Mal Goes to War – Don't blame the wetware
Mal doesn’t understand humans. This is not surprising. Mal is a sentient AI drifting through infospace after his programming spontaneously gave rise to his consciousness. Mal also doesn’t are much for humans, but despite his disdain for these “monkeys” he does enjoy sojourns into the physical world by hijacking the occasional vehicle (drone, bot, cyborg, or whatever else is to hand) for himself.
Unfortunately for Mal, he is forced to take an interest after he gets stuck in a cyborg body as collateral damage in a civil war between the US government and a Ludditesque uprising of ‘Humanists’ who oppose human/tech integration and demonstrate their commitment to humanity by throwing everyone they deem impure into a burn pit. Mal’s quest to return to infospace governs the plot of Edward Ashton’s Mal Goes to War. It is a book with an interesting premise, but which did not live up to my expectations. Maybe that is because the cover sold it to me as ‘dark comedy,’ a satire on war and an interrogation of what it means to be human. Yet while those themes are present, they are not executed with adequate depth to elevate Mal Goes to War beyond the level of an entertaining sci-fi romp. Other works exist that cover the same themes with more insight, novelty or creativity.