- overlandandseas::blogZola2026-08-05T00:00:00+00:00https://overlandandseas.dev/posts/atom.xmlDepiction of AI in Science Fiction2026-08-05T00:00:00+00:002026-08-05T00:00:00+00:00
Unknown
https://overlandandseas.dev/posts/sf-depiction-of-ai/<p>Lately I’ve been reading <a rel="nofollow noreferrer external" href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222725518-empire-of-ai">a lot</a> <a rel="nofollow noreferrer external" href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216848047-ai-engineering">about</a> <a rel="nofollow noreferrer external" href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/245645195-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai">AI</a>, mixed with some science fiction (also about AI). Some of it has depictions or guesses on how we might use AI. Some have it as any standard interaction with a computer, where the idea of an OS or typing into something to get a message is no longer an option, we must interact with an AI program that will ration our speech through NLP and turn it into commands that any computer would do. Others depict no difference than humans, as another race of beings with equal judgments and interactions these are less interesting.</p>
<h2 id="red-mars">Red Mars<a class="zola-anchor" href="#red-mars" aria-label="Anchor link for: red-mars" style="visibility: hidden;"></a>
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<figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/redmars.jpg"
alt="Red Mars in Mass Market Paperback"
width="200"
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<p><em>Red Mars</em>, published in 1992, is a book about 100 astronauts going to Mars to start the colonization process. Kim Stanley Robinson invites us to theorize every little detail of how this is accomplished, how the selection processes should go, and what policies and religion we should introduce to Mars. And, as we see in its sequels, Green and Blue Mars, terraforming and war (sometimes one and the same).</p>
<p>AI in the Mars series is used as an interface with large sets of data to parse it into human-readable format, very similar to our use case today, but hopefully with more success.</p>
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<div class="content"><p>He called up Sax, and asked if he could connect his <strong>AI</strong> into the UNOMA emigration and planetary travel records, without alerting UNOMA to the connection. After some investigation Sax got back to him and said that he could manage that, and so John sent a sequence of questions through, and then continued to fly. An hour and many craters later, Pauline's redlight blinked rapidly, indicating a downloading of raw data. John asked the <strong>AI</strong> to run the data through various analyses, and when she was done he studied the results on the screen. Patterns of movement; they were confusing, but he hoped that when matched with the sabotage incidents, something might turn up.</p>
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<p>There isn’t a clear indication of what interface John is using here, whether it’s typing on a screen or audibly asking his AI to research the data. Other examples include translating language, alerting someone when some data reaches a preset threshold, automatic decryption, and any general computing.</p>
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<div class="content"><p>Ann was still not talking, and they did not ask her to drive. Sax drove with one eye on his <strong>AI</strong> screen, which was giving him atmospheric readouts. She could tell from across the car that the <em>AI</em> was indicating that the impact of Phobos was thickening the atmosphere a great deal, projected to as much a fifty millibar addition, an extraordinary amount.</p>
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<p>There is also the concept that people have their own personal AI, or a specific ship can have a built-in one. This is similar again to running our own models that will have access to our own messages and data. It’s not a new idea. Kim Stanley Robinson gets it close to how we may see ourselves using AI today, for very specific tasks that may replace computers in general. There is no concept of hallucinations or interpreting data incorrectly, as AI does now. But from 1992, it is impressive how this may seem.</p>
<h2 id="anathem">Anathem<a class="zola-anchor" href="#anathem" aria-label="Anchor link for: anathem" style="visibility: hidden;"></a>
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src="/blog_img/anathem.jpg"
alt="Anathem in Mass Market Paperback"
width="200"
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<p><em>Anathem</em>, from 2008, is a wild book. Written by Neal Stephenson, who, in Cryptonomicon, predicted cryptocurrencies, netbooks, and encrypted emacs. I include it here to contrast what even a computer may look like in a science fiction world. Referred to as “syndevs,” the main character does not care or know how to interface with a computer, relying on internal knowledge, and only interfacing with tablets, jeejaws, or syndevs when the required thinking is computational in nature. As such, concepts like content filtering or the opposite are completely foreign to them.</p>
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<div class="content"><p>So crap filtering became important. Businesses
were built around it. Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to
make more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the
Reticulum deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap
back out. They created <strong>syndevs</strong> whose sole purpose was to spew crap into the
Reticulum. But it had to be good crap.</p>
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<p>Two years after the creation of Twitter and one year after the launch of the iPhone, we were already aware that an abundance of content can cause problems and create entire cottage industries around it: both polluting and filtering. Other uses of syndev we can simplify into a computer as well; the glossary does this.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Syndev</strong>: Contraction of Syntactic Device. A computer. <br><strong>Syntactic Device</strong>: In Earth terms, a computer.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="a-borrowed-man">A Borrowed Man<a class="zola-anchor" href="#a-borrowed-man" aria-label="Anchor link for: a-borrowed-man" style="visibility: hidden;"></a>
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alt="A Borrowed Man in hardcover"
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<p>A more recent book, from 2015, written by Gene Wolfe at 84 years old, was the last book published before his death in 2019. (There have been some posthumous publications since then, including the sequel to <em>A Borrowed Man</em>, <em>Interlibrary Loan</em>.) His age may show in some aspects of this writing, hilariously by calling anything computer-like or a device with a screen “a screen” and anyone who is skilled with such devices “good at screens,” but also in the story itself of a man brought to life outside his time period. Not suddenly, but due to the fact that he is a clone of an old writer, he cannot learn any new skills or history and is forced into the confines of an interactive library.</p>
<p>Gene Wolfe thought about the relationship between language, memory, and identity. In Book of the New Sun, there is a race of people who only communicate through pre-scripted propaganda messages, however they have developed a way to expand their language, and even tell stories using only their pre-set sentences. In A Borrowed Man, the main character E. A. Smithe is a clone of a man using only previous publications, he speaks and reasons about things as much as the original author, it’s seemingly perfect at first until we learn of a book he authored that was left out of the training set. This causes him to make guesses or hallucinations about what the contents and meaning could be, realizing he is an imperfect clone and clearly cannot think like the original author.</p>
<h2 id="further-reading">Further Reading<a class="zola-anchor" href="#further-reading" aria-label="Anchor link for: further-reading" style="visibility: hidden;"></a>
</h2>
<ul>
<li><a rel="nofollow noreferrer external" href="https://ultan.org.uk/a-weird-mystery-james-wynn-considers-gene-wolfes-a-borrowed-man/">A Weird Mystery: James Wynn considers Gene Wolfe’s ‘A Borrowed Man’</a></li>
<li>Any of the books mentioned or linked</li>
</ul>
Strugatsky Press2024-11-21T00:00:00+00:002024-11-21T00:00:00+00:00
Unknown
https://overlandandseas.dev/posts/strugatsky-chicago-press/<p>Chicago Review Press has been publishing new translations of old Arkady and Boris Strugatsky novels, this is great, some of them even include a forward from Boris. The cover's themselves I have issues with. A lot of them use stock art and are generally uninspired. The Strugatsky brothers have a weird relationship with English translations, a lot of them where censored by the Soviet Union, so these new translations and a lot more faithful to the originals.</p>
<h1 id="roadside-picnic">Roadside Picnic<a class="zola-anchor" href="#roadside-picnic" aria-label="Anchor link for: roadside-picnic" style="visibility: hidden;"></a>
</h1>
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<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/RoadsidePicnic1977.jpg"
alt="Roadside Picnic in paperback"
width="200"
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</th><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/RoadsidePicnic2012.jpg"
alt="Roadside Picnic in paperback"
width="200"
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</th></tr></thead><tbody>
<tr><td>Roadside Picnic / Take of Troika</td><td>Roadside Picnic</td></tr>
<tr><td>1977</td><td>2012</td></tr>
<tr><td>Macmillan Publisher Co.</td><td>Chicago Review Press</td></tr>
<tr><td>Antonia W. Boris (1977)</td><td>Olen Bormashenki (2012)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<p><em>Roadside Picnic</em> was originally released with <em>Tale of Troika</em>, a sequel to <em>Monday Begins on Saturday</em> which has not been retranslated or re-released. The cover art of the Chicago Review Press copy uses a screenshot taken from the Andrei Tarkovsky movie, <em>Stalker</em>. The cover mentions the text is the inspiration for the movie and the <em>S.T.A.L.K.E.R.</em> video game series by GSC Game World.</p>
<h1 id="hard-to-be-a-god">Hard to Be a God<a class="zola-anchor" href="#hard-to-be-a-god" aria-label="Anchor link for: hard-to-be-a-god" style="visibility: hidden;"></a>
</h1>
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src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/HardToBeAGod1973.jpg"
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src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/HardToBeAGod1974.jpg"
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src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/HardToBeAGod2014.jpg"
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src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/HardToBeAGod2015.jpg"
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<tr><td>Hard to Be a God</td><td>Hard to Be a God</td><td>Hard to Be a God</td><td>Hard to Be a God</td></tr>
<tr><td>1973</td><td>1974</td><td>2014</td><td>2015</td></tr>
<tr><td>Seabury Press</td><td>DAW</td><td>Chicago Review Press</td><td>Gollancz</td></tr>
<tr><td>Wendayne Ackerman (1973)</td><td>Wendayne Ackerman (1973)</td><td>Olena Bormashenko (2014)</td><td>Olena Bormashenko (2014)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<p>Аркадий can be translated phonetically a few ways, this was done as "Arkadi" for a few publications in the 70s, all new editions and English material uses "Arkaday". The Chicago Press Review cover is taken from a film adaptation directed by Aleksei German in 2013.</p>
<h1 id="the-doomed-city">The Doomed City<a class="zola-anchor" href="#the-doomed-city" aria-label="Anchor link for: the-doomed-city" style="visibility: hidden;"></a>
</h1>
<table><thead><tr><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/DoomedCity2016.jpg"
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</th><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/DoomedCity2017.jpg"
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</th></tr></thead><tbody>
<tr><td>The Doomed City</td><td>The Doomed City</td></tr>
<tr><td>2016</td><td>2017</td></tr>
<tr><td>Chicago Review Press</td><td>Gollancz</td></tr>
<tr><td>Andrew Bromfield (2016)</td><td>Andrew Bromfield (2016)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h1 id="monday-begins-on-saturday">Monday Begins on Saturday<a class="zola-anchor" href="#monday-begins-on-saturday" aria-label="Anchor link for: monday-begins-on-saturday" style="visibility: hidden;"></a>
</h1>
<table><thead><tr><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/MondayBeginsOnSaturday1977.jpg"
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<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/MondayStartsOnSaturday2005.jpg"
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<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/MondayStartsOnSunday2014.jpg"
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</th><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/MondaySundayStartsOnSaturday2017.jpg"
width="150"
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</th></tr></thead><tbody>
<tr><td>Monday Begins on Saturday</td><td>Monday Starts on Saturday</td><td>Monday Starts on Saturday</td><td>Monday Starts on Saturday</td></tr>
<tr><td>1977</td><td>2005</td><td>2014</td><td>2017</td></tr>
<tr><td>DAW</td><td>Seagull Publishing</td><td>Chicago Review Press</td><td>Gollancz</td></tr>
<tr><td>Unknown</td><td>Unknown</td><td>Andrew Bromfield (2014)</td><td>Andrew Bromfield (2014)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<p>The 2005 Seagull Publishing features the <a rel="nofollow noreferrer external" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/41/MondayBeginsOnSaturday.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original">original cover</a> from the Russian text, it also includes illustrations that were present in the original but absent from the 1977 DAW publication. The Chicago Press Review cover art is one of the worst covers I have seen, and certainly the worst cover for a book I own. However, in today's age of AI generated slop, this stock art image is somewhat refreshing.</p>
<h1 id="the-snail-on-the-slope">The Snail on the Slope<a class="zola-anchor" href="#the-snail-on-the-slope" aria-label="Anchor link for: the-snail-on-the-slope" style="visibility: hidden;"></a>
</h1>
<table><thead><tr><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/SnailOnTheSlope1980.jpg"
width="150"
>
</figure>
</th><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/SnailOnTheSlope1989.jpg"
width="150"
>
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</th><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/SnailOnTheSlope2014.jpg"
width="150"
>
</figure>
</th><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/SnailOnTheSlope2019.jpg"
width="150"
>
</figure>
</th></tr></thead><tbody>
<tr><td>The Snail on the Slope</td><td>The Snail on the Slope</td><td>The Snail on the Slope</td><td>The Snail on the Slope</td></tr>
<tr><td>1980</td><td>1989</td><td>2014</td><td>2019</td></tr>
<tr><td>Gollancz</td><td>Batam Books</td><td>Chicago Review Press</td><td>Gollancz</td></tr>
<tr><td>Alan Myers (1980)</td><td>Alan Myers (1980)</td><td>Olena Bormashenko (2018)</td><td>Olena Bormashenko (2018)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h1 id="prisoners-of-power">Prisoners of Power<a class="zola-anchor" href="#prisoners-of-power" aria-label="Anchor link for: prisoners-of-power" style="visibility: hidden;"></a>
</h1>
<table><thead><tr><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/PrisonersOfPower1978.jpg"
alt="Prisoners of Power Picnic in paperback"
width="200"
>
</figure>
</th><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/TheInhabitedIsland2020.jpg"
alt="Roadside Picnic in paperback"
width="200"
>
</figure>
</th><th><figure>
<img
src="/blog_img/strugatsky_book_covers/TheInhabitedIsland2021.jpg"
alt="Roadside Picnic in paperback"
width="200"
>
</figure>
</th></tr></thead><tbody>
<tr><td>Prisoners of Power</td><td>The Inhabited Island</td><td>the Inhabited Island</td></tr>
<tr><td>1978</td><td>2020</td><td>2021</td></tr>
<tr><td>Collier Books</td><td>Chicago Review Press</td><td>Gollancz</td></tr>
<tr><td>Helen Saltz Jacobson (1978)</td><td>Andrew Bromfield (2020)</td><td>Andrew Bromfield (2020)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<p><em>The Inhabited Island</em> is a direct translation from the original title <em>Обитаемый остров</em>.</p>