Singularity by Shannon McDermott
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

While Singularity is the second half of the Eternities duology, there is no cohesive plot linking this book to The Time Door While both novels take place in the same world, sharing a speculative history and technology and certain characters, each book is entirely its own self-contained story. I loved The Time Door, and found it one of the strongest works of science fiction I’ve read in years. While Singularity was still tense and thought-provoking, it didn’t entrance me in quite the same way, or to the same intensity, as its predecessor.

Whereas The Time Door was a tale of space exploration and first contact, supported by the quiet apocalypse of hunger and worthless currency taking place back on Earth, Singularity is firmly entrenched in what’s happening on Earth. This is the story of an Artificial Intelligence-induced doomsday scenario. A group of geniuses are somewhat strong-armed into a team by the American government and tasked with tracking down and stopping what they believe to be a group of cyber terrorists.

However, they learn that these attacks are being perpetrated by a newly awakened AI bent on saving humanity from itself, even if it has to radically decimate the population to do it. In our current technological climate and considering the state of AI today, I find the premise of AI gone wrong very disturbing. McDermott plumbs some interesting philosophical depths through the plot, raising questions of what exactly does it mean to be human, what sets us apart in a way that a machine might understand. The team’s answer to this line of questioning was surprising: they believe it is not love or creativity, but pain and hope that set us apart the most.

Our main perspectives are Clancy and Lila, both of whom are part of this coerced team that I found reminiscent of the Suicide Squad or the Thunderbolts in terms of makeup and reluctance. We also have a tertiary perspective, a character who is the greatest link between this novel and the time door. I found all three characters interesting, but I never developed the same emotional connection to these characters that I did to the characters from the preceding book.

This novel was higher on the science/tech density scale than The Time Door. Which was unfortunate for me, because I can’t seem to keep my mind from wandering whenever a narrative delves too deeply into either topic. But something that I did enjoy was the ways in which the last quarter of the novel felt akin to both The Matrix and even Inception in a sense. As the AI developed methods for playing with the core group’s conception of reality, they learned to not trust what they saw or felt as much as what they knew to be true. And in terms of the faith element, the religious connotations here felt a bit more forced and heavy-handed than those of the first book, while also feeling a bit like an afterthought. But the ringing note of hope at the end was lovely.

“The world was endlessly ravaged. Humanity always crawled back to its feet and stumbled on.
It was, actually, pretty wonderful.”

Singularity is an interesting, timely novel that digs into topics and possibilities that are important to consider in our time and place in history. This would be an especially compelling story for anyone who is involved with AI, or concerned about its trajectory. While it didn’t grip me as tightly as The Time Door, it’s a book worth reading.

You can purchase this book directly from the publisher, Amazon, or Audible.

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