Skip to main content

Luminous (SF) - Silvia Park ****

It feels as if there have been way too many SF books about humanoid robots with artificial general intelligence set in the near future, because it just isn’t going to happen any time soon. The human form is very difficult to reproduce mechanically, while current AI is a long way from having human-like general intelligence (even if it's quite good at faking it). But, despite that proviso, I enjoyed Silvia Park's novel featuring... humanoid robots with artificial intelligence in the nearish future.

One of the reasons the book is striking is the setting. We are in a post-reunification Korea (after a vicious war), to a degree modelled on Germany in the way that the old communist part is looked down on by the rest. This is a world where human-like robots are commonplace, and what Park does well is explore the interface and boundary between human and artificial, with several of her characters effectively cyborgs to the extent we're not even certain to begin with if one character, Yoyo, is human or robot.

This world is explored in three threads. The first features a group of misfit children, playing and interacting in a robot graveyard, where they encounter the mysterious Yoyo. The second focuses on a police officer, severely wounded in the war, who specialises in robot crime. And the third involves a robot designer for one of the 'big three' robotics companies. These threads are eventually linked together by family ties, bringing together the struggles of a disabled child Ruijie, the hunt for a missing (child) robot and the design of a new child robot. This emphasis on robots as children, ranging from being something close to pets to much darker uses is something that Park deploys impressively to make us think about the nature of robot-human relations - and for that matter current human relations in general. (Having said that, the child-character threads aren't as engaging as the adult ones.)

I did have some issues with the book. It is very slow paced, and over-long. I appreciate it has a 'rich, layered story' as one comment has it, and does so without the pretentiousness that tends to accompany literary novels - but there were times I just wanted the author to get on with the narrative. There are also some odd glitches in the science content. Park assumes robots would have brains in their heads, which has been clearly not a sensible thing to do since Asimov's day. We are told of Ruijie that 'she was going to study astrology... and become the first bionic astronaut.' Astrology? And we are told the head of the linking family 'used to be for neurorobotics what Karl Schwarzschild was for quantum physics.' I assume that means he wasn't of much importance, given Schwarzschild's claim to fame is in general relativity, and had little to do with quantum theory.

As mentioned above, there have been quite a few of these robot books recently, often from the more literary end of fiction. Compared, for example, with Kazuro Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun, Luminous gives us a significantly better and more interesting exploration of the human implications of this complex technological concept.

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Infinite Alphabet - Cesar Hidalgo ****

Although taking a very new approach, this book by a physicist working in economics made me nostalgic for the business books of the 1980s. More on why in a moment, but Cesar Hidalgo sets out to explain how it is knowledge - how it is developed, how it is managed and forgotten - that makes the difference between success and failure. When I worked for a corporate in the 1980s I was very taken with Tom Peters' business books such of In Search of Excellence (with Robert Waterman), which described what made it possible for some companies to thrive and become huge while others failed. (It's interesting to look back to see a balance amongst the companies Peters thought were excellent, with successes such as Walmart and Intel, and failures such as Wang and Kodak.) In a similar way, Hidalgo uses case studies of successes and failures for both businesses and countries in making effective use of knowledge to drive economic success. When I read a Tom Peters book I was inspired and fired up...
Post a Comment
Read more

God: the Science, the Evidence - Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies ***

This is, to say the least, an oddity, but a fascinating one. A translation of a French bestseller, it aims to put forward an examination of the scientific evidence for the existence of a deity… and various other things, as this is a very oddly structured book (more on that in a moment). In The God Delusion , Richard Dawkins suggested that we should treat the existence of God as a scientific claim, which is exactly what the authors do reasonably well in the main part of the book. They argue that three pieces of scientific evidence in particular are supportive of the existence of a (generic) creator of the universe. These are that the universe had a beginning, the fine tuning of natural constants and the unlikeliness of life.  To support their evidence, Bolloré and Bonnassies give a reasonable introduction to thermodynamics and cosmology. They suggest that the expected heat death of the universe implies a beginning (for good thermodynamic reasons), and rightly give the impression tha...
Post a Comment
Read more

The War on Science - Lawrence Krauss (Ed.) ****

At first glance this might appear to be yet another book on how to deal with climate change deniers and the like, such as How to Talk to a Science Denier.   It is, however, a much more significant book because it addresses the way that universities, government and pressure groups have attempted to undermine the scientific process. Conceptually I would give it five stars, but it's quite heavy going because it's a collection of around 18 essays by different academics, with many going over the same ground, so there is a lot of repetition. Even so, it's an important book. There are a few well-known names here - editor Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker - but also a range of scientists (with a few philosophers) explaining how science is being damaged in academia by unscientific ideas. Many of the issues apply to other disciplines as well, but this is specifically about the impact on science, and particularly important there because of the damage it has been doing...
Post a Comment
Read more