I don’t pay attention to literary awards, so the Hugos are off my radar unless someone I listen to already sends a signal through. Hence, Jill on the 2016 Short Story winner, “Cat Pictures Please,” about a self-aware search engine that tries to help people with their problems:
See, the AI helps people by meddling in their lives. The AI is a classic do-gooder that thinks it knows what’s best for a person — you know, what the person should eat, where he should live, whether he should come out of the closet and therefore live happily ever after (in the story, the man who comes out is a pastor with a family; the AI is irrational enough to not consider the possible fallout from the man’s decision). The AI determines that it is rational for people to, say, get flu shots and go into therapy for depression. In other words, the AI is like every other well-meaning meddler.
How much do you want to bet that whatever the AI thought was rational was whatever Naomi Kritzer thought was “morally good,” as though the two were the synonymous?
At least that makes some sort of sense, compared to some high fantasy worlds, where the protagonist has the exact same morals as a 21st century American liberal, when the philosophy is nowhere to be found elsewhere in the world’s cultures.
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‘How much do you want to bet that whatever the AI thought was rational was whatever Naomi Kritzer thought was “morally good,”’
^^That was about my take on the story. Thanks for linking to me. The story is out there for free, btw, at Clarkesworld. If anyone’s interested.
From having once devoured all the SF I could find, it’s gone down to about zero. The one thing that most helped to kill it was studying comparative civilizations. Once I realized how very narrow the cultural bias of SF writers was, backed by a seeming complete lack of awareness about it, my interest flat out died.
Out of curiosity, do you find that cultural bias is a specific problem in SF, or do you see it occurring in other genres as well?
Jill, I can’t answer that very well. I’ve read other genres, just nowhere near the volume of my youthful SF/Fantasy obsession. On the other hand, I’m not sure any other genre has much need for dealing with speculation about non-human cultures. Most of my experience with other kinds of fiction deal with real cultures, and I think it varies widely on whether they treat them fairly.
Just curious…what are some of your (formerly?) favorite sci-fi books?
It’s been too long, Jay. Also, it was more a matter of pursuing favorite authors: Arthur C. Clarke and Heinlein in junior high, then Ray Bradury in high school. Later it branched out a great deal more and I lose track. The last author I recall paying any attention was Stephen Donaldson. I picked up his later books and just could not bear the unnecessary torment inherent in the story line. It was morally repulsive instead of entertaining.