A big SciFi compendium

 kw: book reviews, science fiction, anthologies, short stories

Androids and AI's and Bots, Oh My! It isn't hard to figure what is on people's minds: just look at what is popular in science fiction.

I see that it has been two weeks since I posted. The current volume contains 31 stories, many of which reward close reading: The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 7 (2022-2023), edited by Neil Clarke. It has been an enjoyable fortnight.

Unlike any other volume of SciFi stories in recent years, this time there were no stories that I actively disliked. I awarded at least one "+" to all but three, and to those I gave a "~", for "ordinary, but not bad." The majority received "++", meaning, "I'm glad I read it", and three of them I marked "+++", for "good and full of great ideas".

Had I had time for more than reading these past two weeks I'd have reviewed a few stories at a time, daily. As it is, what I have time for is to touch on the three "+++" stories, and leave you with this chart of my notes:

As I finished each story I wrote a one-line impression on a copy of the table of contents. Now, on to the stories I liked best:

• "Aptitude" by Cooper Shrivastava – My one-liner is, "Interviewing to be a god—Parable of Gödel's Incompleteness". The woman being tested is one of the last humans, the last denizens of our universe, among a "room" full of singular persons—they appear mostly human to her—who are presumably from other universes. The interview candidates are each tasked to build a model universe, on a much-too-short timeline. Without giving away too much, let us just say that she and another interviewee collaborate to sidestep the process, using recursion to break the system.
• "Jaunt" by Ken Liu – Here I have, "Telepresence robots!! Reaction – Counterreaction". Imagine a very capable, roughly hobbit-sized, robot on a farm in Myanmar through which you can experience much of what it is like to work on that farm. Further, imagine hosting such a robot as it shadows you and your work or leisure activity, conversing with you as though the person "riding" the robot were actually with you. Of course, governments will want to either get involved or control such activities. Imagine the dollars lost by traditional tourism companies! Naturally, an encrypted system is developed to get around the totalitarian restrictions. It resembles TOR, the first incarnation of a hidden Internet.
• "Bots of the Lost Ark" by Suzanne Palmer – I wrote, "AI vs AI – Artificial Initiative almost as good as the real thing". Like in many of the stories, here Bots are small, ranging down to barely visible, and exist in huge numbers. They can conglomerate to perform more complex functions, even carrying out a human's duties; the word "glom" is coopted for such groupings. But these bots and gloms get a mind of their own, and the superintelligent Ship needs all the help it can get from a small number of more loyal bots to regain control of mutinous gloms.

I note that a recurring theme is subversive activity. It runs throughout this anthology; not in all the stories, but a majority. It makes sense from a societal perspective: those who still trust Government are seen as threatening to a majority who have lost that trust. The feeling is mutual. So, modern "saviors" and "heroes" are those who get the better of the powerful persons and organizations that are seen as dominating our lives, or attempting to do so (Does anybody want to know why Mark Zuckerberg is building a house the size of a football field in the middle of a 4,000-acre self-sufficient farm in Hawaii?).

Get this book, read the stories, write your own one-line summaries. You'll be the better for it.