A Letter To Turing

Tarrent has a job to do, it's a collection and delivery run, but there are forces at work to keep him from earning his payday. Helping him out with tech skills, and acting as his conscience, is Areum. Only she isn't human. Together they must make their across three different planetary systems, facing intrigue and danger at every turn as the head of universal religious order seeks to cheat death and a powerful corporation tries to thwart them all.

A Letter To Turing is a fast-paced sci-fi adventure that mashes noir thriller, war and chase forms into one helter skelter race against time. Set in the 23rd Century, after mankind has spread to the stars, A Letter To Turing pitches a melting pot of races together, as the action starts on Nerrapole, a low-tech farming planet. Who can the main character trust and what does their mission really mean. They don't know, but the clues are dropped along the way as they slowly, but surely discover the awful plan that they've been hired to bring to fruition. It would have been hard enough, but there's an informer in the Church and he or she has involved a powerful mining and exploration corporation with a hierarchical power structure. The corporation is interested in taking advantage of what the spy has to offer, but has its own problems, with an ongoing power struggle.

The adventure turns red hot as the focus moves to California III, where the local population is mounting an insurrection against the controlling authorities. It was little more than farmers with rifles until a different part of the corporation leadership intervened with the promise of advanced hardware.

By the time the characters reach Utopia, one of the most advanced tech systems in the Gate network, all the pieces are starting to fall into place and everyone converges on the Church Mission in a final race against time. But just to make it as hard as possible, the corporation has a final, secret weapon that they bring into play.

Tarrent is a low-life thief, but he wasn't always that way. There are skeletons in his closet that won't keep quiet. Areum is his conscience, but she isn't human. As a subtext to the entire adventure, A Letter To Turing also examines what it is that makes us human and what you would have to do to create an artificial life form, an android, that was just as human. The book is in three sections, with artwork at the start of each one. At the beginning of every chapter there are the audio notes from Areum's creator, explaining how she works and why she has been designed that way. If you've ever seen any sci-fi film and despaired at the superficial way AI is dealt with - ie not explained at all - then this is the book for you. The clue is in the name.