At times, the narrative teeters on the edge of arid didacticism there are enough ideas to fill a lesser author's trilogy, but much of the background is present only by implication, forcing the reader to work to fill in the blanks. Chiang's prose is sparse and austere throughout, relying on hints and nudges to provide context. Keeping to the constraints of a novella while working on a scale of years is a harsh challenge. But as Blue Gamma goes bust and Data Earth itself fades into obsolescence, Ana and the remaining digient keepers face a series of increasingly unpleasant dilemmas, their worries sharpened by their charges' growing awareness of the world beyond their pocket universe, and the steady unwinding of their own lives and relationships into middle-aged regrets for lost opportunities. Meanwhile Ana, Derek, and their friends become increasingly attached to their cute and talkative charges, who are neither pets nor children but something wholly new. The market for digients develops and expands, cools and declines after the pattern of the software industry. So does Derek Brooks, an animator who designs digient body parts. When Blue Gamma offers her a job as animal trainer for their digients-digital entities, spawned by genetic algorithms to provide pets for players in the future virtual reality of Data Earth-she discovers an unexpected affinity for her charges. Ana Alvarado is a former zookeeper turned software tester. So Chiang's novella-the second piece he's ever published that's long enough to stand on its own, following the 2007 Hugo- and Nebula-winning The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate-is a welcome surprise: a triumphant combination of the rigorous extrapolation of artificial intelligence and artificial life, two of the high concepts of contemporary SF, with an exploration of its consequences for the ordinary people whose lives it derails. It's very difficult to examine complex abstractions and simultaneously articulate the mechanisms of fiction: most writers who attempt this balancing act end up throttling back on the ideas, or fail sideways into technical writing. Is science fiction a literature of ideas, or of characters? Works that focus on the former often neglect the latter, and vice versa.
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