AI Goes To War in Bethesda, Maryland

We love to speculate about the personalities of aliens and AIs as they interact with us emotionlessly. It’s a classic sub-trope of the outsider view, but played at the level of species narcissism. Whether it’s ALF, Mr Spock, Mr. Data, the Murderbot or the week’s latest article about LLMs, it’s the human version of “that’s enough about me, tell me what do you think, about me?”

The latest in the series of these speculations is Edward Ashton’s new novel Mal Goes to War. The eponymous hero of the story Mal (short for Malware) is a sentient AI who, despite the advice of his friends Clippy and @HelpDesk, jumps down from InfoSpace to take a closer look at an armed skirmish between the “monkeys.” Initially safely ensconced in a drone watching the fight between the Humanists and the Federalists, Mal finds himself caught between the “pure” humans of the former and the augmented ones of the Federal Army in a full-fledged war that grows to include the AIs.

As the name of Mal’s friends suggests, the book is a light-hearted romp—which Ashton sets mostly in Bethesda, Maryland. Bethesda is suburbia within striking distance of D.C. and the heart of American political power but it also has a delightful set of parks through which AIs and humans can run and shoot. So, though the book does raise serious questions about how far genetic enhancement, cyborg augmentation, and the use of nanobot repair change our innate humanity — Ashton barely addresses them. This is not the place to resolve those quandaries — the narrative does not pretend to tackle them, but rather plays in the suburban parks adjacent to those discussions.

In his previous series Ashton’s protagonists are the cloned iterations of Mickey Barnes, a space explorer. In both Mickey7 and Antimatter Blues Barnes uses bodies as if each were a new sleeve to cram himself into. So he treats them not exactly callously, but certainly without the investment that we bloody humans place into our one-time flesh. As a result, Ashton arrives practiced in the arts of a narrator that can relay that detached attitude.

In Mal Goes to War, Mal discards its various bodily hosts with little concern, whether crashed drones, porno neural enhancements, broken household appliances, or slain warrior-control systems. Mostly, the AI doesn’t remark upon this beyond the amount of memory living space—available to it. But as the events become more absurd, the narrative is happy to dwell with deadpan humor it what other works might  describe as horrific gore—such as when he has to leave a severed head (in which he was happily surviving) as a dog chews off its jaw.

Swapping outer space for inner Maryland is an excellent choice for Ashton, swapping in a drily absurd lens for a potentially heroic one. The action is fast-moving and explosive, the characters are fun if not entirely compelling and the plot is entirely satisfying.

We only have so long that we can speculate about sentient AI personalities before they simply prove us wrong. We’re already beginning to meet the parents of Clippy, Mal and !HelpDesk. But while we can, I’m sure Ashton will follow this up with another Mal novel, which will be as diverting a read as this for those in Bethesda and beyond.

(Macmillan, 4-9)