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Aug. 30th, 2011 04:30 pmOkay, so a lot of people I think would enjoy Hiroshi Yamamoto's The Stories of Ibis, but there are three kinds of people I think would especially enjoy it, so if you fall into one of these categories start paying attention:
1. What you have been craving out of life is more heartwarming stories about how online, virtual, and otherwise technologically nontraditional friendships and relationships are valid and meaningful!
2. You are familiar enough with the Terminator franchise to have had, at some point or another, that discussion about how hilariously implausible it is that any humans would have been able to survive if sentient robots really put their minds to it!
3. You would just like to read at least some semi-optimistic stories about sentient robots!
So The Stories of Ibis is a collection of short stories within a frame story that takes place in, of course, a clearly Terminator-derivative ROBOT-CONTROLLED DYSTOPIA. A human storyteller is captured by the robot Ibis, who fixes his broken leg and politely requests to tell him some facts about the robot revolution.
OUR PROTAGONIST: No, no, never! You're going to try and brainwash me and convince me of your ROBOT HISTORICAL LIES!
HIS ROBOT CAPTOR: . . . I am not sure why you think we would care, since we already clearly rule the earth, but suit yourself. How about I tell you some fictional stories about virtual reality and robots?
OUR PROTAGONIST: I AM ON GUARD AGAINST YOUR VILE PROPAGANDA but okay sure I guess whatever.
And then the first story she tells him is about the power of FRIENDSHIP and STAR TREK FANFICTION and is kind of adorable, so clearly we recognize from the beginning that Ibis is a robot of class and taste.
Most of the stories are not the most deep or complex things ever written, but they continue in the vein of being generally much more optimistic and sweet than I had expected, even the ones that involve diving into black holes or brutal germ warfare, which is a fairly impressive feat. The jewel in the collection is a novella about a nurse training the first prototype robot hospice worker in her nursing home - it's just a really quiet, thoughtful, well-done story. Also I kind of love the way the frame story plays out the robot uprising mythos - well, mostly I find it hilarious, but I love it for that!
(I would also like to mention that is really astoundingly un-sketchy for a book that features several vaguely-female robots! Not that there is zero sketch - there is some creepy, albeit clearly intended-to-be-creepy, robot fetishization that shows up in the last story - but I was expecting so, so much worse, though also to be fair it would not be hard to be better than most every other piece of media I have taken in about lady robots.)
1. What you have been craving out of life is more heartwarming stories about how online, virtual, and otherwise technologically nontraditional friendships and relationships are valid and meaningful!
2. You are familiar enough with the Terminator franchise to have had, at some point or another, that discussion about how hilariously implausible it is that any humans would have been able to survive if sentient robots really put their minds to it!
3. You would just like to read at least some semi-optimistic stories about sentient robots!
So The Stories of Ibis is a collection of short stories within a frame story that takes place in, of course, a clearly Terminator-derivative ROBOT-CONTROLLED DYSTOPIA. A human storyteller is captured by the robot Ibis, who fixes his broken leg and politely requests to tell him some facts about the robot revolution.
OUR PROTAGONIST: No, no, never! You're going to try and brainwash me and convince me of your ROBOT HISTORICAL LIES!
HIS ROBOT CAPTOR: . . . I am not sure why you think we would care, since we already clearly rule the earth, but suit yourself. How about I tell you some fictional stories about virtual reality and robots?
OUR PROTAGONIST: I AM ON GUARD AGAINST YOUR VILE PROPAGANDA but okay sure I guess whatever.
And then the first story she tells him is about the power of FRIENDSHIP and STAR TREK FANFICTION and is kind of adorable, so clearly we recognize from the beginning that Ibis is a robot of class and taste.
Most of the stories are not the most deep or complex things ever written, but they continue in the vein of being generally much more optimistic and sweet than I had expected, even the ones that involve diving into black holes or brutal germ warfare, which is a fairly impressive feat. The jewel in the collection is a novella about a nurse training the first prototype robot hospice worker in her nursing home - it's just a really quiet, thoughtful, well-done story. Also I kind of love the way the frame story plays out the robot uprising mythos - well, mostly I find it hilarious, but I love it for that!
(I would also like to mention that is really astoundingly un-sketchy for a book that features several vaguely-female robots! Not that there is zero sketch - there is some creepy, albeit clearly intended-to-be-creepy, robot fetishization that shows up in the last story - but I was expecting so, so much worse, though also to be fair it would not be hard to be better than most every other piece of media I have taken in about lady robots.)
