Tag: self-awareness

Calling all Murderbot fans: Apple TV+ to stream Martha Wells’ series

Talk about a killer show!

Murderbot, Martha Wells’ popular book series about the diaries of a self-aware robot struggling to overcome his programming to kill, will be adapted into a 10-episode science-fiction drama.

Actor Alexandr Skarsgard (Creative Commons license)

Apple TV+ recently announced plans stream the series, which will star Emmy-winning actor Alexander Skarsgard (True Blood, Battleship, Succession, The Legend of Tarzan, The Northman, The Stand), who also will serve as executive producer.

The news should spark wide interest from sf/fantasy fans, since Well’s bestselling Murderbot Diary books have won both Hugo and Nebula awards – and from LFS members and libertarian futurists, since several books in the series have been nominated for the Prometheus Award.

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Klara and the Sun: Ishiguro’s Best Novel finalist offers hauntingly ambiguous tragedy about unrecognized agency, awareness and rights

By Michael Grossberg

The sympathetic character at the center of Klara and the Sun is profoundly human in her caring, determination, curiosity, loyalty and observant intelligence.

And yet, Klara is an artificial being, an android branded and sold as an Artificial Friend in Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed novel, one of five 2022 Prometheus Best Novel finalists.

Set a generation or two into the future and strictly told from the highly limited point of view of Klara, the novel never fully answers the question of whether Klara has achieved full self-awareness (and thus should be treated as a person with rights.)

Yet, Ishiguro carefully drops enough clues and hints to make Klara and the Sun both a tantalizingly ambiguous mystery about the threshold of full consciousness and a haunting meta-libertarian parable about the foundations of rights and the tragedy that can occur when basic “humanity” and basic rights go unrecognized.

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