Ken Liu is unfortunately better known for his translations of Chinese science-fiction into English but he does write stories of his own. I regret to say that I haven’t read them myself but given his reputation, I was eager to find out what a television series based on his stories would be like. I am pleased to report that the series, casting uploaded human intelligences as gods, is utterly fantastic. The technical details are reasonably plausible, it’s appropriately global in scope and best of all, every character acts rationally in pursuit of their goals according to their individual psychologies. It’s such a perfectly conceived and executed project that I have a hard time understanding how it ever got made.

Maddie Kim is a middle school student who is being bullied and has trouble getting over the death of her father. One day she starts receiving cryptic messages in emoji format and the phones of her bullies are hacked. As the messages grow in sophistication, she learns that the sender is her father, David Kim, who mind has been uploaded. David worked for Logorhythms, a company that has been developing this technology for years under its founder Stephen Holstrom. David agreed to undergo the destructive brain scanning process due to his terminal illness but Logorhythms lied to his family, saying that the process failed and kept his digital self working for them as a slave. Meanwhile Caspian is a genius-level intelligent teenager whose entire life seems to have been orchestrated in minute detail by Logorhythms employees. In India, an engineer named Chanda is kidnapped and forcibly scanned to become an uploaded intelligence by his employer Alliance Telecom when he contemplates changing jobs. This suggests that the technology is spreading, setting the stage for a series of events that will completely change life on Earth.

Uploading human minds may be old hat in written science-fiction but it’s very gratifying not only to watch the scenario play out as a television series but to see it done so competently. I love details like how the uploaded intelligences, or UIs, need some time to adjust their mindsets and how they rely on familiar physical metaphors to manipulate the digital environment. They can hack their way through any kind of conventional computer security but are still constrained by physical limits and may not necessarily know what systems are even out there. Naturally they need to be run on fairly beefy server systems and the need to secure computer hardware, with the accompany power and cooling requirements, figure into the plot as well. The story correctly understands that such UIs are strategic-level assets so corporations and later countries will seek to acquire and hoard them. It doesn’t waste time moralizing over whether they are truly conscious. Of course they are conscious intelligences, but whether they still count as human beings in the visceral sense really depends on the people they interact with. Finally, the story takes place across the world and isn’t constrained to just the US. The rise of the UIs is a world-changing event, touching every corner of the planet.

I love how the characters are all smart and act rationally. When Maddie has to meet a stranger in a public place, she pays an older student from school to go with her as insurance. When Chanda resorts to violence, he goes for the kill immediately without any stupid grandstanding. It can be argued that Logorhythms doesn’t seem to go after the Kims aggressively enough after David escapes, it is also shown that they’re constrained by the basic decency of some of their employees and they’re still just an American tech company and don’t actually have evil corporate black ops forces. The cultist loyalty of Logorhythms’ top leadership towards Holstrom that would lead to devote their entire lives to complete his secret project is something to behold and it’s so mature how the story treats the relationship between Maddie’s mother and her father. The governments of the world react exactly as you’d expect as they hurry to recruit and create trusted UIs of their own. It’s so complete and well written even with the large and varied cast of characters. My favorite character is probably Justine, Maddie’s friend from school who is so blunt and so chill even though she knows only a tiny fraction of what’s going on.

The series was nearly cancelled with the story being incomplete after the first season. I suppose it was too much to hope that such a sophisticated, cerebral story could find a wide audience. Thankfully, it was picked up by and finished by another studio and I definitely will be moving on to it soon. In my opinion, this really is one of the best science-fiction shows ever made for television so please do watch it.