Can someone tell me what book this is?

sevenserpent · Cadet Joined: 12 Nov 2009 Posts: 1

I read a great book about 10 years ago that I would love to read again, or possibly read others by the same author, but I have no memory of the title, author, or apparently any key words that would turn it up with a basic Google search. I do, however, have a pretty clear memory of a lot of the plot, and was wondering if anyone in these forums could help me out! Below is a summary of what I remember--WARNING there are spoilers!

The book started with the crew and passengers of a cargo spaceship that was making a routine journey all arriving; among others there was a jester (or fool? or harlequin?) whose job it was to entertain everyone and make these sort of long trips bearable. There was also a woman with a computer in a briefcase that she was trying to nurture into sentience. At some point into the trip, the ship's systems start going beserk, and it becomes apparent that the briefcase computer has actually become sentient AI and has enter the ship's networks, and then it also is revealed (to the reader, not the rest of the crew) that the jester is actually an AI being in a biological body, and actually this whole mysterious order of jesters is actually a community of sentient AI beings who have ben aound for a while unbeknownst to humans. Lots of issues about revealing themselves, especially since prior to the invention of biovats (where they now get their body parts from) the first AI beings had to take over (read kill) humans to occupy their bodies... The jester enters the ship's networks and tries to calm and recruit this newly aware entity, but it is way more powerful and way scared and basically goes rouge... and I won't give away anymore, because I assume if you know this book, you'd recognize it by now.

Many thanks for any help!!! And I hope there's more to read by the same author!
--Rachel Razz

Ninti

Sorry, that's not ringing any bells.
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A Thing of Eternity

No bells.
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~ To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror, to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror. ~ Frank Herbert

Omphalos

This sounds like one of EC Tubb's Dumarest stories. He wrote about 33 novels in that sequence. Why dont you look those books up at wikipedia or Amazon and see if anything there rings any bells for you?
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Liege-Killer · Moderator - Book Reviewer Joined: 26 Jun 2005 Posts: 3417

I'll take a stab at it -- any chance it might be this? That's all I can come up with by googling "computer briefcase AI sentience." Published in 2000, so the time's right if you read it about 10 years ago. Seems to have some similarities to your description.
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