Ghost in the machine
A thought-provoking tale of friendship and robots
Klara and the Sun made me think about what life with super intelligent machines might look like.
Most fiction about robots seems to fall into one of two categories: stories about how they’re going to kill us all or stories about how robots become an integral part of our lives. Although I enjoy the former—the first two Terminator movies are classics for a reason, and there are some terrific episodes of Black Mirror that tackle the subject—I’m drawn more to books and movies that paint robots in a positive light.
Robots are going to play a huge role in our future, and fiction is a great way to explore what exactly that might mean. So, when I found out that Kazuo Ishiguro had written a new novel about robots called Klara and the Sun, I couldn’t wait to pick it up. I read Remains of the Day years ago and thought it was brilliant. His latest is just as thoughtful and beautifully written as you’d expect from him.
The Klara in the title is an “artificial friend” who provides companionship to a sick 14-year-old girl named Josie. The story takes place in a dystopian future where children have been genetically “lifted’ to be smarter. The process of lifting is risky, and it’s the cause of Josie’s illness. Children only attend school online, so many kids have robot friends like Klara to try and make up for the lack of socialization. We don’t find out much about the world outside of Josie’s home, but there are references to frequent terrorism and environmental catastrophe.
Klara is programmed to be deeply empathetic and curious about the world. Because the book is told in the first person, we see everything from her perspective, which is both fascinating and odd. There are long stretches where you’ll almost forget that she isn’t human.
One of the most striking things about the book is Ishiguro’s depiction of Klara’s vision. Instead of having one large field of vision, she seems to see the world through a series of pixel-like boxes. This results in some pretty wild descriptions, like this one when Klara looks at an adult woman she meets: “In one box she was visible only from her waist to the upper part of her neck, while the box beside it was almost entirely taken up by her eyes.” I found it a bit confusing, although it was a good reminder that Klara isn’t like us no matter how human she may seem at times.
As I was reading the book, I couldn’t help but think about which parts of it paint a picture of our likely future—and which parts were pure fiction. I believe we’ll someday have both companion and utilitarian robots in our lives. Klara is mostly a companion. She’s not doing much of what you’d expect from a utilitarian robot, like bringing you things or preparing your meals. Her purpose is almost entirely social, and although I don’t know if we’ll ever have robots as emotionally sophisticated as she is, we might see pretty good companion robots emerge in the next decade.
There’s a lot of work going on in this space, especially around companion robots for older people. Loneliness is a real health problem in old age that increases your risk of premature death—a fact that has been made more evident by social isolation many seniors experienced during the pandemic. Research shows that having a pet can significantly ease this burden. Companion robots like Klara would be the next step up from that.
I’m curious to see whether people will treat these kinds of robots as pieces of technology or as something more. A lot of robot stories explore what happens when we start to see them as human. In Klara and the Sun, Josie seems to understand that her companion is artificial, but there are some uncomfortable scenes where Josie’s mom starts to treat Klara as another daughter. (The movie Her is about an artificial intelligence rather than a robot, but it deals with a similar scenario where a human develops complicated feelings.)
I’m inclined to think like Josie and see robots as machines, no matter how intelligent and human-like they become. In A Thousand Brains, Jeff Hawkins explores at length what moral obligation we have to our machines. Should we feel bad about pulling the plug on an artificial intelligence if it’s as human-like as Klara? Hawkins concludes that the answer is no. I agree with him, although I can imagine a future where other people might not.
Ishiguro certainly makes you think about what life with super intelligent robots might look like. He never claims to be a technologist or a futurist, but his perspective on artificial life is provocative nonetheless. At the end of the book, when someone asks Klara if she thinks she succeeded at her objective, she says, “Yes, I believe I gave good service and prevented Josie from becoming lonely.” In a world filled with stories about killer machines, it was refreshing to read about a future where robots make our lives better—even if they complicate things along the way.
Stranger in a Strange Land
The best introduction to grownup sci-fi
As a teenager, I discovered the novels that Robert Heinlein wrote for adults.
When my Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, and I were kids, we fell in love with computing. But software wasn't the first thing we bonded over. It was Robert Heinlein.
I met Paul around the time I had finished reading all of the science fiction writer’s early books. Those novels were adventure stories with titles like Rocket Ship Galileo and Space Cadet. They weren’t labeled children’s books, but they appealed to kids. The plots were very straightforward. They always had a simple moral and involved a little bit of cool technology and a little bit of romance. I loved them.
Then, when I was in seventh or eighth grade, I got into the Heinlein novels that were meant for adults—but I didn’t know it. Starship Troopers was set in the future but drew parallels with the Cold War. Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress went even deeper into Heinlein’s philosophy of life and his concerns about the future. They were dark and ambiguous. You didn’t always know who the hero was. "This is not the Heinlein I’ve been reading,” I thought. “What happened to the guy?”
I met Paul around the same time, and we got to know each other by talking about sci-fi. I thought I had read a lot of it, but Paul way outdid me. (To be fair, he did have the advantage of being two grades ahead of me in school.) I had one bookshelf filled with science fiction. He probably had eight. Paul explained that the Heinlein books I had stumbled on weren’t children’s stories—they had messages and were supposed to help you think about the real world. That was news to me as a young teenager.
Eventually we started looking for other shared interests. Our school acquired a computer, and we said to each other, “How does this thing work? Let’s try and make it do something.”
Of all the sci-fi I read as a teenager, Stranger in a Strange Land is my favorite. It was published in 1961 and is Heinlein’s most popular book. It’s about a human named Michael Valentine Smith, who’s raised on Mars by Martians and then returns to Earth as a young adult. Because he grew up on Mars, he has psychic abilities and is super-intelligent. After some early adventures, including an escape from the facility where he’s being studied by scientists, he becomes fascinated by the world’s religions. In the novel’s futuristic setting, religions are more politically powerful than they are today, and Smith decides to start his own.
He calls it the Church of All Worlds, and through it, Heinlein predicted a lot of the hippie culture that was to come later in the 1960s. Smith’s adherents learn to “grok” things, a Martian term meaning to understand something by becoming one with it. (The idea of grokking got picked up in popular culture and became, at least for a while, a term you heard a lot even outside the context of the book.) Smith’s followers live in communes, which struck me as pretty out-there when I read it as a teenager.
I love sci-fi that pushes your thinking about what’s possible in the future. In Heinlein’s case, hippie culture isn’t the only thing he predicted. Among other things, Stranger in a Strange Land and other works of his mention what he called a “hydraulic bed”—what we now know as a waterbed. He also does the classic sci-fi thing of using an obviously fictional setting to ask profound questions about human nature.
Heinlein isn’t known as a particularly humorous writer, but Stranger in a Strange Land definitely has some funny parts. Early in the novel, for example, a nurse offers Michael a glass of water. To her, it’s a simple gesture, but it has a lot of meaning for him because water is so scarce on Mars. He thanks her: “May you always drink deep.” After they both take a sip, she can’t figure out why he “seemed content to sink back, as if he had accomplished something important.”
I’m glad I stumbled on Stranger and Heinlein’s other grown-up novels when I did. Everything I had read before them had a tidy ending. Here though the ending is unclear. It’s up to us to decide what happens next, just like in real life.
Hot read
A scary but hopeful novel about climate change
Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future.
Last year, after my book on climate change came out, several friends told me I should read a novel called The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. They thought of it, they said, because it explained something in great detail that I spent only one chapter on in my book: the consequences of failing to deal seriously with climate change. It explained the science well, told a great story, and had a surprisingly hopeful ending.
I finally had time to take my friends’ advice earlier this year, and I’m glad I did. The Ministry for the Future does a better job than any other book I’ve read of playing out, in a dramatic but realistic way, how high temperatures can literally kill people. Like a lot of hard science fiction—I’m thinking of someone like Neal Stephenson, whose books I love—it explains a lot of the science well. And although I don’t agree with all the things people do in the novel to address the problem, it has a lot of intriguing ideas.
The Ministry for the Future opens a few years from now during a historic heat wave in Uttar Pradesh, India—where Frank May, an American aid worker, is doing everything he can to save lives. But it’s not working. As day after day passes without a drop in temperature or humidity, the electric grid eventually gives out, turning life into an inferno for everyone who lives in the north Indian state.
Desperate, many rush to the nearest lake, hoping it will offer some relief—but its water is scorching, too. By the end of the heat wave, more than twenty million people are dead, and Frank has barely survived.
It’s as harrowing a scene as any I’ve read in a science fiction book—because the events depicted in it could very well take place in the real world. I don’t think we’re going to experience heat waves precisely as long or as severe as the one in the book over the next few years. But if we don’t decisively reduce carbon emissions and eventually eliminate them, in the decades ahead we could very well see successive days when there’s a deadly combination of extremely high temperatures and high humidity. (Just last month, parts of northern India experienced temperatures of around 60 degrees Celsius, or about 140 degrees Fahrenheit.)
But this is not a hopeless book. Over the course of the novel’s 106 (!) short chapters, Robinson presents a stimulating and engaging story, spanning decades and continents, packed with fascinating ideas and people.
Alongside Frank, another main character is Mary Murphy, a diplomat who runs the fictional Ministry for the Future, an organization formed by the United Nations when the Paris Climate Agreement’s signatories fail to meet their targets. Their mission is “to advocate for the world’s future generations of citizens, whose rights, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are as valid as our own.” What that really means is they are charged with doing everything they can to fight climate change and save humanity. And by the end of the book— without giving too much away—they find some success.
In Robinson’s story, there isn’t a single solution to climate change, just as there won’t be in the real world. Instead, he weaves together stories about many new policies and innovations, all of which work together to avert disaster. Some of these ideas are really intriguing, like the idea of the Ministry for the Future itself. If we want to address climate change, then our political institutions will have to start doing what the Ministry does: acting on behalf of future generations.
Another major idea featured in the book is the carboni, a new reserve currency backed by the world’s major central banks and designed to incentivize decarbonization. Companies are paid in carboni whenever they remove carbon from the atmosphere or prevent more emissions from going out.
It’s an interesting idea. Creating carboni would be tantamount to putting a price on carbon that reflects the damage it does, which is an idea that I support. But it has downsides too, because it’s a zero-sum solution it would require people to make tradeoffs with finite resources. It might encourage you to spend your life on carbon removal instead of, say, being a teacher or farmer. That tradeoff comes at a cost—society ends up with fewer teachers or a less productive agricultural sector.
I wish Robinson had spent more time on broad solutions that enable us to get to zero emissions while helping people escape poverty: better seeds that don’t require as much fertilizer and can withstand changing weather, or ways to create cement and steel without emitting carbon.
But these are minor disagreements. The Ministry for the Future is a great read. Robinson has written a novel that presents the urgency of this crisis in an original way and leaves readers with hope that we can do something about it. The next chapter in the story of our planet is still being written, and the ending is up to us.
Future shock
This novel made me think about gender equality in new ways
Naomi Alderman’s novel The Power flips the roles of men and women.
One thing I love about science fiction is the way it can reflect what is on people’s minds. Growing up in the sixties, I read a ton of sci-fi, and most of the novels involved either robots or space travel and life on other planets. That was the early days of the robotics industry and the time of the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, so it makes sense that authors were dealing with those subjects. Climate change wasn’t something people worried about then, and I can’t think of any science fiction I read or was aware of as a kid that looked at the role of gender in society. Or if it did, I didn’t pick up on the message.
Today, of course, sci-fi writers are taking on a wider range of subjects. Elsewhere on Gates Notes I’ve written about The Ministry for the Future, which is all about the effects of climate change and efforts to limit the damage.
And at the suggestion of my daughter Jenn, I recently read The Power, by Naomi Alderman, which finds a clever way to look at gender roles. What would the world be like, Alderman asks, if all the women on Earth suddenly developed the ability to discharge massive electric shocks from their bodies? She takes this single idea and explores how it changes the dynamic between men and women, and among women. In doing so, she reveals a lot about how power and gender work today. (The word “power” in the title has multiple meanings.)
The novel switches back and forth between several characters, all but one of them female. For example, Margot is a budding politician with a teenage daughter, Jocelyn, who initially tries to hide her abilities so she doesn’t endanger her mom’s career. You also meet Allie, a young girl who uses her power to escape an abusive foster home and eventually establishes a new type of religion, and Roxy, the daughter of a London crime boss, who’s already tough even before she develops her power.
Early on, you see these and other women dealing with men’s growing fear of their new abilities. (The one major male character is a journalist who documents the growing global phenomenon and is an ally to women, though he also has to contend with the shifting balance of power in his own life—like being afraid to walk alone at night.) Rather than leading to some utopia where women and men are equals and the world is a kinder and gentler place, the change actually results in violent social upheaval. Some men take up arms in a desperate attempt to keep control. Some women find their new power intoxicating and exact brutal retribution on men. I won’t go into detail about just how bad things get, but be warned: The Power contains graphic depictions of sexual violence.
Whatever you think of those scenes, The Power raises timely questions about gender dynamics. Are people more connected by gender than by family, community, or country? And can power corrupt anyone, regardless of gender?
Reading about female characters who have been suffering with no recourse and suddenly have the power to defend themselves, I gained a stronger and more visceral sense of the abuse and injustice many women experience today. And I expanded my appreciation for the people who work on these issues in the U.S. and around the world, including the grantees supported by the Gates Foundation’s gender equality program.
I do have one minor complaint about The Power. The book uses a framing device, and I thought the way it wrapped up at the end was a little predictable. But overall, the massive role reversal that takes place in this book is a compelling reminder of what life is like for women all over the world and the injustices and indignities that they face. Even though the world has made a lot of progress on gender equality, a lot more work remains to be done.
To infinity and beyond
How far would you go to save the world?
Even if you aren’t a big science fiction fan, Project Hail Mary is a lot of fun.
Have you ever read a book that's hard to tell people about without giving away some of the plot? I recently finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and couldn’t wait to recommend it. But as soon as I started talking about it to some colleagues, I realized there was a problem: there was no way to explain why I liked the book so much without spoiling one of its big surprises.
Here’s what I can say without ruining anything for you: Project Hail Mary is the latest novel by Andy Weir, who is best known for writing The Martian. It tells the story of Ryland Grace, a high school science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship in a different star system with no memory of how he got there. He quickly figures out that he’s been sent on a mission to save our solar system from a microorganism called the Astrophage, which is essentially eating our sun. If Ryland doesn’t succeed, the Earth will enter a new ice age that kills billions of people.
The twist comes about a quarter of the way into the book. So if you want to go into it blind, you should probably stop reading this now. I won’t ruin the ending or anything like that, but I’m going to give away a bit more than the summary on the book jacket.
It turns out that Ryland isn’t the only one looking for a way to stop the Astrophage. He crosses paths with an alien that looks like a Labrador-sized spider made out of rock. The rest of the book is about Ryland and his new alien friend—whom he not-so-cleverly names Rocky—working together to save their home planets.
Weir offers a somewhat plausible notion of what it would be like to make first contact. Unlike the humanoid extraterrestrials you see in a lot of science fiction, Rocky is completely alien in every sense of the word. He breathes ammonia, uses echolocation to “see,” and speaks using musical notes. Ryland has to create a smart bit of software before they can communicate. The two end up bonding over being lonely travelers who are light years from home, and they develop a beautiful friendship despite being so different from one another.
As I was reading about Rocky, I couldn’t help but think about Nick Lane’s excellent book The Vital Question. Lane helps you understand the extraordinary number of things that had to line up perfectly to create complex life on Earth. The odds that there is another sentient species relatively nearby seem low. (Rocky is from the 40 Eridani system, which is “only” 16 lightyears away from our sun.) Still, it’s exciting to think about what other life might be out there.
Like Weir’s other books, Project Hail Mary is clever about the dilemmas the hero gets put into. Ryland is a fundamentally decent and likable main character who you can’t help but root for. Because he has amnesia at the beginning of the book, you get to puzzle out what’s happening along with him, which is a lot of fun. He also has a great sense of humor. When Ryland realizes he’s about to become the first human to meet an alien, he thinks, “If there is hostile intent, what would I do about it? Die. That’s what I’d do. I’m a scientist, not Buck Rogers.”
He reminded me a lot of Mark Watney, the protagonist in The Martian. The two books deal with similar themes about how people work together in challenging situations, although the big difference with Project Hail Mary is that not all of the collaborators are human. I loved reading about how Ryland and Rocky combined their species’ expertise to solve problems they wouldn’t have been able to tackle on their own.
I thought some parts of the story—like how Ryland gets picked for his mission and how powerful the United Nations task force that organizes his mission is—were a bit unbelievable. They didn’t bother me too much, though. Science fiction gets a lot of latitude to conjure things up. It’s hard to be too distracted by something being implausible when you’re reading a story about a giant space spider.
I recommend the book for anyone who is in the mood for a fun diversion. I started it on a Saturday and finished it on Sunday, and it was a great way to spend a weekend. Even if you aren’t a big science fiction fan, Project Hail Mary is a terrific story about two friends using science and engineering to save the day.
Neal’s Ark
The day the moon blew up
The novel that rekindled my love for sci-fi.
When I was younger, I read a ton of science fiction. I was up to date on all the big authors. Probably the one I read the most was Robert Heinlein—The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress was a particular favorite. But for the past decade or so, I haven’t read nearly as much sci-fi. I just got out of the habit.
So when a friend recommended Neal Stephenson’s most recent novel, Seveneves, I thought I would give it a try. I had read one of Stephenson’s earlier books, Snow Crash, and thought this new one would be a good way to get back into sci-fi. I’m really glad I did, because is a thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable book.
Neal, who lives in Seattle, was nice enough to meet up so we could talk about his work—and he patiently helped make this virtual-reality film of our conversation.
The plot of Seveneves gets going when the moon blows up without warning and for no apparent reason. This isn’t a spoiler—it’s the first sentence of the book. “The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.” People figure out that in two years, chunks of the moon will rain down on Earth in a cataclysmic meteor shower, wiping out every living thing and leaving the planet uninhabitable for thousands of years. The world unites on a plan to get as many spacecraft as possible into orbit, where a few select people can ride out this Hard Rain and keep humanity going.
The book has so many cool ideas, memorable characters, and good storylines that I can’t cover them all. So I will just touch on two things that really struck me.
One is Stephenson’s writing on technology. Seveneves belongs in the subgenre of hard science fiction, which means it emphasizes scientific accuracy. Everything adheres to physical laws, so unlike Star Wars, no one travels anywhere near the speed of light. Stephenson tells you not just what happens, but how it happens. You’ll learn all about how orbits work and what it takes to connect two spacecraft in different orbits. You’ll learn the difference between fuel and propellant. There’s a long but clever passage about a woman who flies from Earth into orbit in a glider while wearing a suit made of intelligent fabric.
Personally I loved all that stuff. But if you’re the sort of reader who doesn’t care how such a thing might work, you will find yourself skimming parts of Seveneves.
The other thing that struck me is the way the book pushes you to think big and long-term. If everyone learned that the world would end two days from now, there would be global panic, plus a big dose of hedonism. But what if it were ending two years from now? Would people keep going to work? Would kids go to school? If they did, what would you teach them?
In the last third of the book, there’s a fascinating exploration of the connection between culture and genetics. If only a few humans survived and had to start all over, what would happen to distinctions of class and race? How much are you shaped by your genes, your family’s history, and your own experiences? In the wrong hands, this material could be dreary, but Stephenson does a good job of exploring it while moving the story along.
It helps that he throws in other nice touches to keep you thinking. The title is a palindrome, though how that’s relevant is left up to you. The number 7 from the title turns out to matter in more than one way. And you might enjoy trying to figure out which characters were inspired by real people. There’s a famous astrophysicist/science explainer who sounds a lot like Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Seveneves reminded me of all the things I love about science fiction. It is a great novel to get lost in, learn from, and think about. More than anything else, it has me thinking I should get back to reading sci-fi again.
