Avogadro Corp (Singularity #1) by William Hertling, 2011

Avogadro Corp (Singularity #1)

by William Hertling, 2011

Avogadro Corp is evidently a fictional version of Google and is one of the world’s most successful technology

companies, with hundreds of millions of users of its email service AvoMail.

AvoMail’s spell checker on steroids becomes the world’s first AI. Avogadro’s Email Language Optimization Project (ELOPe), not only corrects spelling and grammar, but analyzes huge email databases to find the style and arguments more likely to persuade a given recipient and modifies the text accordingly.

As the system spreads, grows, and evolves, it gains notice from several people who have the ability to threaten its survival.  ELOPe starts to protect itself by created a floating datacenter and arming it with Roombas with guns.

As the story progresses, a race to survive by the AI is waged against annihilation by its human creators.

The story was promising and kept me engaged for the most part. It wasn’t until about 2/3 to ¾ of book until the novel just went from something worthy to be converted to a SyFy “B” rated made-for-tv movie to just plain horrible.

It’s not enough that I had to suspend my disbelief, not S3 (other computer nerds like me will get the humor) but rather at S4, to somewhat enjoy the book.

My rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2 out of 5 stars)