AI tomorrow, or today? This week's paid recommendation
BogiReads brings you the daily speculative reading recommendation of editor Bogi Takács.
Today's recommendation -
A very recent, near-future novella that takes aim at the use of AI in policing, strange yet eerily familiar tech cults, and more!
Author: Greg Egan
Title: “Death and the Gorgon”
Venue: Asimov’s, Jan/Feb 2024
Type: Novella (Unsure of the wordcount, I read it in print
Themes: Science fiction, near future, life extension, AI, policing, murder mystery
Where to read: Buy in print or ebook here
Now that I have a workplace budget to buy books, subscriptions etc. (and I do at least some of my research in Science Fiction Studies), I got some print subscriptions, including to Asimov’s. The Jan/Feb issue was the first one I received, and I enjoyed reading it.
This was one of the two novellas in the issue – I’m always excited about a new Greg Egan story. I used to read everything of his; I need to catch up, because I missed some of his more recent books while I was dealing with my immigration process.
This is a near future murder mystery about life extension that satirizes the Effective Altruism movement. It probably also works if you don’t know anything about Effective Altruism, but if you do, it adds a further layer of enjoyment to the narrative. I was honestly kind of surprised about this, but happy about it. I think Greg Egan’s far-future AI-focused narratives are read by many who are at the very least Effective Altruism-adjacent, and often for inspiration; so the same readers might be more amenable to critiques from the same source. Also, murder mystery!
My only qualm was that this is a police procedural and it could have been a bit more critical of the police – though it is critical of the police, and specifically of the use of “AI” in policing. But overall a cool read, in multiple ways (some I expected, some I didn't); I also felt like reading SFF with a mystery-ish slant and Asimov’s delivered.
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A little bonus: here is how much short fiction & poetry I read in January. A lot of these are still 2023 stories / poems; occasionally older.
61 short stories (I probably forgot to add some to my spreadsheet, so, more?) – out of them 13 listed to recommend. My favorite story of January was in the latest issue of F&SF and I hope to recommend it next week.
58 poems, out of them 10 listed to recommend. I haven’t yet made up my mind about my favorite poem, there were multiple very strong contenders.
10 novelettes. I didn’t like any of them enough to recommend, sorry! (I do have a bunch lined up to read by authors whose work I generally enjoy.)
5 novellas, the only one I would recommend is above.
I am reading short stories instead of doomscrolling and I hope you are enjoying the results (I certainly am!), but my January was actually terribly busy – I’m surprised I got to read ANYthing.
Happy weekend!!
Bogi.