The MoonBorn – The first Sci-fi novel I read

The MoonBorn by D F Lovett

Most of you already know, I am not a big fan of Science Fiction. I don’t understand it at all. I find envisioning the future, it’s technological predictions all too much to consume and imagine. And I am working in a field which can make it all happen. We are all on the Cloud now. It is ironical. But it is also the truth that I am s**t scared of it. I have tried and failed to understand Artificial Intelligence. Maybe that is why I am afraid of it. Just like Ishmael in The MoonBorn.

I told David that I would love to give his book a try after reading Patrick’s review of the same. It took me a little longer than I expected because of my constant travel and other personal commitments that I got engaged in. More of it sooner in another post. I also made sure to go through a Thug’s review of Moby Dick, just to see if I can get the references made in this novel. So let me start with this. You don’t need to know Moby Dick to understand this novel. You might get references if you did, but I don’t think it mattered much. At least to me it did not. This is the story of a person who was born on the moon. I am not going to get into the story much in my post, I would leave that to David and his introduction of his novel. Haven’t we already read about people trying to creating colonies in the Moon by 2030 or so? With the way we are relying on the technology aren’t we all part of the giant species where we might end up being ruled by those said technologies, if not already there. How would a person who hasn’t been to the Moon feel when he goes there for a trip as part of his work? What happens when he meets the first human who was born there. What is that Moonborn’s story? How does this affect our story teller from Earth?

I loved the phrase “Lunatic” and its new definition. Made me chuckle. That was clever 😉 The questions that Ishmael raises about the robots, the various Artificial Intelligence based machines, all those resonated with me and my doubts. I ask those questions myself every time I watch any movies which involves one of them. But it is also true that we are moving towards such a society where this could be a reality. I am scared of that. Recently I was watching a HotWheels based movie (I never knew something like that even was available on Netflix, until my nephew spotted them in the Kids section and made me watch two of them with him) wherein self-driving DORCs (cars which has too much of AI built in it, but also listens to the Villain who has the supreme control with him) try to take over the world and they coordinate and attack the HotWheels team and almost take them down. That was scary, I tell you. And it made me very very wary of Self-driving cars (I never liked that anyway. I love driving myself. Control freak? Maybe, but I prefer that rather than let a machine control me even in that small way) And my nephew agreed to it too. He was like ‘If those cars drive on its own, when will I get to drive? what is my work then?’. I told him that I hear him and that we will never get a self-driving car for us. 😀 I was reminded of a dialogue in The MoonBorn at that time. It said that we should never trust Artificial Intelligence ever. And I fully agree with it. We shouldn’t.

If you like fiction, if you like an interesting story that spans two universes, Earth and the Moon, if you do not like technology and wants to read something that will agree with your fears and make you feel that you aren’t alone, if you like reading novels which do not go beyond 250-300 pages, then you should give ‘The MoonBorn’ a try.