Fool’s Experiment

Lerner, Edward M. Fool’s Experiment. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2008.

From Lerner's page on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America site, on occasion of the mass-market re-release of this 2008 cyber-thriller:

Something far nastier than any virus, worm, or Trojan horse program is evolving in laboratory confinement. When an artificial life-form escapes onto the Internet, no computer is safe.

As the world’s technological infrastructure is plunged into chaos, with planes colliding in mid-air and floodgates literally opening, computer scientist Doug Carey realizes that unconventional measures may be civilization’s last hope.

And that any artificial life-form learns very fast…[1]

Reviewed by Larisa Mikhaylova, SFRA Review #290 (Fall 2009): pp. 17-18, who asserts concerning a similar blurb on the original publication, "In fact, only the last part of that blurb is true to the plot. Because it IS actually the virus which turns people comatose, mad and dead — a viciously insistent one, called Frankenfools and aimed at stopping genetic experiments" (p. 17).

Mikhaylova mentions prosthetics as an important element of this novel and has a long and intriguing section on the title and a major theme or two in SF both classic and recent.

Professor AJ Rosenberg is head of an AL — Artificial Life — Lab.

Charles Darwin wrote, “I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.” Victor Frankenstein’s one[2] was of this kind. AJ Rosenberg’s with artificial life forms is another. Here we witness the growth of self-awareness motivating the behavior of an information-gathering and maze-solving program (AL) which is pushed to choose the way of predation on fellow programs. [...] And again, as Shelley’s classic novel, Lerner’s Entity decides to flush out the mysterious Power (Adversary) which chose such rules of life for it by violating the most protected nodes — electric power grid, military command centers. Gradually it turns into a completely vicious monster. The first half of the book shows the rise of the hero to vanquish it in virtual space of the net — NIT specialist Doug Carey who goes there with a horde of specially designed viruses — phages ([...] viruses [...] are used against the AL creature) managing to isolate it all its tentacles notwithstanding [...] and shred into pieces. These scenes in virtuality in chapter 44 bring to memory Iain M. Banks’ Feersum Endgin (1994)[3] in the eeriness of the landscape. (Mikhaylova, p. 17)[4]

RDE, finishing, 25Feb21