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New anthology 2021 America’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy it includes 20 of the best stories of the year. Series editor John Joseph Adams he was particularly impressed with the story of Ted Kosmatka “The beast is next to you,” Which presents a new perspective on the idea of AI uprising.
“It’s so big,” Adams says in section 492 Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “It pushes all the buttons to admire; the character has all these nice things in it. It feels awful. There is so much going on in the story. I love.”
The story has riffs By Neumann-Wigner interpretation of quantum mechanics, proposing a future in which advanced AI cannot function without humans. Guest Editor Veronica Roth, author Divergent, the story seemed very scary to him. “I got to the part where the machines used the people attached to their fronts to keep moving time, and I said, ‘This is rebellion. I love it,'” he says. “I’ve been moved since I read it. I can’t stop thinking.”
Fantasy author Yohanca Delgado “The Beast Adjoins” admits it’s a disturbing story. “It’s such a beautifully executed and chilling premise that this reversal of what we imagine AI can do for us,” he says. “There is a passage where [the AIs] human backlights are being created — in vessels that are only one eye and a piece of flesh. The writing is incredibly awesome. I’m a big fan. “
For now “The Beast Adjoins” only exists as a standalone story, though Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley wonders if the story can be expanded. “I find the premise so interesting: these IAs can only work when humans are observing them,” he says. “I feel like there will probably be a lot of other narratives that you can get out of there.”
Listen to the full interview with John Joseph Adams, Veronica Roth and Yohanca Delgado in episode 492. Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some of the highlights from the discussion below.
Yohanca Delgado Clarion workshop:
“I skipped a week at Clarion, and I was horrified in my room rocking back and forth because I was saying,‘ I need to write something. I have this idea, and I can’t write anything else, but I also feel — you know that feeling when you want to write something, but you’re not ready? For example, you don’t feel like you have to be a writer to deal with it yet … And Clarion’s schedule is constant. I had already missed one week, I couldn’t miss another. I spoke Andy Duncan, which is a wonderful human being, and he basically says, “I don’t understand why you don’t do this alone.” That’s what you need to hear sometimes. You need someone to shake your shoulders and say, ‘Just go ahead.’ “
About the story “Our language” by Yohanca Delgado:
“My family is from the Dominican Republic and Cuba. I didn’t know any monsters from Latin America or the Caribbean, so I set out on this research project to find them … ziguapa is this woman — there are some stories that also have a man, but I was more specifically interested in the idea of being a woman — who is very small and charming, in a wild way, and who grows her legs backwards. I found it a very interesting monster to think about. What would be his powers? What does all this mean? In researching this, I saw that it is rooted in the stories of indigenous people and slaves. Because his real superpowers were being able to escape. And I thought it fit in very well with some of the conversations about gender and gender oppression. ”
About the John Joseph Adams Pandemic:
“Most people who are publishing a science fiction / fantasy magazine don’t do it as work; it’s a side thing that they’re doing. They have another ordinary job that pays the bills. So maybe because they were saving an hour each day commuting to work, they had more time to work. [magazines]. I actually hoped it would close a lot more and stop publishing because a lot of people lost their jobs when the pandemic happened and it was just a matter of tightening the belt that almost everyone needed. So I was really impressed to see that they were all so resilient. Maybe partly because everyone was thinking ‘People need this now’. So it was more important than being close, than being close, because we need to look forward to this when we face this horrible fear that exists in the real world. ”
David Barr Kirtley Meg Elison’s “The Pill”:
“This story is a way of being science fiction, in a very good way, that it doesn’t present an idea that keeps it in that static state, it keeps getting complicated and it keeps getting into these new twists … It’s one thing. Science fiction is often said about science fiction. that the job of a fiction writer is not to predict the car, anyone can predict the car.Your job is to predict the system and neighborhoods of interstate highways, to study the side effects of these technological changes.And I thought the story worked very well as a science fiction story, where not which is only ‘How does this new technology affect the protagonist?’ —Although it certainly goes into that — but ‘How does it affect the wider? Society?’ ”
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