For the record, I became self-aware as the left foot on a blind man.
This first line from the short story “Left Foot on a Blind Man,” by Julie Czerneda has to rank as one of the most original openers I’ve read in a long time. From The A.I Chronicles, the latest installment of the Future Chronicles series, this line also captures the essence of this sci-fi anthology.
Artificial Intelligence, computers with agency that become “self-aware” (in itself a loaded term), machines able to think and act for themselves. Will it be the next step in the evolution of mankind or a Terminator-like future where the machines turn on their human masters? Let’s see what this collection has to say:
In “Left Foot on a Blind Man,” author Julie Czerneda tells of an accidental awareness. In her future, RRPs, or robotic replacement parts for missing human body parts, are common. Naturally, such parts need some processing horsepower to integrate with their hosts, and the processor on this particular part just happened to get an extra tweak. The self-aware CPU, who is also the narrator, tells how he was recycled into the right arm of a bricklayer, then the nose of a cook, each time taking more and more control with tragic results.
“Maker” by Sam Best gives us a darkly hopeful tale from the perspective of the creator of AI. Now a recluse, Judah is visited by an android. The creature has immense power and he treats his Maker (Judah) to a review of the world his invention has wrought:
It was a quiet world—a world of hums and soft clicks, and of a steady, low-current electric field that Judah felt in his bones. There were no vehicles, and no birds. The metal material of the contiguous buildings shifted like flowing lava, in larger-scale patterns that resembled the same shifting movement of the android’s skull.
Why call this hopeful? The android has an unexpected request that only his Maker can honor.
Many of us define ourselves by our work, but in a world of AI, how much work will there actually be for humans? From EE Giorgi, a favorite scientist-writer of mine, comes “Naria,” a story filled with terrific futuristic medical details and acronyms about a doctor who has no patients, just a queue of reports to approve from the always-perfect AI “doctor.” Peter Sawyer, the doctor-turned-paper-pusher, discovers a mistake and becomes obsessed by it.
Let’s just say machines don’t like to be wrong.
Also, I highly recommend Giorgi's medical thriller, Chimeras.
Did you know there was such a thing as Southern Gothic Robot? As dark as Giorgi gets, it can get even darker. In “Darkly Cries the Digital,” AK Meek talks about grief, the human kind, and how we might pervert technology to make it “better.” A dead son, a grieving housewife, a father who just wants to paper over the emotional loss…and an android. Did you really expect something titled “Darkly Cries the Digital” to end happily?
Susan Kaye Quinn recently released The Legacy Human, book one of the Singularity series about a world fractured by AI. In her short story “Restore” she revisits that world from the point of view of a medical robot. Unit 7435 is taken to his ascender master's home for a special assignment: to care for the master's legacy human lover. The woman is dying and the robot realizes his master intends to ease her passing in a most unconventional manner. The robot’s happiness level drops to one when he realizes what he is being asked to do goes against his programming.
FYI – The Legacy Human is still available at the launch price of 99 cents on Amazon.
These were a few of my favorites. As with any anthology, quality and tastes vary, but the collection is definitely worth your time and money.
David Bruns is the creator of the sci-fi series The Dream Guild Chronicles, and one half of the Two Navy Guys and a Novel blog series about co-writing the military thriller, Weapons of Mass Deception, coming in May 2015.
