Book review: Maya by Clyde DeSouza – can we transcend the human lifecycle?
A lot of hullabaloo around the latest titles. We gave them a read and found these worthy of mention for this month.
Maya by Clyde DeSouza
Genre: Science Fiction. Publisher: Penguin India. Price: ₹250. Rating: 7.5/10
Been a while since you read a sci-fi book without astronauts, strange biological viruses, futuristic colonies and people dying in an incomprehensible holocaust? Let’s settle for a virtually augmented five! Maya provides a refreshing diversion from the fantastic monster and its pompous feats, and resurrects people from the dead rather than killing them in bulk to up its coolness quotient. No, it’s not about paranormal activities or tantriks. It’s all science, in its most artistic, logical and purest form, walking an extra mile to meet technology.
So, the story goes like this… Dan is an ethical hacker in the US, working closely with his Indian friend, Krish, on Augmented Reality (AR). Krish, in turn, is a genius researcher of Artificial Intelligence (AI), from India, working his ass off writing algorithms to make AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) a reality. Dan and Maya, Krish’s sister, are in a relationship. The bro-sis duo has to leave for India because of their father’s health. Krish gets a job with AIRI (Artificial Intelligence Research Incubator) in Mumbai and calls Dan over to India to sell their kickass AR technology to the research centre. Post this and that, the deal is struck and they go to a night club to celebrate. A dirty conspiracy culminates in a gruesome explosion and Maya dies. This is the catharsis, the milestone that points towards the real shit.
Dan, injured and heartbroken, goes back to the US and starts working on recreating Maya with the help of AR. With her videos and pictures he’s able to bring her back as a shadow of a standing figure with some human inverse kinematics. Krish joins him back and with the brilliant Indian brain that he possesses, infuses elements of advanced artificial intelligence to create a realistic digital surrogate of Maya.
The real hero of the story is ‘Wizer’, an instrument resembling eyeglasses that employs cameras to intercept the real world view and re-display its augmented view through the eye pieces. The digital surrogate of Maya is visible only through ‘Wizer’ or when projected on a screen through AR devices and then filmed on a camera. It’s like Google Glass on steroids.
The book starts to get really ambitious towards the end when both the author and the techie-duo begin to tele-travel through wormholes, creating shortcuts from one spot in the world to another in a second. But all this is done virtually, through re-creation and augmentation, so it’s not that bad after all. At places it tends to get a little stereotypical while describing India, and at few others it paints an absolutely unfamiliar side of India that balances on the verge of mere fiction.
The Verdict
Overall, it’s a kickass book that presents to the reader more than one dimension where augmented reality may be useful to the human race. Everything stands on a rock solid ground of science and research, with a few liberties taken here and there. It doesn’t become too geeky with scientific jargons flowing in the pages. Most of all, it doesn’t take sides and is honest to show how the technology may be used in harmful ways. It leaves you with the feeling: So is this how God must feel like!
About the author
Clyde DeSouza is a Dubai-based film maker and writer, and likes to call himself a creative technology evangelist. Science and computers are his favourite areas of research. His biggest source of inspiration is technology and the people who pioneer it. Directors and cinematographers refer to his first book Think in 3D, for its expertise on the subject. This is his first book of fiction. Currently he’s working on its sequel, Dirrogate.
From the June 2015 issue of FHM India.
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