Appleseed

Clute, John. Appleseed. London: Orbit Books-Little, Brown, 2001. New York: Tor Books, 2002 (sic: the "2001" for the first US edn. cited on the copyright page is an error).

Important work of po-mo space opera that breaks down categories of human/machine, organic/inorganic—etc. The AI ship Tile Dance is described as mammalian, and he/she/it is a character in the story, as are the other "Made Minds," JC's formulation for AI machines. Cf. HAL in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (this section and under Drama) and the Minds of Iain M. Bank's fiction (see above). Appleseed is vigorously intertextual and invites comparison and contrast with works as varied as S. R. Delany's Stars in My Pocket to Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great (publ. 1590). (RDE, 11/01/02)