The space probe speaks in a distractingly conversational, American-teenager-like voice, and, despite having had no contact with humans since before gaining sentience, talks about god in decidedly Christian Evangelical lingo and phrasing. The story itself seems largely a travelogue, about places devoid of life. Some of the description is interesting, but not much happens.
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Tries to be funny. Might succeed for some readers, but I found it to be rather tiresome. Spygod, the fictional author of the blog, seems pretty annoyed that he is blogging at all—perhaps because it takes away from his clearly pivotal role in everything that matters—and that makes the whole thing a rather tough slog for the reader. It would probably work better if the voice was sarcastic or sardonic or, well, anything . . . but, for the most part, all he manages are annoyance and self-satisfaction. Oddly, for such a busy guy, Spygod seems to have enough spare time to replace all "bad" words with symbols, comic-book style (@$!#)—which is unfortunate, as it only makes the text more tiresome to read.
My guess is this is meant to be subtly funny, over the long haul. Unfortunately, I just lack the patience to get there—or, perhaps, the faith that I will.
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Unknown Transmission is the sister-story to Station151 (which was my last review). It is, in part, a parallel story, since some of the events take place at the same time of Station151, and it is also, in a sense, a sequel, because many of the events take place seventy years after Station151. It is told from the perspective of a space explorer from the future whose ship is sabotaged by a vat-grown, half-human, half-fish artificial intelligence who decides it doesn’t want to be a servant any longer and decides to build its own empire. Unfortunately for our hero, that means killing him as well . . .
I don’t want to talk about the story too much, because it builds on the events in Station151: while both stories stand on their own, they really should be read as a set, and Station151 (at least the part currently published) should be read first, because Unknown Transmission ads an entirely unexpected level of depth to the original story. Station151 is a First Contact story, and Unknown Transmission explains why it happened and exactly how disastrous the consequences were. The hero of the story is, essentially, the sole survivor of an entire timeline, and perhaps the only chance there is to salvage the nightmare world he’s currently in.
The writing is crisp and smart, the exposition and the dialog are excellent. It’s a very fun read and moves quickly. The last update was in March, but it’s hard to gauge whether the author has abandoned the story or if we’ve just hit a lull in the updates. Like Station151 I recommend subscribing to the RSS feed.
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