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Beta-Life: Short Stories from an A-Life Future
Computers are changing. Soon, the days of silicon-based logic-gate computing will seem like a quaint and distant memory from a charmingly clunky past. Likewise, robots—once designed by mere mortals—will be soon be devised solely by the ultimate designing agency, evolution (with the help of computer modeling of natural selection). Meanwhile, A-Life (artificial life) and mathematical biomimicry—algorithm-based virtual models that map the collective intelligence of nature onto manmade systems—will become as big as genetics is right now. What this future will look like, exactly, is beyond even the scientists. But this book attempts to start the process of imagining it, by pairing researchers at the cutting edge of A-Life and Unconventional Computing with some of the most exciting writers working in English.
13 pages, Audible Audio
First published August 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 12, 2020
This was a fascinating read, with a really interesting central premise. I'd highly recommend.
March 21, 2015
This is a book based on collaborations between writers and scientists, with a simple aim – that writers can see further into the future by knowing what is at the furthest edge of current scientific research, rather than by extending their own present day experience forward. It makes a lot of sense to me; it isn’t about restricting the imagination, more a means of suggesting a credible direction in which the writer may voyage. This was also intended to avoid any tendency to become overly descriptive about some awesome technology which exists in the author’s head alone, and twenty years later is just as unlikely as it was back then.
I thought all the stories were a good read, though some, naturally, were more enjoyable or satisfactory than others. The aim of avoiding getting bogged down in sci-fi description was mostly achieved, and the stories of human attitudes and social relationships shine through. As technology becomes more complicated and interactive, these stories explore how we as humans will need to translate our human relationship skills into relating to increasingly interactive technology. This machines are credibly task driven – there is no super bot that strides in and starts conversing like an electronic butler. Which is good.
To pick out the ones that stand out for me in flicking back through the book – A Brief History of Transience is a brilliant, and slightly startling, end to the book. Don’t miss it out. Bruno Wins is interestingly self-aware about technology in the way it tells a story about a timeless human trait. Making Sandcastles is a great retelling of the tensions between parents and children; The Sayer of Sooth, a story of love with a neat twist. The War or All Against All is an exploration of the hardest of moral choices; Growing Skyscrapers, issues of ownership, power and inequalities. Luftpause, the cat and mouse of rebellious youth - and finally - Everyone Says is woven around the timeless way that relationships are forged in the mundane detail of everyday life.
This was a book I looked forward to picking up again for the next story. A rewarding read.
I thought all the stories were a good read, though some, naturally, were more enjoyable or satisfactory than others. The aim of avoiding getting bogged down in sci-fi description was mostly achieved, and the stories of human attitudes and social relationships shine through. As technology becomes more complicated and interactive, these stories explore how we as humans will need to translate our human relationship skills into relating to increasingly interactive technology. This machines are credibly task driven – there is no super bot that strides in and starts conversing like an electronic butler. Which is good.
To pick out the ones that stand out for me in flicking back through the book – A Brief History of Transience is a brilliant, and slightly startling, end to the book. Don’t miss it out. Bruno Wins is interestingly self-aware about technology in the way it tells a story about a timeless human trait. Making Sandcastles is a great retelling of the tensions between parents and children; The Sayer of Sooth, a story of love with a neat twist. The War or All Against All is an exploration of the hardest of moral choices; Growing Skyscrapers, issues of ownership, power and inequalities. Luftpause, the cat and mouse of rebellious youth - and finally - Everyone Says is woven around the timeless way that relationships are forged in the mundane detail of everyday life.
This was a book I looked forward to picking up again for the next story. A rewarding read.
May 30, 2019
This anthology is an unusual endeavour in which each of the nineteen stories (all set in the year arbitrarily chosen by the editors, 2070) has an afterword written by a scientist researching in the field of the main topic the particular story covers. These collaborations arose from an initial meeting between authors and scientists at the 2013 European Conference on Artificial Life. The authors’ brief was to follow the research into the future, rather than reflect purely on current concerns.
The editors’ introduction to all this first suggests that, due to entropy, complexity and futurism don’t mix, the world becomes ever more complex and less capable of being encompassed by story, before arguing that the notion of the individual saves the day, the protagonist - against surrounding circumstance - is the essence of all stories, the short form of fiction being the most capable of encompassing putative futures.
Be that as it may (and it might misunderstand entropy,) a collection stands or falls on its components and must transcend the bittiness engendered by its varying subject matter. A themed collection even more so. The possibility of cohesion is complicated here by the scientists’ contributions. There is a further mental leap involved in travelling from fiction to fact and back again. The thread is occasionally broken and though the essays are themselves informative enough they do not necessarily illumine the stories they accompany. Each is referenced as in a scientific paper - though in footnotes, except in the one case which followed the more usual practice of an appendix. Then there was the odd editorial decision to have three stories in a row having scientists as parents being an important aspect of the narrative.
It is perhaps in the nature of the premise that ideas and themes may recur, so what in general does this brave new world of 2070 have in store for us? Well, if it’s not synthetic biology or enhanced means of social control then in the main, it would seem, it is robots - or to be more precise, robotic objects, small machines dedicated to particular tasks.
We start strongly with The Sayer of the Sooth by Martin Bedford where an inhabitant of 2070 looks back at, and criticises, a Science Fiction story written by his great-grandfather wherein lie-detecting technology is embedded in contact lenses. Robin Yassim-Kassab’s Swarm dwells on the possibilities for social control of nanobot sized AIs. Growing Skyscrapers by Adam Marek is a tale of the scientists behind the semi-organic buildings of the title and the people who live in the rogue results grown from stolen seeds.
The Loki Variations by Interzone’s own Andy Hedgecock envisages a new computer game so immersive it changes people’s attitudes to, for want of a better term, “the underclass” – and leads to revolution. In Everyone Says by Stuart Evers linking of brains to provide direct empathic experience has been monetised but induces dependency on the linker and imposes increasingly debilitating psychic drag on the linkee.
The seemingly ubiquitous Adam Roberts gives us A Swarm of Living Robjects Around Us wherein a man lies down and dies on entering his home despite (or is it because of?) the plethora of living robotic objects it houses. There is more than an echo of Ballard about the ending to this story - and not only due to its mention of a swimming pool. In Annie Kirby’s Luftpause people have been imbued with a prophylactic against a deadly disease with the consequence that they leave pheromone trails behind them - but there are still dissidents.
The main futurism of The Quivering Woods by Margaret Wilkinson is driverless cars - which frustrate the protagonist more than assist him. Appearing too are holographic simulations but everything is tied round a rather conventional story about infidelity. In Certain Measures by Sean O’Brien crowd “control” techniques have become so precise they can be used to engineer deaths to provide a political excuse for banning large scale protests. (In this case might we perhaps be forgiven for thinking this sort of thing has happened already?)
Julian Gough’s Blurred Lines has a long washed-up pop star so mired in degradation that he resorts to hiring out his brain (for use at times when he is asleep) to a mathematician. He does it as cheaply as possible so the safeguards are ignored. Given his condition it did feel a touch unlikely that he would then come to feel the way he does about his hirer, an elderly woman called Jane; or indeed anyone. Synthetic biology is all-pervasive in The Bactogarden by Sarah Schofield. Our protagonist uses it to repair buildings while her former schoolfriend earns much more by constructing customised restaurant dishes.
In Keynote by Zoe Lambert two scientists experiment using implants on their own children to create a group mind. The story is delivered by one of the children as if in a symposium lecture. Lucy Caldwell’s The Familiar has another pair of scientists form a company to build an eye-controlled flying dragon to give their handicapped son the experience of freedom. In Making Sandcastles by Claire Dean two more parents conspire to use their (unlicenced) Maker to change things in a society where use of such personal fabricators is reserved to the elite.
Dinesh Allirajah’s The Longhand Option features household robots as a commonplace, and a device called a Megastylus speeds - and draws - a writer’s thoughts onto the page. It doesn’t help with the writers’ block though. In Fully Human by K J Orr the discovery of mental organs has led to people opting for more logic rather than empathy and compassion.
Joanna Quinn’s The War of All Against All is very Cold War in feeling. A condemned man is used as a processor of metadata to try to locate those who have dropped out of the system. He tries to maintain his humanity even so. Bruno Wins! by Frank Cottrell-Boyce has a man create unfulfillable expectations of a new robot cleaning system. His dog equally inadvertently puts, not a spanner, but hair in the works. Lastly Toby Litt’s A Brief History of Transience is narrated by a disseminated consciousness which lingers through the decay of the house in which its original once lived.
Each of the stories in Beta-Life has its merits but some of the developments envisaged in the fiction seem likely to come about long before 2070 and others will perhaps never see fruition. But that was ever the condition of SF.
The editors’ introduction to all this first suggests that, due to entropy, complexity and futurism don’t mix, the world becomes ever more complex and less capable of being encompassed by story, before arguing that the notion of the individual saves the day, the protagonist - against surrounding circumstance - is the essence of all stories, the short form of fiction being the most capable of encompassing putative futures.
Be that as it may (and it might misunderstand entropy,) a collection stands or falls on its components and must transcend the bittiness engendered by its varying subject matter. A themed collection even more so. The possibility of cohesion is complicated here by the scientists’ contributions. There is a further mental leap involved in travelling from fiction to fact and back again. The thread is occasionally broken and though the essays are themselves informative enough they do not necessarily illumine the stories they accompany. Each is referenced as in a scientific paper - though in footnotes, except in the one case which followed the more usual practice of an appendix. Then there was the odd editorial decision to have three stories in a row having scientists as parents being an important aspect of the narrative.
It is perhaps in the nature of the premise that ideas and themes may recur, so what in general does this brave new world of 2070 have in store for us? Well, if it’s not synthetic biology or enhanced means of social control then in the main, it would seem, it is robots - or to be more precise, robotic objects, small machines dedicated to particular tasks.
We start strongly with The Sayer of the Sooth by Martin Bedford where an inhabitant of 2070 looks back at, and criticises, a Science Fiction story written by his great-grandfather wherein lie-detecting technology is embedded in contact lenses. Robin Yassim-Kassab’s Swarm dwells on the possibilities for social control of nanobot sized AIs. Growing Skyscrapers by Adam Marek is a tale of the scientists behind the semi-organic buildings of the title and the people who live in the rogue results grown from stolen seeds.
The Loki Variations by Interzone’s own Andy Hedgecock envisages a new computer game so immersive it changes people’s attitudes to, for want of a better term, “the underclass” – and leads to revolution. In Everyone Says by Stuart Evers linking of brains to provide direct empathic experience has been monetised but induces dependency on the linker and imposes increasingly debilitating psychic drag on the linkee.
The seemingly ubiquitous Adam Roberts gives us A Swarm of Living Robjects Around Us wherein a man lies down and dies on entering his home despite (or is it because of?) the plethora of living robotic objects it houses. There is more than an echo of Ballard about the ending to this story - and not only due to its mention of a swimming pool. In Annie Kirby’s Luftpause people have been imbued with a prophylactic against a deadly disease with the consequence that they leave pheromone trails behind them - but there are still dissidents.
The main futurism of The Quivering Woods by Margaret Wilkinson is driverless cars - which frustrate the protagonist more than assist him. Appearing too are holographic simulations but everything is tied round a rather conventional story about infidelity. In Certain Measures by Sean O’Brien crowd “control” techniques have become so precise they can be used to engineer deaths to provide a political excuse for banning large scale protests. (In this case might we perhaps be forgiven for thinking this sort of thing has happened already?)
Julian Gough’s Blurred Lines has a long washed-up pop star so mired in degradation that he resorts to hiring out his brain (for use at times when he is asleep) to a mathematician. He does it as cheaply as possible so the safeguards are ignored. Given his condition it did feel a touch unlikely that he would then come to feel the way he does about his hirer, an elderly woman called Jane; or indeed anyone. Synthetic biology is all-pervasive in The Bactogarden by Sarah Schofield. Our protagonist uses it to repair buildings while her former schoolfriend earns much more by constructing customised restaurant dishes.
In Keynote by Zoe Lambert two scientists experiment using implants on their own children to create a group mind. The story is delivered by one of the children as if in a symposium lecture. Lucy Caldwell’s The Familiar has another pair of scientists form a company to build an eye-controlled flying dragon to give their handicapped son the experience of freedom. In Making Sandcastles by Claire Dean two more parents conspire to use their (unlicenced) Maker to change things in a society where use of such personal fabricators is reserved to the elite.
Dinesh Allirajah’s The Longhand Option features household robots as a commonplace, and a device called a Megastylus speeds - and draws - a writer’s thoughts onto the page. It doesn’t help with the writers’ block though. In Fully Human by K J Orr the discovery of mental organs has led to people opting for more logic rather than empathy and compassion.
Joanna Quinn’s The War of All Against All is very Cold War in feeling. A condemned man is used as a processor of metadata to try to locate those who have dropped out of the system. He tries to maintain his humanity even so. Bruno Wins! by Frank Cottrell-Boyce has a man create unfulfillable expectations of a new robot cleaning system. His dog equally inadvertently puts, not a spanner, but hair in the works. Lastly Toby Litt’s A Brief History of Transience is narrated by a disseminated consciousness which lingers through the decay of the house in which its original once lived.
Each of the stories in Beta-Life has its merits but some of the developments envisaged in the fiction seem likely to come about long before 2070 and others will perhaps never see fruition. But that was ever the condition of SF.
March 6, 2019
20 short science fiction stories. Each of them with a comment from a scientist working on something related. Really interesting concept. Stories vary, some of them are really interesting, some of them less so.
October 22, 2018
Great collection of short stories. SciFi based on science in a very good way.
January 16, 2021
I am not entirely sure how to rate this audio...book? I did not like the stories, they were insignificant and quite boring. The narrative was also not that amazing. But I enjoyed the afterwords (each chapter had one). There I found out some interesting facts and things about science I have never thought about. The future is not just about AI, there is so much more to search, study, develop and accomplish. And of course - it is both fascinating and scary at the same time.
December 16, 2020
This was a very interesting listen. The stories were of varying enjoyment (only down to personal taste) as is usually with a short story collection. I really enjoyed the concept of an afterword to each story which informed the reader/listener of the real science: where it is today and where they project it to be in the future. I found this fascinating
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews