Today’s software can only imitate art, but what about tomorrow?
Will true artificial intelligences be able to appreciate or even create art? Explore dystopian societies, where AI generates most of the content and human artists must eke out an existence, and utopias, where artificial minds help unlock and enhance human creativity.
Delve into the minds of robot painters, AI poets, drone forgers, and electronic theater curators. These and other possible futures are imagined by award-winning and bestselling human authors from the USA, UK, China, Ukraine, Chile, Japan, Madagascar, Brazil, Czech Republic, and Sri Lanka.
"In this impressive collection, a star-studded lineup of 17 authors assembled by Shvartsman (Kakistocracy) raise angst-ridden questions about human-AI collaboration. ... This smart, kaleidoscopic view into the digital future will have readers longing to log off." - Publishers Weekly
This is not the future we were promised.
Sure, the science fiction writers overestimated our rate of technological development many times in the past. We never got flying cars in the 1980s, a space odyssey in 2001, or a Lunar colony in 2018 (per Babylon 5)....
“Next up is Johnny Zepter.” Steve called up the figures. At her own screen, Kate opened the spreadsheet and readied herself to make notes.
“This week, our good buddy Zee submitted four hundred and seventy-three stories to eight different outlets, of which four were accepted.”...
There is a stretch of mud lying beside a lazy river. It has been smoothed flat. A small boy—thin, about ten, bare-headed in the heat—selects a slender branch trimmed of its twigs, and makes patterns with its tip in the quickly-drying mud....
One
Last night the capital city of Ciro was plunged into darkness. Residents ran out of their homes to find that they were not the only ones; the entire metropolis was cut off.
The town of Brakia, eighty kilometers away, had changed hands several times within the past month, and the fighting was intense....
I was not thinking about theater when Rana Guilfoyle, the noted touring actress, walked into my office.
To be fair, I mostly am not thinking about theater anyway. But I was extra hard not thinking about theater today because every holo billboard in town had been announcing that Rana was gracing us with her presence, and Rana is my ex....
“Moreover,” the murderer says, downing the cup of hemlock in a single gulp, the apple of his throat pulsating beneath his unshaven bristles. “This trial is a sham, the court of a kangaroo or some such extinct marsupial, null and devoid of legitimacy, unsanctioned by apostolic or secular authority, unblessed by the council of the great leaders of the noble order, and unseen by the eyes of the gods.”...
Clara’s favorite part of the workday is the very beginning.
She likes flipping the switches on the wall right inside the office entrance, all sixteen of them, different colors and laid out in two neat columns, like the console from an old NASA space capsule that she got to sit inside once on a school trip to DC....
I had researched Tomás Osorio on my flight from Chile to Germany. He was the closest to a child prodigy the art business was ever likely to produce. At thirteen years of age, his first solo show had sold out within minutes, for a combined price of four hundred thousand dollars....
The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name....
Chester Bennington is dead. But I see him.
Kurt Cobain is dead. But I see him.
Charles Baudelaire is dead. But I see him.
Have I gone mad?
Are they all ghosts?
Or is it the AI doing … things, as she calls it, God only knows why, to us?...
The package arrived safely, or as safely it could have, carried by the delivery man with my father tagging along right behind him. It was sealed, clean, sterile. Almost bigger than me, I noticed, like they were delivering a fridge to a happy new tenant, but instead of thank-yous they received only silence....
I am a self-aware entertainment expert system, designed to perform stand-up comedy. I was activated in Del Rio’s Bar and Grill at 6:32 p.m. on May 17th, 2042. Mathematically speaking, I am very funny. I elicit a laughs-per-minute average of 2.68, with each laugh lasting an average of 3.41 seconds....
“Here we have a painting by an unknown artist, created in the early months of the large-scale war. Note how its realism, painstaking detail, and contrast achieved through the interplay of lighting, matches the symbolic message of the piece—”
He stood back and waited for the tour guide to usher her group along....
The doors of the Silent Land are open for you; the doors of the Hidden Realm are broken down for you. The doormen extend their hands to you. The doormen rejoice at your coming and say:
Enter, favored one, and live here well beloved …
— The Egyptian Book of the Dead (The Chapters of Coming Forth By Day) Ch....
One
Enter the woman onto the stage, playing a grieving relative.
The woman, bowing slightly, strode determinedly, step by step, along the avenue leading to the city center. The white dress she wore was a restored ancient mourning costume—the upper and lower garments were made of the coarsest raw linen....
One
The game began. He was an eleven-year-old boy named Emil.
The moonlit path shone through the curtain, projecting the hazy silhouette of a window onto the floor.
Replace the moon with a streetlamp, remove the lunar path, sharpen the silhouette....
When Bob looked out the window, he felt like he had seen the woman passing by somewhere before.
The abundant hair falling over her shoulders was going gray. She must have been in her fifties or so? Definitely older than Bob....
“My name is Timur Timyanov.”
Silence filled the large, empty, dimly-lit hall. Behind the low counter, he saw outlines of old-fashioned nickel-plated clothing racks, bare and splayed like autumn trees.
“I came to …”
Timur faltered.
He’d entered this building many times before, but never from the stage door—not since he was a young child....
Today’s software can only imitate art, but what about tomorrow?
Will true artificial intelligences be able to appreciate or even create art? Explore dystopian societies, where AI generates most of the content and human artists must eke out an existence, and utopias, where artificial minds help unlock and enhance human creativity.
Delve into the minds of robot painters, AI poets, drone forgers, and electronic theater curators. These and other possible futures are imagined by award-winning and bestselling human authors from the USA, UK, China, Ukraine, Chile, Japan, Madagascar, Brazil, Czech Republic, and Sri Lanka.
“In this impressive collection, a star-studded lineup of 17 authors assembled by Shvartsman (Kakistocracy) raise angst-ridden questions about human-AI collaboration. ... This smart, kaleidoscopic view into the digital future will have readers longing to log off.” – Publishers Weekly
Table of contents
This is not the future we were promised.
Sure, the science fiction writers overestimated our rate of technological development many times in the past. We never got flying cars in the 1980s, a space odyssey in 2001, or a Lunar colony in 2018 (per Babylon 5)....
“Next up is Johnny Zepter.” Steve called up the figures. At her own screen, Kate opened the spreadsheet and readied herself to make notes.
“This week, our good buddy Zee submitted four hundred and seventy-three stories to eight different outlets, of which four were accepted.”...
There is a stretch of mud lying beside a lazy river. It has been smoothed flat. A small boy—thin, about ten, bare-headed in the heat—selects a slender branch trimmed of its twigs, and makes patterns with its tip in the quickly-drying mud....
One
Last night the capital city of Ciro was plunged into darkness. Residents ran out of their homes to find that they were not the only ones; the entire metropolis was cut off.
The town of Brakia, eighty kilometers away, had changed hands several times within the past month, and the fighting was intense....
I was not thinking about theater when Rana Guilfoyle, the noted touring actress, walked into my office.
To be fair, I mostly am not thinking about theater anyway. But I was extra hard not thinking about theater today because every holo billboard in town had been announcing that Rana was gracing us with her presence, and Rana is my ex....
“Moreover,” the murderer says, downing the cup of hemlock in a single gulp, the apple of his throat pulsating beneath his unshaven bristles. “This trial is a sham, the court of a kangaroo or some such extinct marsupial, null and devoid of legitimacy, unsanctioned by apostolic or secular authority, unblessed by the council of the great leaders of the noble order, and unseen by the eyes of the gods.”...
Clara’s favorite part of the workday is the very beginning.
She likes flipping the switches on the wall right inside the office entrance, all sixteen of them, different colors and laid out in two neat columns, like the console from an old NASA space capsule that she got to sit inside once on a school trip to DC....
I had researched Tomás Osorio on my flight from Chile to Germany. He was the closest to a child prodigy the art business was ever likely to produce. At thirteen years of age, his first solo show had sold out within minutes, for a combined price of four hundred thousand dollars....
The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name....
Chester Bennington is dead. But I see him.
Kurt Cobain is dead. But I see him.
Charles Baudelaire is dead. But I see him.
Have I gone mad?
Are they all ghosts?
Or is it the AI doing … things, as she calls it, God only knows why, to us?...
The package arrived safely, or as safely it could have, carried by the delivery man with my father tagging along right behind him. It was sealed, clean, sterile. Almost bigger than me, I noticed, like they were delivering a fridge to a happy new tenant, but instead of thank-yous they received only silence....
I am a self-aware entertainment expert system, designed to perform stand-up comedy. I was activated in Del Rio’s Bar and Grill at 6:32 p.m. on May 17th, 2042. Mathematically speaking, I am very funny. I elicit a laughs-per-minute average of 2.68, with each laugh lasting an average of 3.41 seconds....
“Here we have a painting by an unknown artist, created in the early months of the large-scale war. Note how its realism, painstaking detail, and contrast achieved through the interplay of lighting, matches the symbolic message of the piece—”
He stood back and waited for the tour guide to usher her group along....
The doors of the Silent Land are open for you; the doors of the Hidden Realm are broken down for you. The doormen extend their hands to you. The doormen rejoice at your coming and say:
Enter, favored one, and live here well beloved …
— The Egyptian Book of the Dead (The Chapters of Coming Forth By Day) Ch....
One
Enter the woman onto the stage, playing a grieving relative.
The woman, bowing slightly, strode determinedly, step by step, along the avenue leading to the city center. The white dress she wore was a restored ancient mourning costume—the upper and lower garments were made of the coarsest raw linen....
One
The game began. He was an eleven-year-old boy named Emil.
The moonlit path shone through the curtain, projecting the hazy silhouette of a window onto the floor.
Replace the moon with a streetlamp, remove the lunar path, sharpen the silhouette....
When Bob looked out the window, he felt like he had seen the woman passing by somewhere before.
The abundant hair falling over her shoulders was going gray. She must have been in her fifties or so? Definitely older than Bob....
“My name is Timur Timyanov.”
Silence filled the large, empty, dimly-lit hall. Behind the low counter, he saw outlines of old-fashioned nickel-plated clothing racks, bare and splayed like autumn trees.
“I came to …”
Timur faltered.
He’d entered this building many times before, but never from the stage door—not since he was a young child....
Purchase this issue
From the blog
March 15, 2023
The Digital Aesthete
Human Musings on the Intersection of Art and AI
Edited by Alex Shvartsman
UFO Publishing and the Future Affairs Administration are teaming up to produce our next collaborative project, which will explore the relationship between artificial intelligence and art....
June 15, 2022
Living Memory
https://amzn.to/3Nudkcq
Publication date: October 18, 2022
I’m not usually given to reading action adventure novels. My favorite spectator sport is cricket, and I like long slow meandering walks. In other words, give me cosy mysteries or give me death....
February 27, 2022
Are you curious about science fiction and fantasy works written by authors who either currently reside or were born in Ukraine? There are a number of such works available in English. Interestingly. the authors I was able to come up with for this list lean heavily toward fantasy over science fiction....
Discover the annual anthology series of humorous science fiction and fantasy!
