What rights should artificial intelligence have? Are they more than just the sum of their code? Can AIs love? Any science fiction fan worth their salt has pondered these questions at length. And these questions pop up time and again ...
Read More »Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
I had no idea what to expect with this one. I loved the cover and the blurb talked about AI – I was sold. The premise is very simple and I raced through the novel. When I reached the halfway ...
Read More »Bête: Wait here, the cat had said. Fuck that.
Adam Roberts is hardly a new voice in SFF writing, and yet he was new to me. Or, should I say, his fiction work was new to me. Long ago I had come across one of his academic works on ...
Read More »The films that never were…
The recent release of Marvel’s Ant-Man enters into a wonderful ‘what if’ scenario. What if original director and writer Edgar Wright had stayed on the project he had been moulding since before the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? What ...
Read More »CHAPPiE: An AI gangsta with a heart of gold
Since Neill Blomkamp’s stellar debut, District 9 (2009), he has continued to be an active voice in science fiction cinema. While Elyisum (2013), with it’s heavy handed moralistic metaphors, was a disappointment (knowing Blomkamp was capable of producing so much ...
Read More »Ex Machina: Does Ava actually like you or is she pretending to like you?
Ex Machina is the latest film by writer-director Alex Garland. It is essentially a three-piece between reclusive social media mogul Nathan (Oscar Isaacs), the A.I. Ava (Alicia Vikander) who he has built, and Caleb, an employee brought in to test ...
Read More »Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
After seeing Ancillary Justice recommended by practically every one of my favourite authors I had to find out what all the fuss was about. Not only that, the novel has been awarded a number of prestigious awards, including the Hugo ...
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