The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang is full of interesting ideas. It’s a long term look at non human virtual creatures (kind of a cross between Sims and tamagotchis) and what happens to them when the initial excitement has worn off. Chiang has thrown out dozens of ideas in this book, but he doesn’t do a great job pulling them together into a story. So, what is the story about?

Ada and Derek work for Blue Gamma corporation. Blue Gamma is making artificial life forms (called digients)for people to adopt and play with on Data Earth (a virtual world). Ada is a tester and Derek is a developer and they are probably the most excited about the digients. The training and development goes well and sales are great. A company makes an add-on that allows the digients to travel in the real world via a robot like body. Then interest in the digients fade and there are thousands of abandoned digients who are suspended with nowhere to go. As Blue Gamma goes out of business, a lot of questions start popping up about how much should a virtual creature control your life. Should a virtual creature come between you and your spouse (especially if your spouse is bored with it)? How do you socialize these virtual creatures with fewer and fewer remaining? How do you tell the virtual creatures about what’s going on?

Then a bigger problem happens. Data Earth (the platform the digients runs on) gets bought out and everyone moves off of it. Porting the digients environment to run on the new system is massively expensive for the few number of digient owners left. They are left with a lot of bad options: one company is interested in making them servents, one company is interested in making them sex objects or they can just put them into hibernation until a better solution comes out. Ada and Derek are our guides as the few remaining digient owners are brought into a whole realm of questions they never anticipated.

Chiang throws out a lot of ideas and moral questions. But the story feels only half done. It seems like it is a small part of a larger book that was taken out of context. Overall the ideas are wonderful, but the execution is lacking…something. There is no connection toe Ada or Derek. When Derek goes through a divorce (partially due to his diligient) we never see his wife or her view on the subject, so it feels more like a plot point then a real event. I’m interested in other stories by Chiang to see if he can integrate his ideas into stories better than he did here. It’s a small book (about 150 pages) and is full of interesting ideas, so I do recommend it. But I wish it was done better. Mildly recommended