Notes: Collection of two short fiction stories and two essays about robotics. I have read the italian translation by Raul Ciannella and Francesca Secci published by Future Fiction (Future Fiction also published an english translation, and there is also a print on demand edition). Read this review in Italian here.
Spain has changed, and is now in post-apocalyptic conditions. Cars are not used anymore (replaced by small personal aircrafts) and the roads have changed too, becoming abandoned places where the remains of cars still litter the roadside. But sometimes the need to visit a service station remains, and this one is unlike the others. It is a teenage girl who notices it first, and then both her parents realize it. There is an unexpected cleanliness in station, and a homeless man seems to be living there and taking care of it…
And what is happening to Ictineu Tercat, operated recently in Thailand, whose heartbeat is behaving weirdly?
The essays are an interesting insight on the future of robotics: what are the characteristics needed in a robot that interacts with people, especially in caring roles, and how can those problems be solved is just one of the questions they raise. And there is also space for the role these robots will have in society, and for how science fiction can help in understanding it.
Carme Torras is a researcher at the Spanish Scientific Research Council and has published hundreds of articles about robotics and AIs, and this makes the two articles/short essays included here quite the compelling read, since they offer a glimpse of what and how is it so complicated to engineer a robot that can perform tasks that aren’t the simple, repetitive movements a mechanical arm in a factory performs. Robots that will take care of people in need (children, disabled people, elderly) will need to learn and understand the circumstances, and how to move in a setting in which humans move too. I found the paragraphs about the challenge in teaching robots how to deal with different materials very interesting, and if you’re a sci-fi author you may want to give these articles a read. And let’s face it, even if you aren’t, you’re gonna be interested.
The two stories are very fascinating, and I would love to read more by Carme Torras. The first story got my attention pretty quickly, in offering this world that is made fascinating by various hints: it is post-apocalyptic, because car wrecks still litter the roads and tons of people have lost their jobs due to high levels of automatization, but the parents of Ag-Nese, the teenage girl who notices the homeless man first, actually have jobs and she is getting an education, so we haven’t reached a “total collapse of civilization” post-apocalyptic level. I was going to say it’s a sneaky apocalypse, but for those who lost their jobs it’s definitely not so. The second story, called A Life E-Ternal, is a compelling narrative of fear and discovery. I’m not going to say anything else because of spoilers.
That being said, if you want to give Catalan sci-fi from a robotics researcher a chance, this is a great occasion.
