My review of European Science Fiction #1: Knowing the Neighbours:
Varied, well translated (for the most part), and (for the most part
) upbeat.
Concrete impressions:
~ Francesco Verso's introduction presents (among other things) the mission of Future Fiction:
Future Fiction is a cultural association because – for us as a multicultural team – human relations come before business relations, and so we are set on a long term quest to preserve the biodiversity of the future, telling stories that would have never been published in Italian (due to the small size of the internal market) and maybe not even in English (if it weren't for the patience of authors, dedication of translators and courage of enlightened editors). Of course in Future Fiction you will also find stories from the US, the UK and other English speaking countries, because rather than diversity we prefer to talk about a “fair distribution of futures across the world.”
(Or, as a certain harpy would say, "We are sisters, you and
I."
)
~ Olivier Paquet's "Amber Queen" features an AI that actually sounds realistic:
[Noriko] poured a little wine into the sakazuki and pulled up the right sleeve of her shirt, revealing the diamond dragon on her hand. Adélaïde seemed to be sleeping under the nocturnal star. A slight contraction of her thumb sufficed wake the Artificial Intelligence. Immediately, the skin under the jewel quivered, indicating that the sublime jewel was perfectly adjusted. The network of claws and subcutaneous wires communicated with the chip installed in the gem-covered support. The machine–oddly enough, Noriko found it difficult to use that term–adjusted to the slightest change in conductivity, both thermal and electrical, and interpreted the signals.
It had taken ten years for a language, something that surpassed simple utility, to develop out of this coexistence. The complexity of the harvest, the interaction with meteorological constraints, could not all be turned into equations. The President wanted the Artificial Intelligence to feel the wine, to measure the effect and integrate it in her analyses. The cellar masters that preceded her drew this knowledge from their heritage and used it unconsciously. Noriko wanted this lineage to continue and to be expressed other than in the form of archives stored in databases.
The kirin’s tongue deployed and lapped at the wine in the cup, taking in enough to fill the eye. Shortly after that, the earring chimed and Adélaïde’s voice echoed in Noriko’s brain.
“It’s a very tall tree, long, majestic, reigning over the hill, like a shepherd watching new sprouts shiver in the morning. It’s a slow wind, the spray of foam lost on the beach sweeping over the feet of a child who runs off. Listen to the bird soaring over the mountain flank, wings barely flapping, and yet the air vibrates around it, enveloping it and carrying it. Wrap yourself up, curl up, share.”
(...) “Adélaïde,” the President said out loud, “I don’t want to leave. My place is here and I still have so much to learn. You enabled me to overcome my handicap, what will remain of me without you? I’m self-centred, but we’ve learned to tame one another and grow together. Each vintage is the fruit of our cooperation. I still need you.”
No response. The Artificial Intelligence had vocal modules for communication, but they were used most often to interpret reports, not for conversation. Adélaïde had no language other than that of the wine.
The story also offers a dialectic blend of the new and the traditional. Why should ever one come at the complete expense of the other?
~ Nina Horvath's "Programmed Obsolescence" is surprisingly full of interesting moments and observations--not necessarily SF-nal:
“I don’t understand though ... I mean, you’re quite pretty, I can’t see any disabilities or anything like that,” Irina answered.
“To tell the truth I have a disabled pass. But because of what I have in here,” I tapped my head three times with my finger. “My parents paid for a special modification. They wanted, more than anything, for me to have perfect hearing to be able to appreciate good music. However, things didn’t go how they were supposed to, because I do have excellent hearing but I can't bear it. Didn’t you wonder how I managed to hear your fire alarm?”
Irina nodded.
“I can hear even the smallest sounds. I can’t sleep if there is a clock ticking nearby, and every household electrical appliance hums continuously. I can even hear the sound a television makes when it is switched off.”
“Well, how about earplugs?” she suggested.
“It doesn’t work like that, not all sounds come through my ears and I can’t always use earplugs, because otherwise, afterwards, it would be worse.”
(I have a friend with a disconcertingly similar problem. And she says it got much worse after she fell sick with Covid last winter.)
Or:
I sat down on the floor and the curious kitten came over to me immediately. After letting it sniff my hand I started stroking her.
“Oh, how sweet!” I said enthusiastically, “You really are a lucky cat!”
“I don’t know about that, this little thing hasn’t had much luck. You see, I was shopping, and I saw a car slowing down and someone threw it out of the window, without even stopping. Unfortunately I was too shocked to note down the number plates, otherwise I would have reported it.”
“That’s terrible!” I said, distraught. “Y’know, sometimes I wonder what’s happening to people.”
“I stopped wondering a while ago. There are too many people who just don’t care. They don’t seem to understand animals are living beings, not toys, and they throw them away when they get boring,” she sighed.
You can basically tell the author is speaking from experience.
I was also (pleasantly
) surprised by the ending.
~ Neil Williamson's "The Golden Nose" is perhaps the sweetest nasty piece I've ever read. Consider:
Herr Zickler, when Felix found the proprietor slouched at a desk at the centre of the maze of lumber like a torpid spider, was a surprise. From the tone of his emails, the sure, unfussy knowledge he had displayed on the Habsburg History site that Felix’s ineffectual Googling had led to after reading about the artefact in the Karlheinz Kuntz biography, he had expected tweeds, greying temples, a professorial air. Not this…loafer.
Zickler acknowledged his arrival with a nod, but did not remove his headset or divert his attention from his laptop screen. “Five minutes, Herr Kapel,” he said, covering his microphone. “Raiding on Warcraft. Dungeon boss. Have a look around.”
Or:
Finally, Felix gave in to curiosity that logic and common sense had been unable to kill, and drew in a full, deep breath.
Well, of course, there was no difference between that breath and the one before. Does it actually work? he’d asked Zickler. Does it actually give you preternatural, magical, olfactory sensitivity? Will you be able to tell the difference between species of tulip from a mile away? Or inform the police what the victim’s last meal was from the odour palette of their kitchen? Or tell whether your lover is true from the tang of her sweat?
Felix laughed at himself. No, there were only the usual smells of the bathroom: soap on the wash stand, bleach from the floor, the slight odour of damp that told him Joanna had showered before she left. He could see the water droplets on the shower curtain, and a rim of mildew around the hem that had really quite a strong taint to it. It almost masked the sting of mint from the dried smear of toothpaste on the sink, and the fulsome guff of sewage seeping from the toilet, the lingering stain of farts too, and the cloying, complex melange of bathroom dust – talcum powder mixed with flakes of skin and tiny hairs and carpet fibres – and that dog really did stink, she’d been washing him in here, in their shower, that was disgusting, and their neighbours, the vegetarians, well she’d been cooking bacon again after he’d left for work and then doused the place in the most godawful aerosol freshener –
Felix removed the Nose.
And breathed out.
~ Linda De Santi's "Beautymark" presents a future that is as scary as it is allegorical--simply replace "beauty" with "likeability" (including the amount of likes we get on social media), and get scared yourselves.
And while some things may change, others have stayed the same:
I sat down at my desk and tried to concentrate, to make an idea come. I used all the techniques they had taught us at the Academy to overcome my writer’s block: I scribbled out lists, I wrote out the first words that came into my head in one breath, I tried to develop one of the suggestions they had suggested during a lesson (“invent a dialogue between you and your beautymark”), I listened to relaxing music, I even used an automatic incipit generator program.
And some of those immutable things make me retch just as they do now:
The authors of bestsellers - invited like Patron Saints to officiate at the mediatic rite of the exam - typed barrages of messages on their Influencer Profiles; magnificent heirs and heiresses distributed wide magnanimous smiles to the webcams, while a business angel confessed to preferring sex symbol artists to those who were simply beautiful. Then there were the investors, looking around hungrily, on the lookout for Future Stars or even only One Hit Wonders who nevertheless possessed a minimum 85% artistic beautymark rating. Then let’s not forget the millionaires, the brashest of them all, on a hunt for young authors to exploit to write their autobiographies, as well as the rows of journalists and opinionists telling the online channels how special these kinds of days were: the effort, the tears, the emotions, the authenticity, the wonder, the art on the stage, celebrities in the midst of the public, the beauty on the faces, money everywhere.
Alas, the ending reduces one of the main characters to a caricature.
At least it made me realize that you can make a poignant story out of unpleasant characters or an unpleasant setting--but when you have both, it's simply ugly. (No pun intended.)
~ Uwe Post's "Petware" is the funniest story so far--so dazzling in its banter that I can't pick out one single quotable excerpt. I also need to reread it; there's so much inside so few pages, I'm sure I've missed something vital.
~ On the other hand, J.S. Meresmaa's "The Naming Tree" is simply sweet. There's no single passage that
begs to be shared with the world; but the atmosphere of that smarter, more grown-up future feels nice and soothing.
~ Tais Teng's "Any House in the Storm" offers my favorite approach of "why should things be either-or?". The techno-optimistic solutions envisioned by the protagonist take my breath away:
In high school, Nadia’s design for a hurricane-proof house wins the second prize of the Building for the Future contest. Her house is a geodetic dome with a frame of supple titanium, anchored with carbon fiber cables and windows of cultured diamond. Even in the fiercest winter storms it will just stand there swaying, like the toughest soap bubble ever, and always right itself.
The buried accumulators hold energy for at least three months and her desalinator could suck a carafe of sparkling water out of Dead Sea sludge. Just you try, the house seemed to urge. I can withstand any hothouse trick the world has up its sleeve. I am deeply high-tech, completely up-to-date.
And:
Nadia stands on the edge of the construction pit and the whole world seems made out of sparkling sunlight—it’s endlessly wide. After all these years they have finally started: the biggest arcology of Europe.
The Belle van Zuylen is already half a mile high and grows forty more meters every day. When the Belle is finished, it will overtop anything Dubai and China have raised in the sky. A solar chimney forms the core, sucking in air, lifting it for more than two miles to drive a hundred turbines. The apartments hang from cables of twisted bucky-tubes, free to move and thus secure against any hurricane or earthquake. Above that super-tower a wheel of gliders will rotate, an Ockel’s windmill that reaches all the way to the stratosphere. On the roofs of the apartments she now sees the first date palms and olive trees growing.
And then the deuteragonist comes in to put my breath back with his simple, down-to-earth designs:
“(...) By the way, what are you doing nowadays? Did you go to the university like you wanted? To study construction?”
“Who wants half a million euros in study debt? I started my own firm. A while ago I designed a cabin for UNESCO. It condenses its own water with a dew trap and you cook all your food with a solar oven. Everything made from local materials.”
Thesis; antithesis; synthesis.
The only thing that mars the beauty of bringing these two approaches together is the condescending presentation of another culture:
“So sorry,” the grand duke says, “this isn’t what I was looking for. Both of the houses have their good points. The rug of living grass in Herr Cernik’s home, the view from madam’s window and free hot showers all year long. But I can’t stick my subjects underground like moles, now can I? And windows with twenty thousand channels are not a good idea. In Riga we have one government channel with the state opera and my fine speeches and the rest is foreign rubbish.”
Their gazes intersect and suddenly it is like before. Nadia and Rachid are the only smart ones in a classroom filled with idiots who don’t have the slightest idea what is truly important.
And finally, a scene that I, a fiction translator skeptical of my automatic colleagues, found hilarious:
A moment of blackness and the man steps from the window in glorious 3D, sits down in Nadia’s favorite chair. He wears a parade uniform with rows and rows of medals. Star-bursts and Maltese crosses, leering skulls and sheaves of grain.
“Laba diena, ponia Nadia Becker,” he gibbers and then the translation software cuts in. “My name sounds Linas the Fourth, grand duke of Riga. Ich have eine honorable Vorschlach for you, leading to successful profit both of us.”
Save me from low-tech hicks that insist on their own translation-ware, Nadia thinks.
“I am all ears,” she says. Yikes, I hope his program works better in the other direction. “Uh, please tell me?”
~ Krystyna Chodorowska's "The Lying Weather Forecast" nails my gripes against sinoptik.bg:
As a child I had always heard my father repeating these sayings: “Red sky at night shepherds delight, red sky in the morning shepherds warning,” and “Rainbow in the morning, gives you fair warning.” My father was a farmer, he lived and breathed the weather because everything depended on the forecasts being correct. He was usually right, his intuition seemed almost magical, but he was simply drawing conclusions from observing the signs. A few decades later and suddenly none of the proverbs had any meaning any more. My father died convinced he had lost his ability to understand the most important things in life.
~ Carme Torras's "Team Memory" examines the wonders of the human brain (just like that all-time favorite of mine,
Perception):
I’d done research on amnesia and consulted colleagues with clinical experience about the kind of “lacuna” Tim had apparently suffered. None of them were surprised that the truth machine hadn’t detected it. A colleague with forensic experience told me that at a traumatic moment, the patient’s mind is like a tabula rasa, but made out of soft clay, and the first version of events that they tell the patient is inscribed in his mind as a memory that is just as real or even more real than if he’d lived it. When he recovers his memory, even if it’s only a few details, his reconstruction of what happened usually corroborates and completes the version he’d been given.
“Evidence shows that the blank created by amnesia is filled in within a few months.” I gave Doug a summary when he came to the gym to learn about my research. “Tim’s declaration before the judge and the machine would have been the same whether or not he’d recovered his memory.”
Or it would be, I began to explain, unless it was one of those extremely rare cases the prestigious Clinical Neurophysiology Journal had found worth publishing. The patient with amnesia in the article was an adolescent who, in exchange for a few grams of cannabis, opened the door of his school to a shooter who killed several of his classmates. His parents, trying to ease the effects of the trauma, told him he’d been present at the slaughter and was lucky enough to get out alive. Although he was under surveillance by the toxicology unit for drug consumption, the boy never connected drug use with the tragedy at his school. Months later when he recovered the memory of what had happened, he told it like a nightmare that kept dogging him, believing his parents’ version instead of the one in his own mind. Two similar cases coincided in interpreting the real memories like a recovered dream.
That concurred entirely with my own research into mirror neurons. These neurons are activated in the same way if I raise my hand or if someone else raises their hand in front of me: that’s what the name comes from. They’re also activated if an amputee imagines raising a phantom limb. When we dream or see a game, it feels almost the same to us as if we were really playing, due to the activation of the mirror system. I admitted to Doug that I should have guessed something along those lines back when I was in university because during the two months when I was laid up with an ankle injury, I watched more games than I had in my whole life, and when I came back, not only was I on top of my game right away but I’d developed new movements. A little after that I made first string. And I owed that to all the NBA forwards, especially LeBron James.
However, I didn't understand the ending. Who dun it? Need to reread.
Надявам се да стават за мен.
