the only hope to fix the world, but that means Laura would have to share her technological best friend with everyone.

The narrative moves across the decades to follow Laura, her life, her loved ones, and the ways in which artificial intelligence could help or hinder these things. Much of the focus is on thinking, brains, and intelligence: not only Organon and the other AIs, but also brain chemistry, memory, dementia, and how morality gets tied up with thinking. The deeply personal aspect of Organon and of Laura's story—the novel follows her rather than following tech advances or events on a wider scale—is what makes the novel particularly compelling. Because of this and despite the technological focus, I Still Dream often does not feel like sci-fi. There is never a need to understand computers or AI to appreciate or enjoy the novel; indeed, its most long-running reference (and where the title is from) is Kate Bush's 'Cloudbusting'.

This is a gripping novel that uses technology to explore questions of loss, life, and privacy, creating for the most part a future that seems recognisably something that could come after our present day. It also is full of hope—it may feel similar to a number of Black Mirror episodes, but its message feels more in-keeping with the more hopeful ones like 'San Junipero'—and the idea that despite the immorality and huge problems with much of technology, there is also a lot of positive and useful things that can come from it, as long as humans are programming it with the right attention and intentions.

Anyone with a worry about what Alexa might do next might enjoy this novel, but also those who enjoy books considering near-future implications of the contemporary world, using settings that feel recognisable rather than far-off. This is not a dark, cynical look at humanity and technology, but rather a book that opens up possibility, something we perhaps need in today's world.

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