I feel like I understood what the author was going for here, theme wise, but as a whole this novella kind of fell flat for me.

Scorn is an AI created by their mothers, who are CEOs of mega-corporations on Earth (and the Moon). We begin the novella with Scorn waking up and realizing ze was destroyed at some point, losing time in their most recent investigation - thus, having to retrace their steps and figure out not only what they were finding out, but who tried to kill them and way. 

There are some really fun interesting bits of ideas here. A black box bar provides a secure space for Scorn and other robots/AI to hang out and maybe have discussions about autonomy that might make humans a little nervous. The bar AI itself may or may not be into Scorn, ze has to figure that one out. Scorn can print various bodies, and though ze spends most of the time in humanoid bodies, ze feels most comfortable in a spider-like body. 

There are also threads of ideas that also touch on the possibility of AI fighting to be recognized as sentient beings, and the way humans poorly to that. I felt like it was meant to mirror, in a way, the fight that trans and genderqueer folks are up against right now. 

As I said, great ideas are woven throughout this. Unfortunately, the narrative itself just absolutely fell flat for me. When not touching on interesting ideas, I just didn't care at all what Scorn was doing. Didn't care who tried to kill them, didn't care what the story they were chasing was. 

This is absolutely a great idea put to paper, and I think Ogden has some brilliant ways of interrogating gender and parent-child relationships through Scorn's journey. I just wish the entire narrative itself lived up to those ideas. 

Emergent Properties will be released on July 25th, 2023; thanks to NetGalley and Tordotcom for the review copy.