Review: _O Human Star_

[jducoeur]

I just finished reading the originally-webcomic O Human Star, by Blue Delliquanti, in its graphic novel form -- having heard friends burble about it over the years, I backed the final Kickstarter.

tl;dr -- wow.

As the story starts, Alastair Sterling dies. Sixteen years later, he wakes up in a new synthetic body that has been built by somebody. He is taken to the home of his friend/associate/more Brendan, where he finds Sulla, an earlier copy of himself.

A now-fifteen-year-old, now-female, flying copy of himself.

This is very much science fiction, and really good science fiction at that -- not trying to explain all the details, just exploring the idea that, around 2002, serious AI got cracked, and the beginnings of brain-recording not too long after that. The singularity is happening quietly in the background: not an apocalyptic version of the singularity, just a world that is steadily drifting away from the one we know, in no small part because of synthetic sentients who are increasingly able to design and improve themselves.

But more importantly, this is a story about people. Several of those people happen to be synthetic, but they're mostly still people. It's not presented in the usual simplistic way, that robots are either exactly like humans or utterly unknowable -- instead, we see a spectrum, from synthetics who think of themselves as basically human and want that very much, to others who find that a frivolous distraction from more interesting possibilities. Not to mention people who are finding ways to improve on their own designs.

It is fundamentally a trans story, about figuring out your own identity, and becoming more who you need to be. Sulla may be synthetic, but she is also very much a fifteen-year-old girl, trying to figure out how to pass (both as a girl and as a human), finding friendship and trying to figure out how much of herself to let her friends see. And at the same time, it is also very much Al's story, as he tries to wrestle with this new world, finding his own place within it, and battling no small amount of self-doubt and self-loathing.

There is a central mystery of who brought Al back to life, and why, but this isn't really a mystery story at heart. The mystery is in service to the characters (and there are a bunch of other great characters as well as our central three of Al, Sulla and Brendan), as is pretty much the rest of it -- an excuse to explore all of their history together, from the time when a just-graduated Brendan apprenticed himself to Al onward.

It's remarkably sweet, and very true: a tale of friendship, love, and (not least) parenting -- not always easy, but wonderfully real.

Highest recommendation from me -- having just finished the PDF version, I suspect I'm going to have to buy all three volumes in paper, because this one belongs on The Shelf. If the above description sounds like your cup of tea, I suspect you'll love it.

Comments

[writerkit]

And then she disappeared into a webcomic and was never seen again. (Which is to say, yes, I'll check it out; that sounds delightful.)