“Night Sky Mine”

Melissa Scott

I really enjoyed this one! I think it counts as cyberpunk, but the digital world stuff was a really neat take on evolutionary programming. I’m actually over here wondering how much this was an inspiration for Code Lyoko, the visuals I was imagining felt very similar.

The setting is basically that, at some point, software engineers went “screw it, we’ll just evolve software to do what we want instead of trying to write it ourselves.”1 Skip forward a mystery amount of time, and they’ve accidentally created entire ecosystems – pieces of software acting like flora and fauna in a networked environment, preying on one another and, occasionally, going all cancerous and crashing the entire substrate running it all.2

The book takes place a long time after that; there’s entire careers in software breeding now, as well as people who go hunting in the wild parts of the net, looking for useful programs.

My only negative I’ve got is that the pacing feels off; the ebook came in at something like 440 pages, and the denouement hit on, like, page 430. It felt rushed, and like there was closure missing for the characters and the story itself. I suppose that means I need to go see if there’s a sequel.

I also spent the entire book reading the title with the word ‘mine’ meaning ’belonging to me,’ despite the fact that the asteroid-mining megacorporation in the background is named Night Sky Mine Co., but that’s more on me than the book.

Anyhow, I quite enjoyed the read – check it out!3

If this feels familiar, you are correct, that’s what all the modern AI stuff is. ↩

This goes poorly for people relying on other software running on that substrate – for example, navigation and life support systems for faster-than-light starships. ↩

This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩