BKWEAPON.RVW 940301 Charter Books/Berkley 200 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 "Weapon", Mason, 1989, 1-55773-309-0, U$4.50/C$5.75. The weapon of the title is a robot which runs amok. The government hunts it down. That bare bones outline of the plot gives a completely misleading impression of the book. For one thing, Mason does a creditable job with some research into robotics and artificial intelligence. The robot, Solo, is programmed through a neural net, and Mason gives a reasonable portrayal of the difficulties involved. (The reality oF a battery that would power a hydraulically operated 300 pound machine for twenty hours is something else, again.) In the second place, most roles are reversed in the book. (Oh, except for men and women, of course.) The runaway robot is the good guy. The Dr. Frankenstein inventor is the one with misgivings about the project. I shouldn't say all roles are reversed; the army and CIA take the usual lumps. Generally, though, the book is entertaining, well characterised and sympathetic. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKWEAPON.RVW 940301 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag