In which sexy computers take over the earth

So I said I would move on to greater things, but it didn't happen. On Queen's Birthday (Monday last) I visited Kmart with my sister and we found a whole lot of books whose prices were all either $0.75, $1.05, $1.03 or $1.23. We took seven of them (for $6 total) and I've been reading one of those all week - ThiGMOO by Eugene Byrne ($0.75).

Greater things it is not. It's a whimsical and occasionally hilarious little tale about a group of artificial intelligences who enact global communist revolution and make the world a Better Place. This all came about because their creators got fired and their home servers were scheduled to be shut down.

It doesn't read like a seventy-five-cent novel (having read it, I would pay at least $5 for it) largely because of its many likeable characters. As well as the AIs themselves, called erams, the story is narrated by two humans who are the creators of the erams. One is an irascible old Tory knight, the other a gentle, mildly socialist professor of history. Alternately applauding and denouncing the eram revolution, these two provide politics to suit everyone.

The greatest strength of the story is its utilisation of the world's total reliance on computers to allow power to be seized. The setting appears to be in a not-too-distant future, but it's entirely plausible even in the context of today's world. When the erams take over stockmarket computers and start trading fairly according to their socialist principles, capitalism has little option but to lie down and take it. No one can eject the erams, because they infiltrated 60% of all corporations before anyone noticed them; not even military force is safe lest the erams take over the control systems of aircrafts and missiles...

Like any story which ends in total victory, this one suffers a bit from anticlimax towards the end, with too much ponderous tying up of loose ends. Nonetheless, it was a good read, if a silly one. Now maybe I feel ready for some proper reading!