Tag: robots

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (Literary / spectulative fiction)

A captivating book about Zelu — a disabled Nigerian American author (unpublished) and teacher who gets cancelled (and fired) due to her insensitivity (really deeply provoked impatience!) with her more irritating students. It’s also about the new book she writes — Rusted Robots — which becomes an overnight sensation. A post-apocalyptic story where robots and AI are at war over the tattered remains of human civilization, Rusted Robots brings her fame, fortune, some wild, tech-based opportunities, and a whole lot of people who suddenly feel entitled to tell her exactly what to do.

There are so many intellectually interesting and intersecting threads in this story — AI and automation, family, gender roles, African culture, authorial creativity and control, fame, freedom vs safety, disabilities, and the balance between individual and society — but the overarching theme is one of my favorites: the place of narrative and story in human culture. After all, I read fiction because I seek understanding, not just information.

Okorafor manages to blend multiple genres brilliantly, and since I am a fan of both literary and speculative fiction, I was riveted from start to finish. The characters were drawn so deeply — like all of my favorite people, they seemed to be compelling, annoying, loud, supportive, controlling, and caring all at once. I appreciated the fact that while most of the characters were Black (with the exception of the “wealthy white dudes” who keep finding her), there was no antipathy towards white people, just more of a lack of interest.

The big twist at the end absolutely blew me away. And a last little make-me-happy tidbit? She included a call out to one of my favorite (and fairly obscure for the U.S.) books — So Long A Letter by Mariamba Ba.

In my Top Reads of the Year list.

Quotes:
“The rusted robots in the story were a metaphor for wisdom, patina, acceptance, embracing that which was you, scars, pain, malfunctions, needed replacements, mistakes. What you were given. The finite. Rusted robots did not die in the way that humans did, but they celebrated mortality. Oh, she loved this story and how true it felt.”

“The capitalism machine had used her book, her attempt at shouting into the void, to make visual comfort food for drowsy minds.”

“She thought about Rusted Robots and the main character, who understood deep in her circuits that true power was in the harnessing of it, not the possessing of it. And when you were aware of the moment you harnessed power, that was when it was most difficult to navigate.“

“Narrative is one of the key ways automation defines the world. We Humes have always been clear about this fact. Stories are what holds all things together. They make things matter, they make all things be, exist. Our codes are written in a linear fashion. Our protocols are meant to be carried out with beginnings, middles, ends. Look at how I have been built. My operating system is Ankara themed, my body etched with geometric Ankara designs. I’m the embodiment of a human story. But true storytelling has always been one of the few great things humanity could produce that no automation could. Stories were prizes to be collected, shared, protected, and experienced”

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on January 14th, 2025.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells (Science Fiction – Audio Book)

Really enjoyed this sci fi book about part organic / part inorganic genderless security bot who has managed to disable his governor module (the one that forces him to obey orders) and becomes a far better being without it. He has no name but calls himself “Murder Bot” to himself for reasons that become known much later. There is a lot of action as the group of humans he has been hired to protect are under attack from some mysterious enemy, but what I really like about the book is the bots wry self assessment and growth in ways he neither expected nor, in all honesty, necessarily wanted. Loved it and will go on to read the series (which has apparently been optioned as TV series!). Great reader — I enjoyed listening…

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune (Speculative Fiction)

Writing: 4/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 3.5/5
A small and definitely diverse family (consisting as it does of three robots and a small human) lives happily in a dense forrest finding discarded electronic treasures in the local (and wildly gigantic) scrap heap and refurbishing them. Two successful refurbishments are now part of the family: Rambo — the ultra-loquacious, ultra-needy, and anxiety plagued vacuum robot; and the truly twisted and psychopathic Nurse Ratched (Registered Automaton To Care, Heal, Educate and Drill) — possessed of a dry wit and an “Empathy Protocol” she engages to hysterical effect.

When they find a damaged (and very handsome) robot in the scrap and manage to bring him back to “life,” it unleashes the force of the Robot Authority — the same group that wiped out all humans because they were busily destroying each other and the Earth. A rescue mission into the City of Electric Dreams with the “help” of a wild cast of characters along the way and a gay, interspecies romance (if you count advanced robots as a species) round out the tale.

I liked the characters and the humor — laughed out loud many times. I really liked the ongoing philosophical discussions and thoughts — plenty of existential considerations and an exploration of what it means to human, sentient, and / or conscious. Guilt, forgiveness, grief, and joy and what it means to experience those emotions. A scrutiny of Morality in a wide gamut of situations. And lastly, what does it means for a species to evolve? I also loved the well-integrated cultural references, especially to one of my all time favorite movies (Top Hat — yes!). The adventure sequences went on a bit too long for my taste, though I admit they included some pretty creative beings and mechanisms and I’m not really into ANY adventure sequences, so …

Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on April 25th, 2023

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (speculative fiction)

200 years after The Awakening — when sentient robots left the abusive factories for the wilderness, rejecting further contact with humans — a human and robot meet in a twist on the traditional “First Contact” story. Sibling Dex — a gender neutral monk, meets Mossbank — a sentient “wild-built” robot whose family tree boasts several generations of wild-built individuals descending from16 factory bots. What follows is short on plot but long in world building, while we follow the two as they wander through untraveled areas and talk about their similarities, differences, and rising self-awareness.

I’m a big Becky Chambers fan — I enjoy her writing and her exploration of cultures. This is the beginning of a new series, and I’m hoping some of the future episodes have a little more plot to them. While this was philosophically interesting, I did get a little bored to be honest. Also, she uses the pronoun “their” for Dex and his/her fellow monks. This drove me crazy — I was not able to get used to it although it peppered every single page. Every time I read the word I struggled to figure out who the rest of the people were and then had to remember it was only Dex! Every time! I’m super happy to use someone’s choice of pronoun when I remember — including a made up one (I like zhe) — but using plurals for a singular drives me batty. I probably won’t read the next book because of this — I just don’t need the cognitive load. However, if this doesn’t bother you and you enjoy slow-paced, philosophical, stories, you will enjoy this!

Thank you to Macmillian-Tor/Forge and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on July 13th, 2021.

Almost Human by HC Denham (Speculative Fiction)

Writing: 3/5 Plot: 3/5 Characters: 2/5
A cautionary tale of a future where AI based humanoid robots may be slowly taking over the planet while the human population they are intended to serve remains blissfully unaware. All but one — the utterly competent, perfectly empathic, friendly humanoid robots just give Stella Mayfield the creeps.

While the plot had potential, I really didn’t enjoy this book. The characters were extremely stereotyped (and really, although Stella was a Biologist with a PhD, she behaved like the stereotypical neurotic woman while the men behaved like stereotypical men — completely out of touch with their feelings blah blah blah. The techie robot engineer was the biggest stereotype of all (and spoke some weird dialect that didn’t match anything I’m familiar with and I live and work in Silicon Valley!). There is very little science and very little plot — instead it includes lots of filler encompassing a lot of clichéd relationship stuff that had little to do with the plot. Writing is decent enough that I finished the book, but nothing special, and the end was completely predictable. Could have made a decent short story with better characters and more philosophic depth.