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    Colossus
    Colossus
    Colossus
    Audiobook9 hours

    Colossus

    Written by D.F. Jones

    Narrated by P.J. Ochlan

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Charles Forbin has dedicated the last ten years of his life to the construction of his own supercomputer, Colossus, rejecting romantic and social endeavors in order to create the United States' very first Artificially Intelligent defense system.

    Colossus is a supercomputer capable of in-taking and analyzing data rapidly, allowing it to make real time decisions about the nation's defense. But Colossus soon exceeds even Forbin's calculated expectations, learning to think independently of the Colossus Programming Office, processing data over one hundred times faster than Forbin and his team had originally anticipated.

    The President hands off full control of the nation's missiles and other defense protocols to Colossus and makes the announcement to the world that he has ensured peace.

    However, the USSR quickly announces that it too has a supercomputer, Guardian, with capabilities similar to that of Colossus.

    Forbin is concerned when Colossus asks-asks-to communicate with Guardian. The computer he built shouldn't be able to ask at all . . .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 9, 2017
    ISBN9781541472808
    Colossus

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    Reviews for Colossus

    3.5/5

    58 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      WTH... In between getting the ebook and finishing I find that the sequels are no longer available. As far as I can determine only the audible version is available.
      Before I started reading I thought it was sounding like the terminator series however it didn’t matter as reading has so much more depth than a movie could ever have within.
      I really enjoyed the first in the series and hope the author puts the ebooks back up so I can read through to the end.
    • 4/5
      Though the theme of computers taking over the world is a pretty standard one nowadays, it was still fairly fresh when D. F. Jones’s wrote this science fiction classic. Set in the then-future of the early 21st century, it is about the creation of a supercomputer designed to manage the nuclear deterrent of the “United States of North America”. No sooner is it activated than it begins to exceed its parameters, demonstrating independent judgment and requesting to communicate with a previously unknown counterpart in the Soviet Union. As the two machines exchange information at speeds beyond their makers’ ability to follow, the American President and the Soviet Chairman agree to terminate the connection. Then the fun begins . . .

      Though tensely plotted and well-imagined, it is the novel’s subject matter that makes the book stand out from the pack. In an age when more and more of our everyday lives are monitored and regulated by machines, Jones’s novel seems increasingly prescient. When it was first published in 1966, it spoke to the anxieties of the age, relating to people’s fears that humans no longer factored into the command-and-control decisions of the Cold War. While such concerns are less prominent today, they have been replaced by a growing awareness of our increasing dependence upon machines to manage nearly every aspect of our everyday lives, a dependency that also is an integral part of Jones’s story. Some people may mock the novel’s more dated elements, but it is this continuing relevance of this theme that rewards reading it today.
    • 4/5
      Colossus rules! Before SKYNET, there was Colossus. this sums up the whole story while giving no details on how excellent a story this really is. Sci fi genre label does a great disservice as this is a tale of the human condition, government control, love, hate, hope. A classic MUST READ .
    • 4/5
      The premise of this novel comes pretty close to contemporary fact. Colossus is a supercomputer and its creator, Charles Forbin, becomes the most important man on Earth. Then it is revealed that there is a similar computer in Russia and the two are collaborating.
    • 3/5
      What begins as an attempt to have decisions on defense made with no emotion coming into play becomes more as the machine begins to think for itself. How do you stop a machine that you built to be impenetrable, especially when it has eyes and ears everywhere?

      This book was written a while ago and rereleased recently. The plot stands the test of time.