Read Time: 4 Minutes
Speculative science fiction, cautionary tales, philosophical musings on what constitutes life and sentience, and some silliness thrown in to boot. There’s a wide variety of excellent science fiction here and I enjoyed each one. Many of the stories fall into that area which gets you thinking about where we are headed as a society. This is a hallmark of excellent science fiction, and the stories here did not disappoint.
I’ll give a brief summary of each and dig into a couple in particular that I enjoyed. Out of the gate we get a person suffering from locked-in syndrome who is given the ability to move and interact with the world again through technology. This raises the question though of where does the man stop, and the machine begin? An interesting look at fusing technology with biology.
The second is a brief story set in the year 9999 onboard a space station “Commercialopolis” where a freshly awoken robot applies for a job selling to the remaining inhabitants of the station. There’s one very major problem standing in the way of the robot’s success, not to mention the definition of insanity. Then in “Alignment”, how may we control a man-made god? Research into fusion energy had some unexpected results when it created someone who, for a brief period, had the power of a god. How would one control such a person? How could they be trusted to work in a country’s best interest?
Next was the namesake of the book – “Early Adopter”. I admit to pre-judging this one rather quickly as it’s written in second person perspective – like the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books where you as the listener are the main character in the story. I honestly didn’t think I’d enjoy that being that it is such an unfamiliar perspective, but as I got further into the story and indeed by the end it was probably my favourite of all the stories in the collection.
On the surface it’s a story of a young man who gets into a relationship with an AI avatar who has been programmed to be the perfect companion. Relevant today because these things have begun to appear with the recent surge of adding AI to everything. This story takes the idea to an extreme where you can’t help but wonder where sentience actually begins.
It’s sort of like the Chinese Room thought experiment, or to put it more simply – if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Therefore, if the AI companion has apparent intelligence, looks like a person and acts like a person, where exactly can the line drawn?
Next, a former mining-colony-turned-tourist-destination on the Jovian moon, Europa where they have an abundance of platinum, and a rather horrifying solution to teleportation to take the place of long space voyages. Then a deep dive into a current dilemma debated in the world today – can a machine truly create a unique work of art? A human and an AI go toe-to-toe discussing if this can be done, before investigating a hive-mind for humankind. A group of scientists link minds to become a gestalt entity in order to solve some pressing problems of the world.
Finally, and probably my second favourite and the longest of the short stories: “The Emulated”. Some very smart cookies have cooked up a computer simulation that can essentially recreate the world from a Genesis-like point. The emulated world can be run at speeds much faster than real life so they can be watched as they evolve in real time.
Alex, the primary coder brings in an old friend of hers to help guide the project. Jacob, a pastor, is brought onto the project as a moral compass as they essentially start running the most realistic God-sim ever invented. It reminded me a little of an episode of Futurama where Bender tried being a god but only made things worse. A similar thing occurs here, where Alex and her good intentions at helping the “Emulans” (the natives of the emulated world) have unintended and unexpected side effects that drastically alter the world.
The narration by Betty Bat and James Langton was good and well produced. No apparent background noises, retakes, or other issues that would otherwise pull me out of the story. A couple of Bat’s male voices were a touch cliched, but her regular speaking voice and some of the other characters she voiced were fine. James Langton was also easy to listen to. Of the two, I preferred Bat’s narration over Langton’s if I had to choose, but both were good in their own right.
So overall, this collection of speculative science fiction short stories was immersive and didn’t shy away from looking at contemporary issues we face as a society. These are my favourite kind of short stories. Science fiction and ones that get in, expand on an interesting idea or theme with a sharp story line, and get you thinking. Line these up and keep them coming – I could listen all day. This will definitely be in my list of books to relisten to.