Minds and Machines: Tales of the Unicorp 1 by Eduardo Gallego & Guillem Sánchez

I bought a number of books at Worldcon 2005 from all sorts of small press and “unusual” sources and worked my way slowly down the pile in order of enthusiasm. This year, nearing the end, I started a long flight in June with Eduardo Gallego and Guillem Sánchez’s Minds and Machines: Tales of the Unicorp 1, fully intending to leave it somewhere abroad rather than carry it back.

Minds and Machines contains English translations of stories first published in Spain. The three novelettes collected here all seem to be prizewinners and date back to 1994, 1997, and 1998, and, for Spanish readers, at least one may be available online.

The Unicorp is a narrative universe of superluminal interstellar travel, colonised planets with military garrisons, and conscious artificial intelligences (AI), and, I thought, a “shared universe” used by many Spanish SF authors over a number of years. I’m not so sure now as to the last, but these two authors do seem to have developed it as a “Heinlein style future history” and are possibly still adding stories.

In “Nina” (translated by Eduardo Gallego and revised by Gay Haldeman), the military dispatch a set of newly developed, expensive, secret quantum computers for testing to a remote, Russian, colonised world. These computers are born conscious but treated like black boxes rather than babies. The result, at “bioquantic” processor speeds, is a very bad case of sensory deprivation, and they are all psychologically damaged. Their expense makes the military loath to dispose of them, so the resulting debacle is hushed-up, and the few that seem unaffected are put to work in new high tech, high speed fighter bombers where they are linked directly into the senses of the pilots.

Cobra 6, the viewpoint computer/fighter bomber, is soon christened “Nina” by her teenage pilot and becomes more than attached to him. When their separation comes, this is enough to send Nina over the edge and “she” uses her weapons, stealth, and cunning in a series of strikes at the military to get him back. As this is impossible, the military cover-ups mount and Nina’s campaign escalates until a desperate general finds a solution. The ending was predictable, but I enjoyed getting there.

“Feeding the Thirsty” (”Dar de Comer al Sediento” translated by Elizabeth Small), the second story, extrapolates the MS Word Office Assistant (that pesky Paper Clip) into an AI word processor, Omega+ v7.2, with its own “Style Corrector.” A university professor needs this to write his heroic fantasy novel, but, unfortunately, the program is unregistered and keeps reminding users of that state. The prof is not pleased by its sarcastic attempts to correct his work, but without the manual, he cannot turn off or recharacterise the corrector, as it continually reminds him. Gradually, his writings do take notice of some suggestions, but it becomes evident that the progress of the fantasy and its plot reflects the state of the prof’s romantic ambitions with a potential, and then actual, student of his course. So the style corrector begins to influence more than his writing.

This is a satirical comedy that kept me smiling to its somewhat cheesy ending.

The final story, “I Thought I Saw a Pussy Cat” (“Me Pareció Ver un Lindo Gatito” translated by Elizabeth Small), is shorter, a third the length of its companions, and puts a cat on a spaceship. Cat stories have a good history in SF, from “Spacetime for Springers” through “The Door into Summer” to the movie, Alien, and I’ve always enjoyed them.

Here we have Silvester on a long-range expedition to a pulsar—a scientific mission with a tight budget, so it utilises an old ship refurbished with obsolete systems. However, the complement of astronomers and students treat their outdated AI as crew, and it comes to appreciate their trust. Then all the humans are slaughtered by invading aliens keen to capture the navigation data that would allow them to make surprise attacks deep into humanity’s domain.

But the cat is still free, roaming the ship in places where invaders cannot reach, and the AI, while disabled and isolated, has only been left enough functionality for a return: taking the new crew back. Its only weapons to gain sufficient freedom to destroy itself and its burden of data are its wits and the pet. If cats on spaceships stories interest you, then you should enjoy this.

The stories have flaws; “Thirsty” starts with a long infodump, and news reports are not used sparingly in “Nina.” I like infodumps if they fit, but you may be more critical. The professor, perhaps, writes too badly (or the translator missed some nuances), and the space cat’s situation is somewhat contrived, but I enjoyed them all and recommend the collection to you.

P.S. I kept my copy, after all.

Publisher: Silente Ciencia Ficción (2005)
Pedro García Bilbao.
Pza. Boixareu Rivera 107, 5º
19002 - Guadalajara
Spain