Factoring Humanity

By: Robert J. Sawyer

Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren

Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

In the near future, a signal is detected coming from the Alpha Centauri system. Mysterious, unintelligible data streams in for ten years. Heather Davis, a professor in the University of Toronto psychology department, has devoted her career to deciphering the message. Her estranged husband, Kyle, is working on the development of artificial intelligence systems and new computer technology utilizing quantum effects to produce a near-infinite number of calculations simultaneously.

When Heather achieves a breakthrough, the message reveals a startling new technology that rips the barriers of space and time, holding the promise of a new stage of human evolution. In concert with Kyle's discoveries of the nature of consciousness, the key to limitless exploration - or the end of the human race - appears close at hand.Sawyer has created a gripping thriller, a pulse-pounding tour of the farthest reaches of technology. Factoring Humanity is a 1999 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.

©2003 Robert J. Sawyer (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"[T]his is exciting, readable science fiction that will take you where no one has gone before - and you'll never forget the ending." (Amazon.com review)
"An intelligent and absorbing double-stranded narrative." ( Kirkus)

A other great novel from Sawyer

Factoring Humanity by Robert J. Sawyer as with most of his novels is part science lesson with a gripping fictional story woven into it expertly as always. The book addresses topics like quantum human consciousness, quantum computing, Artificial intelligence, The Many Worlds Theory and/or multi dimensional and parallel universe theories and explains them in ways most readers can quickly grasp to understand the basic premises that are part of this story.

The story revolves around Ryan, a scientist and Professor at Toronto University who is making great strides into AI and quantum computing, and his wife, Heather who is also a psychology professor at the same university who is working on cracking aliens signals that are being received by Earth for many years now with almost no progress by anyone in deciphering them.

Ryan and Heather's family is thrown into turmoil when their daughter makes some heinous claims that threatens to tear the family apart. Ryan and Heather fight to make sense of these new developments and explore their worth and affect on each other and their toll on relationships.

Heather is torn between her feelings for her husband and the safety of her daughter, and finds her answers may lie in her work with the alien signals.

The book explores human consciousness and a one "overmind" consciousness shared by all humanity and how we are all part of one larger being in very interesting ways.

The novel is a solid 4 out of 5 star read, and as always with Sawyer's books, leaves you wanting to dive into the hard science his books present, which is why he is one on my recent favorite authors.

Enjoyed every minute!!!~

Factoring Humanity gets complex at times (those were my favorite parts!!) and the listener has to pay close attention-if he/she is not a theoretical physicist!

This book brings to mind several things--Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, Dr Seuss (dont want to spoil it--if you listen you will probably see where I am going with this!) and Greg Bear--along with themes that permeate all of Sawyers books. I thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to finish.

I am sharing my serious geekie-ness with this next part...which is why I am changing my name once I submit this review (grin)...Robert Sawyer quotes the original Star Trek and the movie Wrath of Khan within the pages...and I had to dust off my copy and fast forward to the scene they discussed and see for myself what the author pointed out...which means to me that I was relating to this book on a personal (if seriously nerdy!) level...

My only complaint is that I have only one more Robert Sawyer novel to go...then I have to wait for him to publish something new next year...Would love if another reader who is a Sawyer fan could recommend another author who is similar. I have looked for ages and have been dissappointed in the choices I made.

I give Factoring Humanity 5 geeky stars and an honorable mention in Nerdy! Will definitely listen to this again and recommend it to my pocket protector adorned, duct-taped glass wearing, nerdy friends!!

"Big Idea" science fiction

This is a SF geek's SF novel. See, I even used "SF" instead of "sci-fi" like I usually do to annoy the sci-fi geeks, because Factoring Humanity is Very Very Serious SF. It's full of interesting thought experiments in a broadly-scoped scenario, the epitome of thinky-mindy SF, and it also lived up to expectations of such novels in that it was very dry and full of long passages of exposition, about quantum computers, about Jungian psychology, about materials engineering, about Artificial Intelligence, about the characters' backgrounds. So, imaginative and intelligent book, interesting story, characters who are placeholders to make the plot happen.

Set in the near future, the premise of Factoring Humanity is that Earth has been receiving radio signals from Alpha Centauri for several years now. No one has managed to decipher them yet, but there is no question that they were produced by intelligent minds. I thought the book was very realistic in depicting an Earth that, once it got over the initial collective gasp of surprise that WE ARE NOT ALONE, proceeded to carry on like before. Yeah, people are curious about those aliens, but since nothing has actually happened yet and no one knows what they're saying, they've faded into the background, becoming part of the noise of modern society. I think that's exactly how the world would react, by and large.

The main characters, Kyle and Heather Davis, are estranged scientists both working on different ends of the same problem. Kyle is a computer scientist who has built an Artificial Intelligence (but not a truly self-aware one), and who is working on quantum computers. Heather is a Jungian psychologist (those still exist?) trying to decode the Centauri messages.

The book starts out more like a soap opera than a SF novel. In the opening scene, the Davis' grown daughter shows up at their home and accuses Kyle of molesting her as a child. Unfortunately, this revelation is dropped on the reader before we've even gotten to know, much less care about any of these characters, delivered like the opening act of a play with lines recited by journeyman actors. So rather than being shocked, outraged, or wanting to know whether the accusation was true, I was just baffled, wondering where the author was going with this.

Heather, who is racked with uncertainty over the accusations, meanwhile makes a breakthrough in deciphering the aliens' radio messages. It turns out they contain instructions to build something. Meanwhile, Kyle has conversations with Cheetah, his "APE" AI, and makes a breakthrough in quantum computing that could spell the death of cryptography and thus most of the world's financial industry.

Somehow, all these threads do tie together — the molestation subplot, Heather's discovery, AIs, and the true nature of the aliens. It all gets resolved in an interesting and surprisingly optimistic way, considering that the book ends with one of those SF "game-changers" in which the universe will never be the same.

It's the sort of book obviously meant to make you think, and it does, but I just never felt like any of the characters were real, and so the interpersonal drama (and the AIs & aliens plot mixed with Jungian psychology makes the interpersonal a crucial point of the book) fell flat. Factoring Humanity is recommended for people who like science fiction as a literature of ideas but aren't looking for a rippin' adventure.

I didn't expect to cry...

Great science, great drama and even a great love story . thoughtful and optimistic. this book is even spiritual . a must read .

Good "read" - more than a sci fi techno-fest

Any additional comments?

Well done on all levels. Perhaps a bit more far-fetched than I'd prefer but that's balanced by a nice study of personalities, particularly as involve marriage and family. Made me want to check out more by this author and performer.

just a bit blah

I really enjoyed some of Sawyer's earlier work. The Neanderthal/Human/Hybrid series is brilliant - well developed characters and relationships with depth that we really came to care about, all mixed carefully balanced with clever, innovative and well developed scientific speculation and a plot that moves along very nicely and holds it all together. However, as time goes on his work becomes more and more like excerts from a science paper, and all the characters seem flat, everyone is so completely scientifically adept in the same exact way and always on the same page with each other and so quick to launch into a lecture/intense conversation about the ins and outs of the science involved. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of speculative science in my science fiction, but I like it worked into the story, not trumping the story. In this the story and characters seem more like a vehicle for a very long winded essay of some kind... or like some dream nerd scenario (and I use the word nerd with the utmost of respect) in which people sit around debate this stuff endlessly... That and the preoccupation with religion and the relentless preoccupation with Canadianism vs. Americanism (which is so prevalent in this one it becomes a bit embarassing at times) are really changing Sawyers work and style. Some might like that but it isn't my cup of tea and I really think his earlier work was much stronger and much more compelling and entertaining.

APPALING!

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Not sure this book is for anyone. Horrible hodgepodge of science, mathematics and psychology held together by incest/sexual child abuse.

Would you ever listen to anything by Robert J. Sawyer again?

never

What three words best describe Katherine Kellgren’s performance?

decent enough

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

no. it was absurd

Any additional comments?

'nuff said!

Worst book in my library

I get the overall impression that this book was written in the 80s and it wants to give a lot of social commentary on that era. Too much attention was given to these repressed memories of sexual deviation that added little to the story.
The book was sold to me on the pretext that it was a science fiction novel. Yes, there were a few pages of math babble to try and give it some credibility. I stopped listening about halfway through. I feel I just kissed $14 dollars goodby.

Lacks internal logical consistency

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Robert J. Sawyer sets up the story using the scientific method and evidence that stands up to strong scrutiny, great, but,... then dumps this when it suits him to leave an illogical mess. ie a story that makes no sense. If you are going to set up a story using the scientific method and evidence that stands up to strong scrutiny you need to follow it up with a story that is plausible, even if only a little.

Also I just did not care about the characters, as I do in a Peter F Hamilton book, for example.

Has Factoring Humanity turned you off from other books in this genre?

No but I will try to return this book, and may be try another of his but if that fails to then it will put me off Robert J. Sawyer, which is a shame as I think he has potential.

How could the performance have been better?

Having a man reading it, as a man is the main character would have made more sense.

And the woman's voice grated on me, and she over acted, and it was not a pleasant voice to listen to, it put me of my toast!

Maybe I have just been spoiled by listening to John Lee.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Factoring Humanity?

The premise of the whole story. He talks about I think people who can supposedly talk to the dead as evidence for the existence of a 4th dimension where the memories of the dead and the living are stored and anyone can access them, via a machine the aliens tell us how to build. But this makes no sense as there is no evidence that stands up to strong scrutiny for anyone being able to talk to the dead or for any supernatural phenomenon, including god, and the tooth fairy. Also fyi all the feelings you have are created by the brain including any so called religious or spiritual feelings, for example feeling that a powerful supernal entity has special plans just for you, or that you are part of a greater whole etc... They are not real, so don't become deluded.

Any additional comments?

If Robert J. Sawyer could get his act together he could be a half way decent writer.

Excellent until it collapses to hideous naivety

Really the first half of the book was excellent and enjoyed it tremendously. Nicely setup characters and intriguing plot that could turn any way. Unfortunately, it all just collapsed so suddenly that I was shouting out loud in agony. Still hopeful I returned to listen some more. Maybe it could all be mended. It couldn't be. This was my first and probably my last book from Sawyer, and the experience was so disappointing that I had to post my first review after about a hundred books.