Fabrications [9780802168665]

Overview

“Fabrications captures its highly intelligent narrators with great astuteness and nuance, drawing thrilling stories out of 'alien' minds. Mason's work feels more pertinent than ever in our fast-advancing future.”—Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Coldwire

Far-sighted, darkly amusing, and haunting, Fabrications is a dazzling work of literary imagination told from the perspectives of various powerful artificial intelligences, influenced by Borges and Calvino, and for readers of Kazuo Ishiguro and Emily St. John Mandel

In Fabrications, New York Times bestselling author and computer scientist Zachary Mason tells stories of an all-too-plausible near-future world molded and mediated by advanced artificial intelligence. Benevolent by design, literal by nature, and immensely powerful when unchained, these are not the chatbots of today’s world, but rather highly evolved yet surprisingly vulnerable beings who permeate nearly all aspects of human life. Their fates inexorably wrapped around those of the people they serve, the AIs communicate in milliseconds but watch the sweep of time unfold from the detached watchtower of immortality.

The revelations Mason conjures from within these beings’ perspectives are brilliantly crafted and strikingly relevant. In “Kami”, AIs are assigned to represent natural phenomena, giving nature legal personhood and setting off a chain of high-stakes consequences. In “Ouroboros”, a hedge fund manager unleashes his AI from the usual constraints, allowing it to make him billions of dollars—when he dies, the program clones him several times over the centuries like a familiar left without a companion. And in “Lamina”, a woman with dementia is gently kept on track and reassured by the medical program implanted in her mind who can be there with her when no one else can.

For readers of Ted Chiang, Karen Russell, and David Mitchell, Zachary Mason holds a mirror up to our contemporary world and dares to imagine what might follow.