All posts tagged: Silvia

New Scientist Book Club: Read an extract from Luminous by Silvia Park

New Scientist Book Club: Read an extract from Luminous by Silvia Park

Published by skeptic

Seoul – the setting for Silvia Park’s Luminous – at night Sean Pavone/Shutterstock That summer was immortal. July was especially savage with sixty-two heat deaths in Seoul, punctuated by the spectacular fizzing breakdown of a GS-100 security android when it crumpled knees-first outside a United Korea Bank. A cleaner broomed away the remains. The head was left grinning on the pavement, chirping at passersby to warn them of today’s heat. Then the monsoons came. Undeterred, hundreds of Red Devil fans flooded the World Cup Stadium, waving flags of their reunified nation. Their dreams vaporized after the first round. Mexico: 7, United Republic of Korea: 0. The very next day, the sky cleared. A white sun buttered a salvage yard with rust while an old bomb-disposal unit, the Grumman A-1, moved in a figure eight. It cleared the path for a young girl named Ruijie, who was dragging the body of a woman by the ankles, naked arms thrown back as if shouting hooray. The woman might have been beautiful once. Lips pink and plush, and …

Silvia Salis, Mayor of Genoa, Is a Married Catholic Woman but Doesn’t Believe That’s the Only Way to Live

Silvia Salis, Mayor of Genoa, Is a Married Catholic Woman but Doesn’t Believe That’s the Only Way to Live

Published by Sam Flores

Do you ever feel alone in your role as mayor? Sports helped me in this. You have a great team, but on the field you are alone. In politics, the final decision is mine, but I have a really good team around me. A team that can hold you up, protect you, and support you. You have to surround yourself with people who work for your good. Have you ever been betrayed by anyone on your team? No. What is your daily routine like? Wake up at 6:30 a.m. Work out or run for an hour. Then I wake up my son, Eugenio, stay with him, and drive him to school. Now it’s Nemo time, so every morning is like Groundhog Day: same scenes, same sentences, same questions. I make a point of starting the day with him because often, when I come home after dinner, he is already asleep. And I can’t see him until the next morning. At a dinner party, in Milan, you said your political program consists of four themes: security, …

Two excellent new sci-fi novels, Luminous by Silvia Park and Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Parker, tackle robots in very different ways

Two excellent new sci-fi novels, Luminous by Silvia Park and Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Parker, tackle robots in very different ways

Published by skeptic

Do we relate better to stories about robots with faces and bodies? Carlos Castilla/Alamy Ode to the Half-BrokenSuzanne Palmer, Daw Books LuminousSylvia Park, Magpie Robots and whether they will one day deserve to be treated like people – or destroy humanity, or both – have interested writers for well over a century now. In the real world, the robot threat appears to involve the uses of artificial intelligence in misinformation and more direct forms of warfare such as drone attacks. In the world of literature, however, many writers focus on individual robots. Maybe giving the AI a body and a face simply helps tell your story better to creatures with bodies and faces. Fictional robots have a lot going for them. They can be funny, cool or sexy. They can be nerdy and a bit depressed. Some represent “the other”, a test of how humane we are. They can also help us think about concepts of ownership that may apply to our treatment of pets or farm animals. And they can be terrifying killing machines. …