View source for "Fool's Errand"

'''Zettel, Sarah. "Fool's Errand."''' ''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'', May 1993. ''A Woman's Liberation: A Choice of Futures by and About Women''. New York City: Warner Books, 2001. For other anthologies, see The Internet Speculative Fiction Database, as of March 2024, here.[https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?47304]


Mentioned by Pawel Frelik in his review of ''A Woman's Liberation'' as "a cyberpunkish incursion into the machinic [sic] consciousness" (p. 10).[https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/sfra/23/]


Expanded into the novel, ''Fool's War''.[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fools-War-Sarah-Zettel/dp/0446602930]


From a post by Spoon under reviews at the Amazon site for the novel:
<blockquote>
Dobbs is a Fool, a jester, typically contracted to starship crews for long voyages, her job being to help maintain crew sanity during the trip. She has contracted to a data packet ship for two years as the ship makes a data run from Neptune to a far colony. While at the colony, they download some software updates for a local hospital, which is where the fun begins.

Turns out that Dobbs is also a troubleshooter for the Fool's Guild, watching out for any sentient AIs that may pop up, and getting the AI into a safe environment where it can't mess up the local computer systems, ships, or ecologies. A new AI has formed at the colony, maybe because of what the ship downloaded, and Dobbs has to make a first contact and isolate the AI.[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fools-War-Sarah-Zettel/dp/0446602930]
</blockquote>



RDE, finishing, 3Mar24
[[Category: Fiction]]