Review: Machina, a Serial Box Production

Machina by Fran Wilde
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

4.5 Stars #SerialBox #Machina

I've talked about the Serial Box platform in the past. It's a hybrid platform that allows the reader to both read the text version and listen to the audio version of the story in a single app on a smartphone or tablet that allows you to switch seamlessly between reading and listening. The stories are released in weekly installments, i.e. this is a serial subscription for a story that typically is divided into ten to twelve episodes.

Machina, written by Fran Wilde, Malka Older, Curtis E. Chen, and Martha Wells, is set in the early days of the climate apocalypse on earth. California is pretty much gone, between fires and earthquakes. A group of robotic engineering friends who escaped Los Angeles as it was quite literally going down, have left just a month shy of their graduation from Occidental College. Trey already had a job lined up, while Stephanie, their friend Smits, and a TA they rescued, Lakshmi, are all facing uncertain futures. Trey has big plans, and basically, all of them know that the people of Earth need to get off this planet ASAP. The overarching goal involves developing an AI system that will save humanity and allow it to shift to a human base on Mars. You would think these friends could work well together to reach these goals— they are, after all, friends, right? But that's just because you haven't spent enough time with Trey yet. Trey appears to be cut from the Steve Jobs/Elon Musk "I am an asshole genius" mode and after the opening evacuation from LA, we fast forward to five years down the road to find that Stephanie and Lakshmi had had enough and left to form their own company and develop their own code for an AI system. Their company, Watchover, is in direct competition with Trey's company DevLok for a contract with IARPA, the space agency that is going to send the AI to Mars. Stephanie and Lakshmi's reasons for breaking away from Trey will become increasingly obvious from the first chapter on but are carefully enumerated in Episode 6, just in case you have any doubts by then. In some respects, Machina is a cautionary tale for the pitfalls of being an asshole genius, and/or working for one.

Overall, Machina is a tale of corporate espionage and "mysterious interference," that has some quirky characters (can't get enough of Smits and the cocktail-making robo-dog Pseudo), and is graced with a female collaborative relationship, a strong non-binary character, and a mystery that hovers at the end suggesting the possibility of a second season. At ten episodes and about 300 pages in text, it's a hearty story that releases today, January 29 and will run in weekly episodes through April 1. The chapters written by the four authors do have distinct styles but meld well into the overall story. Fran Wilde's episodes feel ever so slightly more descriptive and character-focused. Malka Older's chapters focus on that sharp eye she has for tech. Chen's chapters mesh well with these and Wells' sole chapter is the pivotal one in which Stephanie and Lakshmi have had enough and DevLok's Y3 goes rogue. (Martha Wells knows all about AIs going rogue. She's an expert!)

All in all, this is one of my favorite Serial Box productions I've read and listened to. The audiobook is narrated by the award-winning Natalie Naudus.

You can find Machina at Serial Box along with links to download their app at www.serialbox.com.

I received an Advance Review Copy of the series from SerialBox in exchange for an honest review.

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