Another collection of short stories. This wasn't as good as Arrival but still pretty readable. Included:
The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate - "coincidence and intention are two sides of the same tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot day one is true and the other is false"
Exhalation reminded me of Asimov's The Gods Themselves:
someone realises that the technology everyone’s using is gradually going to be
less and less effective until it won’t work at all. The Idea is raised that maybe
there are other universes where you might be able to borrow some of the
“displacement” into their own but that doesn’t happen.
The Lifecycle of Software Objects. Digients are software
constructs that have AI and occupy virtual worlds and you can interact with
them. Zoologist brought in to help teach them and develop their
intelligence. Cute bit where they have the digients controlling a robot
humanoid in the real world which can then interact with people. The main
thing that the digients were interested in was the texture of things in the
real world; in virtual environment not so much attention had been given to
making the floor feel gritty etc. Quite long. Nice idea for a story but didn’t
have the twist that I’d assumed was coming.
Davey’s Patent Automatic Nanny - sort of nice and interesting but nothing fantastic
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling - liked this one: about
confabulation of our own memories and how unreliable they are. Chimes in with
cognitive dissonance stuff Words I had to look up: Ouroboric Griot
Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom. A World where “prisms” can be
activated which then provide a link to a parallel world with which you can
communicate and find out what would have happened if events had turned out
differently. People use them to converse with their “paraselves” and this
causes various social problems as people can feel envious of their
counterparts. Story explores Some other social consequences and also follows a
particular set of characters who use prisms to make money by eg exploiting
situation where a prism can be used to allow One member of a couple talk to
their spouse after a car crash killed a different one of them in each
timeline. This one had a good ending which took me a few seconds before I
worked out what it meant then it made me chuckle with delight.
The last story was the best but didn’t think this book was as good as the
other one and no story as good as the caliagnosia story from that.
Completed : 04-Aug-2019