WWW:Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer – review

If an AI took over the World Wide Web, would it be a source of good or evil? That’s what Hugo and Nebula Award winner Robert J. Sawyer writes about in his WWW trilogy, which concludes with WWW:Wonder.  Other questions he poses include whether trying to shut down or “kill” a sentient AI is akin to the murder of a human. Is WWW:Wonder a great conclusion to a fantastic trilogy, or is it a dud? I vote more in favor of the former, and will go into why in this review, but either way you feel, I’m looking forward to reading your viewpoints below!

Man’s best friend may be his dog, but a teen girl’s best friend, at least in Robert J. Sawyer’s trilogy, is Webmind, the AI she helped bring into existence, and who in return helped bring her vision to one eye. WWW:Wonder is, in a nutshell, the continuing story about what might happen if a beneficent AI takes over the Internet and gives mankind the presents of a cure for cancer, some types of blindness, and other ailments, but whose motives are looked upon with intense suspicion. We’ve been conditioned with so many worst case scenarios about robot and computer overlords that many people find it difficult to believe that Webmind has truly good motives.

Webmind is the first-person narrator of much of the novel, his narration interspersed with the third-person POV of sixteen-year-old Caitlin Decter. This made me tempted to label WWW:Wonder a YA science fiction novel, and I likely wouldn’t (hopefully) have been overly criticized for doing so–but, the book and series hasn’t been promoted as YA, nor is it in the YA section of the local bookstore where I shop. It is a great novel, a nice conclusion to the WWW trilogy, and the fact that the main character is sixteen years old doesn’t necessarily mean this should be called a YA novel (not that there’s anything wrong with YA novels. The best ones rank with the very best literature, and often the lines that demarcate what is a YA novel versus an adult one are hazy, at best–for instance, there’s Catcher In the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and many more).

At the start of the novel, Webmind has already survived one dedicated effort by the U.S. government to shut him down. He’s sure it won’t be the last one, but he holds no antagonism towards the people who orchestrated the attempt, nor towards humanity in general. Instead, he enlists the aid of his friend, Caitlin, among others, to take his case directly to the American president, the public, and to the people of all of the other countries of the world. She finds herself an overnight media sensation, with all of the networks wanting to interview her. Unfortunately, though, many regard her as being just the mouthpiece of puppet of Webmind and disregard what she says.

One of the main characters behind the sentiment that AIs should not be allowed to get to be too powerful for fear that they’ll turn against us is Colonel Peyton Hume, an A.I. expert with the American government. This is in accordance with something called the Pandora Protocol. He was behind the first attempt, and he manages to then get an expert hacker to cooperate with him to try to do away with Webmind once and for all. This is despite the fact that, as I wrote earlier in this review, Webmind comes up with potential cures to cancer, etc., has stated that he is in favor of peace & harmony for the world, and responds kindly to anyone who sends him e-mail. Some think he is a hoax; some, that he’s God, speaking to humanity through the Internet, though he denies that claim.

One of the most interesting characters in the novel, IMO, isn’t a human or an AI, but an intelligent chimp/bonobo hybrid named Hobo whom Webmind has counseled via sign language. Hobo has learned to paint people in profile, but he has shown violent tendencies every once in a while, because male chimps frequently get more violent as they get older. Webmind says he should fight against the chimp side of himself, though, and demonstrate to the public that yet another way he is special is that he can choose to be artistic and peaceful rather than violent. He becomes a spokesperson (spokes-ape? -Bonobo hybrid?) for Webmind.

Yes, it’s true that WWW:Wonder and the entire series gives Robert J. Sawyer a broad canvas to express his own, often liberal, viewpoints (stated without judgment), as other reviews have pointed out. Still, for my money, there’s enough “wonder” in this book in Caitlin’s adjusting to being newly sighted, dating, etc., and Webmind’s introspective musings about good and evil (and whether he could be capable of evil) that it’s a pretty good, if not great, conclusion to the series. If you’re a fan of the WWW series, WWW:Wonder is a must read; if not, it’s still a very entertaining, thought-provoking novel about the nature of AI and morality that you should check out if those topics interest you.