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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A mob wife fleeing her past — and a dirty U.S. marshal — gets a little help from a mysterious stranger in Epperson's modern noir tale of revenge and greed.If I were a damsel in distress fleeing a past and people who wanted me dead, like Gina Cicala in the modern noir thriller "Sailor" by Tom... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-04-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The literary genre is white-hot in Hollywood, with filmmakers bidding on unpublished books and paying as much as $1 million for the rights to relatively modest sellers.The back-to-back blockbuster successes of "Harry Potter," "Twilight" and now "The Hunger Games" have turned the hunt for fresh... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Publishers Association has repeated its warnings over government proposals to limit licensing... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-03-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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By encouraging readers to tackle longer, more sophisticated novels, the queen of daytime TV may have hurt overall fiction sales. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2012-03-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Other National Book Critics Circle honorees include writer John Lewis Gaddis for 'George F. Kennan: An American Life' and Maya Jasanoff for 'Liberty's Exiles.' Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-03-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The under-the-radar author won for her collection "Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories."Reporting from New York -- The National Book Critics Circle gave its 2011 fiction prize to Edith Pearlman, an under-the-radar writer of short stories, at its annual awards ceremony Thursday evening at... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The U.S. Justice Department has warned Apple Inc. and five top book publishers that lawsuits over alleged ebook price fixing might be in the offing, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Five US publishers are being threatened with legal action over the way they set prices for electronic books according to reports. Continue reading at BBC World
[ BBC World | 2012-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A novel banned by the Chinese government has made the longlist for the Independent Foreign... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Justice Department has warned Apple Inc. and five of the biggest U.S. publishers that it plans to sue them for allegedly colluding to raise the price of electronic books, according to people familiar with the matter. Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2012-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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'The Lifespan of a Fact' lays out a thought-provoking debate of the issue between authors John D'Agata and Jim Fingal.The key passage in John D'Agata and Jim Fingal's "The Lifespan of a Fact" (W.W. Norton: 124 pp., $17.95 paper) comes late in the book, during an exchange on the role of fact in... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Penguin has acquired a title written by solar physicist Doctor Lucie Green, which looks at the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-02-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Transworld titles earn pride of place in both the Mass-market and Original Fiction charts this... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-02-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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W H Smith is to promote cross- over young adult (YA) titles more directly to adults via a new... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Germany’s top fiction title at the end of December, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out His Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson climbed up from #5, supplanting previous chart-topper Inheritance (Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance was also #2 in Spain). Jonasson’s novel has sold more... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-01-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jon Appleton has been appointed to the newly-created post of editorial director for fiction at... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John Sutherland, a former judge and chair of the Man Booker prize, is to chair the judging panel... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Independent publisher Saqi Books is to launch a new non-fiction imprint, with plans to publish... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Profile Books is to publish a new take on the origins of life by Royal Society prizewinner Nick... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Gibson Square Books will be increasingly "dipping its toe" into fiction, following on... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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