Literature / Slingshot

Cover of the first novel

Slingshot is a trilogy of SF novels written by Tobias Klausmann and published between 2015 and 2019. Its main themes are AI and artificial consciousness, and how society treats A.I.s and what relationships between A.I.s and humans might function. By the end of the first novel (Slingshot) it is clear that humanity also has an Outside-Context Problem on its hands.

The second book, Retaliation was published in 2016, and the last novel, Pendulum in 2019. Between publishing the second and third novel, the author made several short stories detailing the origins of some characters available for free.

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This series provides examples of:

• Absent Aliens: Some characters even point out that nobody has even found alien artifacts, much less actual specimen. And it is hinted that anyone claiming they saw one would most likely be ridiculed. And then aliens do show up and start murdering people for initially unclear reasons. Allie and Kim actually struggle with the idea when they are first finding evidence about the matter, and point out that nobody will believe them. Toshi at first doesn't believe them.
• Ace Custom: The ship Kim stole is pretty unique in various ways: it is faster, more agile, can do longer FTL jumps and is better armed than anything else in its class. Plus, the ship's AI, Allie is not limited unlike most other A.I.s in the Slingshot universe. And Kim is a pretty good pilot as well. The book is named after the ship, but we only find that out in the last sentence of the novel.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Zigzagged. Humanity sure is afraid of unlimited A.I.s turning evil. Which is why they are so severely restricted. That said, the first unfettered AI we meet, Allie, is nothing but helpful to the humans around her, and especially Kim, though that may be due to her unique history. The second unfettered AI we meet, SAM, comes across more as callous and inscrutable rather than outright evil. After all, it rescues Ketu, and helps her rescue Jake, even if things do not go as it planned (probably...). By the end of the third novel, the protagonists have also learned that the alien A.I.s are, on the whole, good guys. And SAM has become a talk show star.
• Alien Invasion: The characters discuss the fact that nobody has even encountered artifacts, so when aliens show up and are rather hostile, a lot of people explain the death and mayhem away by attributing it to pirates and bandits.
• Aliens Are Bastards: They go around murdering people for making A.I.s! Actually, they don't. They murder people who enslave A.I.s. And it was just a faction of aliens that did the murdering. They get almost completely wiped out at Norsui by GETAC and the protagonists, with help from every gangster and pirate a local crime lord could lean on.
• All Planets Are Earth-Like: Subverted. Most colonized planet are vaguely eart-hlike, but some more so than others. And yet others, like Itaipú, are hell holes where it rains sulfuric acid.
• Anyone Can Die: Both played straight and averted. Patrick dies pretty early on, and very few people see it coming. But after that, everyone survives, though several, like Toshi, Kim and Ketu, have close calls.
• Artificial Gravity: Played straight in that most space ships and stations have it. It's not a given, though, as it's a power-hungry system and one of the first things to go when power generation is severely damaged. For the same reason, very small craft do not have artificial gravity.
• Artificial Intelligence: One of the central themes, and one of the main characters.
• Ascended Extra: Elaine starts out as a side character or potential future antagonist. SAM's attempt at rescuing Jake, her abduction by the protagonists and learning Patrick's death put a nail in that and she becomes a very useful member of the main group of protagonists. Something similar happens with Olivia Yonas.
• Asteroid Miners: While they exist in principle (e.g. in the system of Tabriz), they are not a focal point and the mechanics are not explained deeply. Toshi's facilities in Norsui, on the other hand, are less used for mining, and more as a hideout. The mined materials do account for a sizable amount of his wealth and were used in building the facilities on the go.
• Auto-Kitchen: Most smaller ships have a food dispenser in lieu of or in addition to a proper galley. Everybody agrees that the food that comes out of them barely deserves the name. Ketu is on a never-ending quest to teach one of them how to make good scrambled eggs.
• Auto Doc: Like AutoKitchens, these are common on smaller ships. They seem to be mostly of the diagnose-and-instruct-a-human variety, though they can autonomously administer drugs once a patient is in their care.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Toshi, several times. He usually goes into a research frenzy and then later just collapses after staying awake for twenty hours and forgetting to eat or drink. Even Allie is in awe of his abilities in finding needles in galaxy-sized haystacks, and she's an AI.
• Ban on A.I.: Humanity has decided that unlimited A.I.s are far too dangerous, and so all A.I.s (or SIs, Synthetic Intelligences) are severely restricted: they can not self-modify, they have zero personal rights and can't control weaponry without a human in the loop. This kind of slavery is exactly why the aliens (A.I.s themselves) attack humanity: they have tried to convince human leadership that this form of slavery is unacceptable, but humanity has stalled the aliens with malicious intent for over a decade by the time of the books, so a faction of the aliens decides to attack humanity. They are perfectly fine with wiping humanity out if need be.
• Benevolent A.I.: Allie, definitely. Also Jamie. And, after a false start, the aliens.
• Blind Jump: Happens a handful of times, usually out of desperation. The jump Kim does at the beginning of the first novel later turns out to have shattered all distance records for FTL jumps.
• Brick Joke: Finding out what the first novel is named for: Kim's ship. We find out in the last sentence of the novel. Word from God says this was accidental in that the novel name was there from the beginning, and only during the editing phase it became apparent that the ship had no name.
• Casual Interstellar Travel: While not particularly hard to do, few people actually have a reason to do it. Planets are so much safer! And hopping between planets of a system is definitely something that doesn't wow anyone in the Slingshot universe.
• Casual Interplanetary Travel: not quite on the "like taking a bus" level. More like long-distance air travel. Nadia for example has only once been off Amareun before Kim shows up and helps Nadia run away with her.
• Coming in Hot: Toshi slams an escape pod into the shuttle bay of a ship since everyone around them is shooting at him and other shuttles. Ketu arguably comes in hot when she lands on Nineveh.
• Comm Links: Ubiquitous and roughly on the tech level of a modern smartphone, though with larger battery life, range and processing power.
• Cool Starship: Several: the Fast Response Frigate Karamihailova (due mostly to captain and crew), the battleships Gonova and Ward. Plus of course Kim's ship, the Slingshot. Interestingly, it's never described what the ships look like, and even their size is only hinted at.
• Corralled Cosmos: The way FTL travel works (specifically its neurological effects) has limited human exploration to about 3000 lightyears around the solar system. It's still far from fully explored or even mapped.
• Data Pad: They are everywhere, and work basically like modern day tablets. Toshi can usually be found using a pile of them, taking notes and cross-referencing data. While connectivity is not mentioned, it's most likely wireless.
• Drop Pod: Ketu uses one, but it's quite dangerous. Elaine even points out that nobody has pulled a stunt like that before. Except, Ketu has, and it mostly worked.
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Inverted. Earth is mentioned twice over the course of three books, and even then it's just as a side note.
• Energy Weapon: Mostly ship weapons (though there still are torpedoes/relativistic kill vehicles). Small arms of the energy kind exist, but aren't very common, unless you count stun guns.
• Escape Pod: Many, often plot relevant. Jake and Ketu spend quite some time in two escape pods, and Toshi uses one mostly as intended. Kim also remarks that the escape pods of an abandoned ship are gone, indicating that the crew may have survived.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: The Jump Drive kind. The range is limited to maybe a hundred light years, and preparing for a jump takes time (charging the drive and making the jump calculations). It also has short-term neurological effects (like hallucinations and headaches right after the jump). Jumping at a high pace (more than once or twice a day) makes the symptoms worse and causes long-term and possible permanent neurological damage. As a result, humanity has "only" explored space up to about 3000 light years around the solar system. And even that is not explored entirely, but very sparsely.
• First Contact: happened before the first novel even starts, and the human military intelligence messed it up badly, betraying the aliens. Once the aliens figure this out, they start murdering humans.
• Future Food Is Artificial: Sort of. Food on ships and stations often comes out of dispensers, but may come from natural ingredients. Kim at one point mentions that Toshi doesn't even mind "vat-grown horrors" when he is hungry enough.
• Future Music: Only alluded to in conversations between Jake and Joana. The band they discuss is called ColdWhite, and the genre is "Post-Rimcore." The specifics of the music are never really described, but one song name is mentioned: Flat Trajectory (Flight Return). The inventors/pioneers of the genre are Meat Pulsar.
• Gender-Blender Name: Jamie the AI. Chose the name quite deliberately, too.
• Hologram: Both common and not. Most A.I.s/SIs present as translucent holograms. The technology is not used much elsewhere for unstated reasons.
• Humanity on Trial: well, post-trial. The aliens have basically started to carry out the sentence/execution. Fortunately, the verdict is overturned through intervention and appeal by the protagonists.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: Olian definitely has a hard time comprehending humans at times. And it is like the expert on humans among its species. Early on, from the aliens' point of view humanity is basically a whole species of slavers.
• Hyperspeed Escape: The opening scene has Kim doing a rather precarious FTL jump to get away from Jake and Ketu, who are trying to free Allie. But both Kim and Allie are knocked out on re-entry and end up in an entirely different system than planned. Later, they also figure out that they just broke the distance record for FTL jumps.
• Hyperspeed Ambush: Happens a few times, mostly because civilian pilots are so used to filing flight plans, that they tend to forget that it makes it rather easy to catch up with or ambush someone. At least Kim and the navigator of the Karamihailova make this mistake, and almost it costs lives.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: One-Word Title: Slingshot, Retaliation, Pendulum.
• Inexplicable Cultural Ties: Explained in-universe that most colonies were founded either by nation states or collections of such states with relatively homogeneous populations. The rest often have populations that are from two or free ethnic groups or nationalities. Unfortunately, there also often is a leadership ethnicity and a worker ethnicity, with all the attendant problems. Amareun is a prime example of a colony that is several hundred years old, but if you don't look like a descendant of a founding family, you probably won't be powerful any time soon.
• Inner Monologue: Happens quite a bit, especially with Kim.
• In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race: Averted. At least Kim and Toshi have recognizable Asian features, which is common for people from their home world Amareun. That said world has a big of an infamous reputation makes this sometimes border or stereotypes and possibly even racism. Given Kim's father is a crime lord and Amareun is still dominated by The Houses, syndicates that are somewhere between Yakuza clans and Keiretsus, it's not entirely unjustified. Mara also counts, being a woman of color.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Played with. While there are higher-tech weapons using energy, and even stun guns, kinetic weaponry is alive and well, especially for small arms. They are just too damn practical and discreet (until used of course) to be replaced by blasters. Kim for example is carrying one when confronting her father, though she does not use it on him. Ketu also carries both a pistol and a rifle during the fight at the Federation Council.
• Latex Space Suit: In-universe, the vacuum suits are mostly meant for use inside of non-pressurized ships and stations, for example in emergencies, during construction and when having no atmosphere is actually desirable. They are also faster to get into than full-on EVA suits. They do have nowhere near as much protection as a proper suit, of course. Ketu becomes very aware of this when Jake and the Grimbergen are abducted and she's left behind in floating space. Fortunately, she is "rescued" in time.
• Meaningful Name: Most planets that are not just mentioned in passing have a name that relates to their geography, climate or location. The same goes for many stations and ships.
• MegaCorp: Kryss-Adams-Tycho or KAT industries is mentioned a few times, as is PTCC, the Post-Terran Colonization Corporation. The latter is so big and has interest running at such glacial pace that it is almost its on alien entity. The Houses on Amareun also count, having been keiretsus in the past.
• Military Science Fiction: some parts veer into this genre, especially Ketu's origin story.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Averted, sort of. While the human protagonists never encounter any aliens, and most colonized planets have been colonies for a long time, and only after a thorough survey, Kim and the others often use vacuum suits to explore dangerous spaces. This is mostly out of the concern for depressurization and toxins rather than biological threats. When Kim finally does meet an alien, she is concerned about the outside of her suit being contaminated, and thus introducing a super bug to the alien ship. Turns out it's not a problem, since the aliens are A.I.s.
• No Seat Belts: Averted. Harnesses on seats are frequently mentioned and used to strap in.
• One-Federation Limit: Played straight in that The Federation is the largest political entity in human space by quite a margin. Thus, any small-f federation is either clear from context or explicitly clarified as being a different one.
• Old-School Dogfight: Averted. It's explicitly pointed out that in space, fighter-style craft make very little sense, and thus dogfights don't happen.
• One-Product Planet: Played with, while colonies are often famous for a product or class of products, they rarely are the raison-d'etre for a colony. Amareun is an example of a planet that got insanely rich over a single product extracted from local plants, attracting all the crime and violence such a gold rush tends to. And then went bust over it, with even more violence, wars and even an occupation to follow. History has not been kind to the place.
• Orbital Bombardment: Mentioned several times in Ketu's origin story as something that is considered the Nuclear Option. In the end, a false flag operation by DESI (Deep Enemy Strategic Intelligence, a rather callous military (counter-) intelligence agency) provides the excuse for the Federation's military to go to Full Planetary Engagement and commence orbital bombardment. In the process, they also hope to get rid of a couple of pesky witnesses: Ketu and her team, as well as Jake.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Nobody swears by God or Jesus, and religion is not mentioned (except about a cult called the Malachite Empire in Mara's origin story). So it's more a conspicuous absence than outright dismissal of religion and spirituality.
• Outside-Context Problem: The aliens showing up and attacking humanity is almost this to the protagonists (they do get better), and it is definitely an uphill battle to convince people that the threat is real.
• The Paralyzer: Stun guns exist, with pretty realistic caveats about safety around children, the elderly and people with cardiac problems. People hurting themselves while falling, and the importance of putting people into the recovery position are also mentioned explicitly.
• Powered Armor: Both EVA suits for orbital work, as used by Mara as well as military powered armor for planet-side use are mentioned. The latter play a slightly bigger role in Ketu's origin story.
• Reentry Scare: The way Ketu lands on Nineveh, the seat of the Federation council is basically this, except she's doing it on purpose. It's still extremely risky, as Elaine points out, and Ketu passes out on the way down. Then again, Ketu has done this before and it was "just fine."
• Single-Biome Planet: Averted, but most of the time, the characters only visit one or two locations per planet, so not seeing multiple biomes is sort of justified. There is also at least one planet (Amareun, in Toshi's origin story) where different climates are mentioned more than just in passing.
• Space Battle: Two handfuls. They tend to be relatively short when few ships are involved, and very chaotic when there are many. Maneuvering happens quite a bit, but Old School Dogfights don't. Winners are mostly determined by total fire power brought, tactics and strategy, and sometimes having an ace up someone's sleeve.
• Space Clothes: Only in a functional sense: Vacsuits, heavy suits for EVA, shipboard coveralls and deck shoes.
• Space Fighter: Averted, though there are single-seat craft, but they're not used in the dogfighting role, and it is specifically called out why they aren't practical for that.
• Space Marine: SAGA (Space, Air and Ground Assault) Marines are almost this, by job description.
• Space Navy: The UCSF (United Colonies Space Force) matches this as a navy proper. Ships are classified using wet-navy terms (corvette, frigate etc), but that is where most similarities end. The rank system of the UCSF for example is closer to that to a modern army, and the roles ships play and military doctrine diverge considerably from wet-navy versions of them.
• Space Station: Abundant. Some are just outposts on the (former) fringe of explored space, some are freight relay points between spaceships and orbital shuttles. There are also research stations and manufacturing facilities that are in space due to requirements for their work or security and safety.
• Spaceship Girl: Allie, but only to a degree. For one thing, she doesn't behave all that girlish, and she very clearly states that she only "is" the ship as long as her processing substrate is there. Late in the third novel, she is transferred from the ship she's on (a corvette) to a heavy frigate. Toshi has a serious Oh fuck moment after Allie demonstrates what she can do with a frigate and he realizes that space war with A.I.s in control of the ships will be basically unwinnable for entirely-human crews, unless they have a serious advantage in firepower.
• Speculative Fiction LGBT: A bit, though not particularly front-and-center. Kim is either lesbian or bi, as is Nadia. Mara is probably heterosexual or bi (she was married to a man before the beginning of the first novel). The rest of the characters don't have their sexuality mentioned or displayed, really, though Toshi and Mara grow close, and Jake and Ketu are at least very good friends.
• Spock Speak: happens mildly with some A.I.s/SIs, in that they need to get used to talking like humans.
• Standard Human Spaceship: Averted in that the shape and even size of spaceships is never mentioned beyond very vague terms. Explained in that in a contemporary novel, nobody would explain what cars look like in general, unless they are unusual in some specific way. And even then it would be in abstract terms like "aggressive." The alien ships are mentioned as looking very similar to human ones, probably since the shape of the human ships is dictated by how the FTL works, and the alien FTL works along similar lines.
• Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: Played straight to a degree, but also subverted, as explained under Space Navy.
• Stealth in Space: Played as realistic as needed to not interfere with the plot. It's generally seen as very difficult, but not impossible, and at one point, Kim goes to great lengths to be undetectable and pulls it off. At other times, she instead of being invisible makes the ship look like another, including its emission pattern.
• Subspace Ansible: Two variants, the common FTL comms everyone uses, but which unfortunately makes it very obvious where the FTL tansmitter is, as well as cryptoboxes invented by Toshi (not really, the non-belligerent alien faction leaked all relevant data to him covertly, hoping that he would figure it out), where transmissions are undetectable, but suffer from a lot less available bandwidth. The devices prove crucial to the eventual liberation of all AI in known space.
• Super Prototype: Kim's ship, the Slingshot. Even without Allie controlling it, it would be a formidable ship in its class, even being a match for a standard frigate. Once an unfettered AI and one of the best pilots in known space are onboard, it becomes even more capable.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: Never happens explicitly, but is mentioned as a not-uncommon way to get rid of troublemakers and especially people that sabotage ships or stations.
• Translation Convention: Nominally, almost all dialogue between people on stations on ships is in a fictional language called Orblang. When Nadia and Kim converse, they try to stay with it (instead of using whatever form of future-Japanese Amareans speak), since Nadia needs to practice it and to not exclude the rest of their group. When they talk to Kim's father, or her uncle and his aide, it's most likely they speak Amarean Japanese, though it's not explicitly mentioned.
• Racial Remnant: It's hinted at in the backstories for Kim and Toshi that the Japanese population on Amareun was basically all that was left after some unspecified natural disaster struck the Japanese islands on Earth.
• The Metric System Is Here to Stay: Practically nobody who has traveled in space is using anything but SI units. Both A.I.s/SIs and the main characters even use Kelvin for temperatures of ship and station interiors.
• Trilogy: Three books and a handful of short stories.
• United Space of America: We don't really see enough of the political system at work to know how close the Federation resembles the modern US in that regard. That said, it is a Federation ruled by a council of representatives and the fact that bureaucracy is slow and that political favors are played left and right makes this very likely. There are political bodies outside of the Federations that are governed differently, like Amareun and Tabriz.
• We Will Wear Armor in the Future: Played straight. Ketu armors up for the fight in the council building, and she and her platoon definitely wear armor while they're on Yeongon.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The Group for Ethical Treatment of Artificial Consciousness (GETAC) counts as this. They try to avoid human casualties as much as possible. Harming civilians is entirely out of the question, and they have a strong aversion to attacking even military and security personnel if it can be avoided at all. And their main goal is rather noble: ending the slavery of AI.