Science Fiction Tried to Warn Us about AI. Or Did It?, by Tom Gammarino Essay [email protected] Wed, 03/01/2023 - 03:46 Photo by NASA / Unsplash “All our AI Frankenstein stories,” the author writes, “warn us that AI will destroy us, but far louder than that, they promise that the future is going to be mind-blowing and epic.” Will we heed the warnings? Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the literary work that most clearly established the conventions of science fiction as we know it. Not only did the 1818 novel pioneer the archetype of the mad scientist, it also established one of the genre’s most important cultural roles: to warn us about ways humans, through our hubris, might create the very beings that eventually undo us. In subtitling the novel The Modern Prometheus, Shelley harked back to the Titan who stole fire from the gods and was punished by having his regenerating liver devoured every day by an eagle (since the liver was the seat of the emotions for the Greeks, we might as well translate it as “heart”). Inspired by the experiments of Luigi Galvani, who used electric current to stimulate the leg of a dissected frog, and his nephew Giovanni Aldini, who ran a similar experiment on a hanged criminal, Shelley had her mad scientist play God by endowing a patchwork of human remains with the spark of life. Two centuries later, the resulting monstrosity serves as a stand-in for any of our runaway technologies — the internal... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2023-03-01 09:46:57 UTC ]
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Pushkin Press will launch its non-fiction line with Summer Before the Dark by Volker Weidermann later this month. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-01-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Children’s publisher Nosy Crow has appointed Katherine Halligan to the new role of head of non-fiction and activity publishing. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-01-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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How many have you read? Test yourself by seeing if you can match first lines to the titles of the Monitor's favorite novels (and one collection of short stories) from 2015. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2015-12-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Macmillan Children’s Books has bought the world rights to A Girl Called Owl, a new tween fiction novel, from Skylark Literary. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-12-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The number of Americans using adblockers will grow over the next three months, according to a report released today by Digital Content Next, a trade group representing online publishers. The study estimates that about a third of Amer ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2015-12-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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At a time when the translation market is shrinking, the internet giant’s publishing arm, AmazonCrossing, has leapt ahead as by far the biggest publisher of English versions of international titles this year. Alison Flood inspects its basketTranslation Tuesdays: read poetry, short stories and... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-12-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Scribd is adding sheet music, science and technical titles and Sesame Street books to its ebook subscription service. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-12-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Key festive titles from publishers are now on bookshop shelves, including a number of new titles from big-name authors. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-11-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Del Rey, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, has acquired "a bold new voice in fantasy fiction" in author Mark de Jager. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-11-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Tom Gauld rings the changes for short fiction, following Philip Hensher’s article on creating an anthology of British short stories Continue reading... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-11-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Noy Holland on perhaps the most difficult and weighted subject an author can tackle. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-11-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2015 is David Almond for 'A Song for Ella Grey.' Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-11-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jeanette Winterson has said that as a society "we've got our values all wrong" as she warned against further cuts to the arts ahead of the Chancellor’s autumn statement on 25th November. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-11-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Thomson Reuters is “exploring strategic options” for its Intellectual Property & Science business. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-11-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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HarperLegend, with its focus on discovering new literary talent, will consider manuscripts submitted by un-agented authors. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-11-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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There are some men who, upon learning that I have been involved in two feminist books, like to say to me that women are: “More equal now than before, so why do we still need feminism?” Typically, their tone has a kind of faux-earnest, head-cocked-to-one-side, u ok hun? edge to it. They aren’t... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Ellen Banda-Aaku has long battled with her African publishers to make her teen/YA books ‘suitable’ enough to print. Now she’s started to stand her ground for the sake of her teenager readers – and risks not being published at allPlus find out about #ProjectKala, a campaign to promote reading in... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Penguin Lessons is a warm and unique story about an unlikely friendship between a man and a penguin, and fond memories of a long-ago trip to South America. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Authors Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison answer questions about their new book Never Evers (Chicken House). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-11-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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We take a look back at the winners from the past 10 years of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-10-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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