Adrienne Martini Reviews Dual Memory by Sue Burke
Dual Memory, Sue Burke (Tor 978-125080-913-1, $29.99, 352pp, hc) May 2023.
In Sue Burke’s Dual Memory, AI runs the world. Most of the machines are not fully capable of rising above their programming and making independent decisions. However, at least one, Par Augustus, has crossed over from a simulacrum of human-like thought to full autonomy – and is able to network with all of the other machines to make just about any of its goals a reality.
Par falls into the hands of Antonio Moro, a young man recently freed from a refugee camp, who is injured while working as a mercenary for the people of Thule. During his recovery, he’s offered the chance to become an artist, which is what Moro has always wanted to be. Par also has big dreams of art glory. But the raiders Moro was fighting against come back to Thule and Moro’s life gets complicated. (Don’t worry. This all makes more sense in context.)
What works best in Dual Memory is just how many layers of worldbuilding Burke has developed, from the basics of Thule society all the way down to an event called the Anthropocene Tip, which is when supply chains collapse in a manner that subtly suggests truly sentient A.I.s made their own decisions about humanity’s future. All that surrounds Par and Moro is chock full of nifty ideas, settings, and questions.
Those rich surroundings, however, make the two main characters feel somehow hollow, like paper dolls against a three-dimensional backdrop. In most of the chapters, the story is told so tightly from Moro’s perspective – the POV of a character who really doesn’t know what’s going on around him – that it’s hard to parse what the bigger picture might be. Moro seems to spend most of the story being tossed about in the plot winds without ever getting a chance to choose anything. Par’s short chapters work to fill in some gaps but it’s not quite enough to hold onto. While Burke pokes at some really interesting ideas, the story never quite seems to gel enough to carry the reader through them.
Adrienne Martini has been reading or writing about science fiction for decades and has had two non-fiction, non-genre books published by Simon and Schuster. She lives in Upstate New York with one husband, two kids, and one corgi. She also runs a lot.
This review and more like it in the August 2023 issue of Locus.
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