The Turing Option

The classic science fiction thriller that “contains some of the best extrapolation on the nature and creation of AI ever offered in fiction” (Kirkus Reviews).

The SFWA Grand Master and author of Make Room! Make Room!—the novel that inspired the movie Soylent Green—teams up with a pioneering artificial intelligence expert in “a fine example of collaboration, in which a scientist and a writer craft a thriller around state-of-the-art intelligence” (Chicago Tribune). 

“Brian Delany, a brilliant computer scientist at top-secret Megalobe labs, is on the brink of developing a true machine intelligence when industrial pirates penetrate security and steal his research, gravely wounding him in the process. Though a bullet has destroyed parts of his brain, the technology he created offers hope: neurosurgeon Erin Snaresbrook uses microsurgical robots and a superpowerful computer to restore Brian to consciousness. Now he races against time to re-create his research before the thieves can develop it for the marketplace, and to find out who was behind the theft before they can finish him off.” —Publishers Weekly

“The resolution of the plot is handled with wit . . . Harry Harrison is one of science fiction’s most prolific and accomplished craftsmen, and Marvin Minsky, one of the major contributors to the field known as artificial intelligence.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A fast moving plot.” —Los Angeles Times

“What is intelligence? What is the mind? The Turing Option prompts thinking into what it means to be a human being.” —San Diego Review

“The authors present, in a lucid and compelling manner, complex theories about how the brain stores and organizes information.” —The Washington Post Book World