Tomb of the Fathers

Arnason, Eleanor. Tomb of the Fathers — A Lydia Duluth Adventure. Seattle: Aqueduct Press, 2010. See Internet Speculative Fiction Database for any subsequent reprints or translation, and for links to on-line reviews.[1]

Reviewed by Sandra J. Lindow, SFRA Review #293 (Summer 2010): pp. 26-27.[2] The novel is set on a near-future Earth, in bad shape economically and ecologically, and, relevant here "partially controlled by artificial intelligences who have mastered faster-than-light travel, a secret that can’t be shared because it requires 'specialized hardware and software' no intelligent species can understand." Note that "Duluth is a human recorder who shares consciousness with an AI implant in her brain that seems male and provides advice and encyclopedic commentary."

In addition to "Striker, a sentient rat" — a bit of casting the Initial Compiler likes — we'll mention more relevantly that Duluth's crew includes "a shape-changing AI" — combining a cybernetic theme with shapeshifting (as in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY?) — and "a number of intelligent machines including space suits that can transform to become lethal weapons or go for sight-seeing walks on their own and a Buddhist space ship/land rover combo [...] that limits its explorations because it does not want to 'harm the native live forms' by rolling over them (72)" (Lindow, p. 26).

RDE, finishing, 31Mar21