Pinsker’s story has Private Investigator James Spendlove looking into the suspicious death of billionaire John Lonsdale III. Their funding is almost up, and then the robot fortuitously sees something quite strange – a sign of life? Or something odd resulting from an injured arm? And why is Lange’s AI assistant, Sansa, so intrigued? The story morphs before our eyes from a cool story of remote exploration to an even cooler – and sadder and scarier – story of… remote exploitation? Thoughtful AF, anyway!Ī couple more on the mostly pure fun axis (though not without serious speculation on AI plus economics) are Sarah Pinsker‘s ” Bigger Fish” and Suzanne Palmer‘s ” Chiaroscuro in Red”. Also exploring Saturn’s moon Enceladus! Lange is leading a research project remotely, as a robot probe explores the moon.

” Test4Echo” is neither funny nor sweet, but it’s pretty brilliant, directly exploring the relationship of AIs and us – their creators. (Enough so that a name they choose is Kleekai Greyhound – and only a little while after reading this story did I realize that Klee Kai is a dog breed, after seeing Bill Belichick’s Klee Kai help him conduct the NFL draft!) This is very funny and very sweet.įunny might apply to the occasional Peter Watts story, but never sweet, I trust. The new one (still looking for a name) gets a job at a café – and finds themself fascinated by dogs. The older one, a very reluctant mentor, is named Constant Killer, and, well – you can guess their job. Vina JieMin Prasad‘s ” A Guide for Working Breeds” is mostly dialogue between two robots – a veteran mentor and a newly constructed one. The book opens particularly strongly, with two very different but very impressive pieces. I could probably cover all the stories here, but in this space I must limit myself to just a few. (Ellen Datlow probably retains that title for fantasy and certainly for horror.) Strahan’s new anthology is Made to Order, on the subject of robots and mostly their desire for liberation, for autonomy, and while that implies stories about robots righteously overthrowing their masters (us!) – and certainly there are some such – the ways this and similar themes are wielded here are much more varied. I don’t think there can be any doubt that the best currently working original anthologist of science fiction is Jonathan Strahan. (Solaris) March 2020.Īnthropocene Rag, Alex Irvine (Tor.com Publishing) March 2020.

Made to Order by Jonathan Strahan