I just discovered your writing in Clarkesworld via "How to Remember Perfectly." That led me here, to this article, which then led me back to Clarkesworld to read "Gaze of Robot, Gaze of Bird." That story was so hopeful and beautiful that I nearly cried. I guess I'm in, at the least, the 10%. Thank you for these stories.
When I think about fiction several memories pop up. My first story was one I read for a class assignment. That was a tale about beaver hunting. I wouldn't have approved of that theme at all.
Then a birthday gift from Dad. He gave me one from Edgar Rice Burroughs "Tarzan and The City of Gold". I grew up in the hills of southern Ohio. These were hero stories. Something in me resonated with them. Then the move to a big city introduced me to comics. Hero stories again, but I was suffering culture shock now. City people seemed vile. There was wish fulfillment happening now.
Humans do a lot of that. There was a lot of family influence. We had always been outsiders because of our grandparents' lives. Sci-fi consumed me in high school. Outside of a small circle of school friends
I did not belong. I eventually moved to Canada where I did belong. I became very fond of the works of Robert Sawyer, e.g. his Neanderthal series. What did I want from these books? I wanted humans to be different from what I perceived them to be. I still have this yearning at the age of eighty-two. I'm working on my take on the human condition as related to AI. For me, humanity is obsolescent.
The origin of life and evolution necessarily contains survival and competition. The work of Ernest Becker is relevant. People like Ray Bradberry and Frank Herbert suggest a fantasy about space travel that will (in my mind) never happen. I see the life of the cosmos as a giant strange loop that repeats endlessly with the recreation of intelligence and then species suicide. One can then imagine how AI could change everything by removing a big flaw which is the root cause of our built-in obsolescence.
I just discovered your writing in Clarkesworld via "How to Remember Perfectly." That led me here, to this article, which then led me back to Clarkesworld to read "Gaze of Robot, Gaze of Bird." That story was so hopeful and beautiful that I nearly cried. I guess I'm in, at the least, the 10%. Thank you for these stories.
Aw, thank you! I'm glad to hear this, and it's sweet of you to say.
"Tubes must have hands", is now one of my personal mantras.
I'm glad you like that line. It's one of my personal favorites.
When I think about fiction several memories pop up. My first story was one I read for a class assignment. That was a tale about beaver hunting. I wouldn't have approved of that theme at all.
Then a birthday gift from Dad. He gave me one from Edgar Rice Burroughs "Tarzan and The City of Gold". I grew up in the hills of southern Ohio. These were hero stories. Something in me resonated with them. Then the move to a big city introduced me to comics. Hero stories again, but I was suffering culture shock now. City people seemed vile. There was wish fulfillment happening now.
Humans do a lot of that. There was a lot of family influence. We had always been outsiders because of our grandparents' lives. Sci-fi consumed me in high school. Outside of a small circle of school friends
I did not belong. I eventually moved to Canada where I did belong. I became very fond of the works of Robert Sawyer, e.g. his Neanderthal series. What did I want from these books? I wanted humans to be different from what I perceived them to be. I still have this yearning at the age of eighty-two. I'm working on my take on the human condition as related to AI. For me, humanity is obsolescent.
The origin of life and evolution necessarily contains survival and competition. The work of Ernest Becker is relevant. People like Ray Bradberry and Frank Herbert suggest a fantasy about space travel that will (in my mind) never happen. I see the life of the cosmos as a giant strange loop that repeats endlessly with the recreation of intelligence and then species suicide. One can then imagine how AI could change everything by removing a big flaw which is the root cause of our built-in obsolescence.