I took ages to really grab this book and start reading, and I must say it, when I finally got hold of the audiobook I was able to go from start and end, let me explain why, this is a collection of stories that are about AI, AI is in the centre, the main character or what gives motive for the main character to continue his or her way, in one of the stories AI is a son, in other is a lover, and in many of the stories the AI gets more human than the actual humans in the story. When reading I didn’t feel motivated enough to read it through, but when I got the audiobook, it was a different story, I enjoyed much more having the book and the stories read to me, since it was the work of several readers, and when that happen in anthologies or short story collections that grabs my attention even more because that makes a fence in my mind and I know where one begins and others finish.

While I did like some of the stories others I got a bit bored and I was only able to go through because the people reading the stories in the audiobook version did a great job, so I can only recommend for you to grab the audiobook or if you really like to imagine new realities where AI is the main character or how AI could be better than humans.

Thank you Netgalley and Arc Manor | CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, for the free ARC and this is my honest opinion.

This collection has some of my favorite writers and some writers I've been wanting to read. I've been hearing a lot about Ray Naylor and I really loved his story. I never love every story in a collection, but I liked this collection because of its theme. There were such interesting uses of AI, from a relatively mundane production of stories to uses for violence and war. The most interesting thing is the humanity, especially where the AI learns its own humanity.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this.

An anthology of speculative fiction at its best featuring great authors and a lot of food for food.
Not all the story are 5/5 because some are 4/5 but they are all at high level
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for the early read. This collection of short stories are great. I fully enjoyed reading these and highly recommend buying this book!

I really loved this short story collection, The idea to have a common topic and each author write about it was very cool and the theme of AI was up to date and relevant. I'm looking forward to buying this book to have copy on my shelf :)

I really enjoyed reading "The Digital Aesthete", a compilation of 17 speculative fiction storied focusing on "the intersection of art and AI". The editor's introduction had me hooked from the start. There are quite a lot of fallacies concerning generative AI, which I find simultaneously completely overblown, (No ChatGPT is not sentient), and scary (But ChatGPT is scarily human-like... except when it isn't). And I appreciated the Ted Chiang quote accurately calling ChatGPT "a blury JPEG of the web".

The authors of this collection include some of the best modern SF talent, including Len Liu, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Taiyo Fujii. Given that 7 of these stories are translated into English, the collection contains a wonderful spectrum of ideas.

A comment or two on each story:

"Silicon Hearts" - What happens when all fiction is both written and evaluated by AI?
"Forged" - Could a sentient AI engage in a life of forgery? What could go wrong?
"A Beautiful War" - Can AR/AI technology be used to mislead people in dangerous ways? Could this affect the practice of war?
"Stage Shows and Schnauzers" - Post singularity, super intelligent AI, detective-work, and live theater.
"The Mercer Stat" - I'm still thinking about this one. Sentient AI in a courtroom in a future pocket universe who fixate on the past?
"Good Stories" - Wow! Another amazing view on what the future of fiction could be like with massive individualization via AI. Uncomfortably accurate prediction, I think.
"The Factory of Market Desires" - Excellent story about, sentient AI with a strong opinion on the art they want to make.
"The Form of Things Unknown" - Extra-solar travel, first encounter, highly augmented humans, and self discovery. Very engaging story.
"Eve & Mada" - Artistic post singularity AI virtual world?
"Torso" - Sentient robots as human care takers.
"The Laugh Machine" - The story of a comedian robot in a bar turns out to be serious...
"The Unknown Painter" - Hints of the secret life of an AI painter and his/her/its creator....
"Hermetic Kingdom" - Haunting story of life (afterlife?) after being downloaded from a human brain into virtual reality.
"A World of Tragic Heroes" - Post Singularity... AI and humanities future... Does it have to be a tragedy?
"Emil's Labyrinth" - Rogue sentient AI & unsatisfied humans in a dystopian future...
"Reader Alice" - Another take on what happens when the market for books is shared by humans and generative AI... Well thought out story.
"Prompt" - Artistically disturbing story of AI controlled but human created live theater.

I recommend all of these stories! I thank the editor, Alex Shvartsman, and the publisher, UFO Publishing, for kindly sharing a temporary electronic review copy of this work. No generative AIs were harmed or used in the creation of this review.

An excellent anthology of short stories all to do with AI and the arts, from painting and sculpture, the theatre, writing, computer games and even a standup comedian. It’s not anglocentric, it includes various translated stories too. My favourites were ‘Silicon Hearts’ by Adrian Tchaikovsky about writing by bots for magazines edited by bots, and literary prizes judged by bots; ‘A Beautiful War’ by Fang Zeyu, where an AI assisted soldier sees art everywhere; ‘Good Stories’ by Ken Liu where stories are written by AI and consumed by the customer using dramatising apps etc; ‘The Laugh Machine’ by Auston Habershaw about an AI standup comedian; and ‘Hermetic Kingdom’ by Ray Naylor where uploaded people play the NPCs in games.

Thank you to NetGalley and the contributing authors of The Digital Aesthete for an ARC of this anthology!

Despite not usually being an anthology reader, The Digital Aesthete: Human Musings on the Intersection of Art and AI might have changed my opinion going forward. I was very excited about the prospect of reading from a number of acclaimed authors—nearly all of whom were new to me—on the topic of AI and its interactions with creativity and art. There’s something particularly magical about the way in which writers/authors can make sense of a worrisome topic like AI through their own creative processes, and I’m really glad I was able to pick up this book!

On the individual stories, there was a lot to like here. I enjoyed the majority of the stories, but a few standouts were: A Beautiful War by Jane Espenson; Stage Shows and Schnauzers by Tina Connolly; The Form of Things Unknown by Julie Novakova; and Torso by H. Pueyo. These were not the only stories that humanized the AI theme, but I felt that these did so strongly in such a way that was incredibly effective to me. Silicon Hearts by Adrian Tchaikovsky also really set the stage for the theming of the book: a very strong opening! There were also a few that were decidedly not my taste because of a more meandering style, but there was more positive than negative to be read here.

[Blurb goes here]

In this collection of literary works, the overarching theme revolves around generative AI and its application in artistic endeavors. The authors were prompted—it seems—to craft short stories that explore the intersection of technology and creativity, particularly focusing on the use of AI in manipulating text, image, and other media. The common thread among these narratives is their connection to generative AI, although some stories deliberately conceal the technological aspect, integrating it subtly rather than placing it at the forefront of the tale.

The anthology presents a myriad of approaches. Some stories may echo themes found in earlier ones, creating a sense of repetition. I'm sad to say that only a select few managed to transcend the rest, emerging as out-of-the-ordinary tales that captivated me.

Upon delving into "The Digital Aesthete," I was confronted with the inherent certainty that comes with anthologies: only a handful of narratives will truly stand out and be worth the time spent on them.

These beautifully written short fictions, though aesthetically pleasing, lack the impact needed to linger in the reader's mind long after reading them.

Despite my anticipation for an amazing compilation, "The Digital Aesthete" did not live up to expectations. Not even close.

This is, unfortunately, a read I cannot recommend.

Thank you for the advanced copy!

This was a very interesting anthology which explores the use of technology (both sentient AI and language learning models) in various forms of art. Of course, like every anthology, there are the highs and lows.

But unlike every anthology, even the lows and average stories show that the author has a way with words. It might've been their off day, but you can still tell that they can definitely write. This isn't amateur hour, and I'm thankful for it.

Overall, I'd recommend this if you're interested in the creative ways that art (in all forms) intersects with technology, automation, robotics, and language learning models.

Thank you to CAEZIK SF & Fantasy and NetGalley for this arc.

Reviews of each short story below:


Silicon Hearts by Adrian Tchaikovsky
4.5/5 stars

Two "writers" earn their living by writing prompts into story writing AI bots and submitting the "stories" to magazines and journals to make money. Chaos ensues when their romance story bot starts writing nonsense.

Great opening story to the anthology!

I didn't think I'd like this one, but I was proven wrong. Tchaikovsky managed to make me care about the plot and the characters in this short story. It was both funny and grim at the same time and made me think about the future of AI art. I'd recommend this one.


Forged by Jane Espenson
3.5/5 stars

Failing to complete its task, a drone starts to forge "Naïve" art pieces.

Great storytelling here and I liked the literal anthropomorphism of the drone MC. Great example of "garbage in garbage out" when it comes to machines created by humans.


A Beautiful War by Fang Zeyu, translated by Nathan Faries
5/5 stars

An artist is drafted into a war, but he doesn't want to fight. A new AI tech is introduced to help these draftees fight like real soldiers while desensitizing and acclimatizing them to war.

Absolutely superb! (But then again, I'm biased because I like reading about war and art.) Such a creative and dark story about the military applications of AI.

Would love to read more from this author!


Stage Shows and Schnauzers by Tina Connolly
4.5/5 stars

PI Emily Viridian and Gabriel, her AI assistant, investigate a series of incidents at her ex's musical performance.

I'm not usually into contrived detective stories, but I ended up liking this! Great characters, great vibes, and overall, a strong story with a beginning, middle, and end. Loved the pacing too and the setup really helped introduce the characters.


The Mercer Seat by Vajra Chandrasekera
1/5 stars

Something about a courtroom drama in the future compared to a classic sci-fi story and movie.

Well, this read like a rambling essay on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?/Blade Runner with a side of ChatGPT-prompted futuristic court drama. I had no idea what was going on. There were a lot of words and nothing made sense. A great example of purple prose.


Good Stories by Ken Liu
5/5 stars

Clara works as a "textsmith" at Good Stories, changing a few words here and there on AI-generated stories to bypass copyright laws. She finds out that no one actually "reads" the "stories" that are "written."

Another great addition to the anthology! This reads very dystopian and very topical to the point where it feels prescient and comes off like an apocalyptic horror for creatives. This touches on AI as a threat to storytelling, involving several types of creatives such as writers, filmmakers, actors, etc.

So, of course, I loved it.

Also, the addition of actual ChatGPT text was a stroke of genius.


The Factory of Market Desires by Rodrigo Culagovski
3.5/5 stars

A famous artist, Osorio, creates an AI that's tasked to make art pieces in his style. But the AI has other ideas.

I'll admit, I got pretty bored halfway through because this sounded like a typical "AI becomes sentient" story, but I actually liked how it ended!

It's both strangely apocalyptic and sort of sweet at the same time, giving off vibes that seem to say that we might as well work with AI-prompted "art" if this going to be the future. Not sure how I feel about that though, which is why it feels very apocalyptic to me.


The Forms of Things Unknown by Julie Nováková
4/5 stars

"It's just strange to hear someone claim to be an artist out here. I thought that was just a hobby. Something to fill your spare time, if you've got any and if it doesn't consume common resources."


The MC, along with another teammate, Abigail (who has an AI implant), try to communicate with an alien species. The MC finds out that there's more to Abigail (and her fellow linkheads/Joined humans) than meets the eye.

Wow! I'm surprised I ended up liking this one. The beginning felt very tryhard sci-fi, but after that, the whole philosophical debate on whether AI-linked humans were better off or worse than "regular" humans really pulled me in.

I'm not sure if the alien ant served a greater purpose other than being a foil to both characters, but maybe that was the whole point.

Anyway, this is one of those short stories I'd love to see fleshed out as a full length novel.


Eve & Mada by Mose Njo, translated by Allison M. Charette
1/5 stars

Something about Madagascar's capital and falling in love with a woman and singers and poets who committed suicide.

Rambling and barely coherent. The author attempted to talk philosophically about suicide and love, but I had no idea what was going on. Not sure where AI came into play either.


Torso by H. Pueyo
4/5 stars

"Art was created to express oneself to others," replied Torso.

I create it to express myself to me."


The FMC, who is a disabled sculptor, receives a robot assistant from her father, who she has a very complicated relationship with.

This went somewhere I thought it wouldn't go... But I won't complain.

Other than that human/robot scene, I liked the emotions conveyed in this story. It was very dark and well-written, and is a great addition to the sci-fi body of stories relating to human and robot relationships. It reminded me a bit of He, She and It by Marge Piercy.


The Laugh Machine by Auston Habershaw
4/5 stars

An AI robot comedian at a local bar becomes intrigued with a regular who comes in, only buys wine, and cries at its shows.

Although this wasn't really my thing, this was still a well-written short story! The AI comedian gave me murderbot vibes with its dark humor and sarcasm. I loved how it explored how companies could record a comedian's acts and pay the comedian a license fee to use the material. It reminds me of the SAG-AFTRA strikes and how studios want to use AI so they can record actors' likenesses. Lots of food for thought there.


The Unknown Painter by Henry Lion Oldie, translated by Alex Shvartsman
3/5 stars

A hacker creates an AI that can make accurate predictions about events (most of the time).

I really wanted to like this, but I wasn't sure what the story's main purpose was. It meandered from a story about a hacker, to the hacker joining the Ukrainian military because of the Russian invasion, to the hacker teaching others how to use a drone? And somehow, an AI-generated painting foretold the triumph of Ukrainian forces in a battle against the Russians?


Hermetic Kingdom by Ray Nayler
2/5 stars

Two lovers pay off their debts by working for simulation games.

This read very dudebro sci-fi. I wasn't a fan of the beginning at all. A lot of it was just one character telling another character what was going on.

The author was very good with descriptions though and I felt immersed in the story, which is why I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 star.


A World of Tragic Heroes by Zhou Wen, translated by Judith Huang
4/5 stars

A woman and a girl (both polar opposites) live in a world where an all-powerful AI might or might not determine people's lives.

This read a lot like play/screenplay directions rather than prose, but somehow, I ended up liking it (when I'm usually really bothered by this).

The beginning was also very confusing and I was about to write it off, but the middle and ending were worth the read. It gave me major Arc of the Scythe by Neal Shusterman vibes, where the AI is all-encompassing and acts like an artificial god (of sorts) by guiding/directing the populace. There's also a bit of weird fiction to whet the appetite.


Emil's Labyrinth by Anna Mikhalevskaya, translated by Alex Shvartsman
3/5 stars

Emil, the MC's son, loses his life to technology and AI.

This was all right. I think I understood the premise, but I'm not totally sure how the labyrinths relate to AI consciousness. I think if there were less ideas, the story would be tighter and more intimate and understandable because the loss of a child is a pretty damn powerful story.


Reader Alice by Taiyo Fukii, translated by Emily Balistrieri
3/5 stars

Reader Alice is a language learning model subscription used by a growing number of writers and editors.

Hmm... I'm not sure how I feel about this. There's a lot of telling and not much of a plot. Events don't happen as much as they're explained to the reader.

It's very bleak in terms of AI language learning models taking over short story and novel writing. It feels like something that'll probably end up happening down the road. At least this story is written in a manner-of-fact tone, instead of doom and gloom.


Prompt by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey
4/5 stars

Timur, an aspiring playwright, desires to debut his masterpiece at Prompt, who's very finicky about the types of performances it allows on its stage.

I've read the first two Vita Nostra novels by the Dyachenkos and wow, this short story was definitely a grand finale! I'm really glad they were allocated enough words to write this interesting sci-fi piece. The mix of art (theater in this case), along with a god-like AI, gives off major cyberpunk vibes.

Reading this story made me feel both curious and apprehensive about the future of this type of technology. "AI" as both an enhancement and a crutch to contemporary art is an issue that we're facing now and will probably become a bigger issue if it isn't properly regulated.

This short story gives a good glimpse into AI-enhanced art and whether it's subjectively tasteful/good or not.

It’s weird: this collection was kind of polarising, and that’s just in my head. Unusually for me, there were stories I really liked, and stories I really hated, and almost nothing in-between. Normally there’s a decent spectrum.

But let’s talk about the good. Some stories I thought were above average: Prompt, by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey, tackles the “black box” of AI in an oblique and interesting way. Ray Nayler’s Hermetic Kingdom starts like Westworld, but has a happyish and poignant ending. The Form of Things Unknown by Julie Nováková is a beautiful story exploring transhumanism and cybernetics/cyborgs. Vajra Chandrasekera’s The Mercer Seat is cool and weird and references PKD’s Do Androids Dream and Blade Runner and all kinds of sci-fi lore. Forged by Jane Espenson thinks about AI “creativity” and kind of subverts the roles of AI and humans. But Auston Habershaw’s The Laugh Machine stands out, and is far and away my absolute favourite: a comedic AI (and it’s genuinely funny) that’s “stolen” jobs and caused grief kind of stumbles on a new calling in this really tender story.

I think this is a collection that’s worth reading for what it tries to do—to explore what a “generative world”, in the words of editor Alex Shvartsman, might be like. Because of the bimodal distribution of my ratings of the stories in it, whether it entirely succeeds is debatable for me. I will, however, recommend it for the stories I did love.

Thank you to NetGalley and to UFO Publishing/Arc Manor/Caezik SF & F for access.

I can't say that I loved this collection of short stories focusing on AI, but I'm sure other readers will find things to like here. Many of the pieces felt as if they were deliberately avoiding the more serious issues their stories hinted at: the "uploading" of a self and disability, machine learning and medical care, how writing is learned and taught. There were a lot of lost opportunities in these stories.

What a rollercoaster of a collection. The Digital Aesthete couldn't have come at a better time, with the ongoing conversation about ethics and legality of using AI in creative fields.

The 17 short stories alternate between the realms of futuristic speculative Sci-Fi and the more believable, realistic current state of AI in the field of arts. Warning - a couple of stories include graphical depictions of violence and self-harm.

The diversity of voices and styles is refreshing, and you've got something for lovers of every theme, from post-apocalyptic far futures to a creative take on the brutal conflict in present-day Ukraine. The authors also have vastly different depictions of AI. Some are benevolent, life-saving companions that manage to reach or exceed human capacity for empathy, beauty and art and find a way to coexist in a sort of comfortable symbiosis. Others are morally ambiguous, put to use by immoral humans or are outright malicious on their own.

If you're looking for an ultimate conclusion about whether AI can, should or will create art, this isn't it. But the purpose of speculative fiction is leaving no stone unturned in exploring the "what ifs", and this book does this exceptionally well.

✨ Disclaimer ✨ I received a free copy of this book and this is my honest review.

I love that when a existential crisis arises, even one that threatens to encroach in the artist's territory, that artist is still going to create art about that crisis. That's the through line of the stories that have been curated for The Digital Aesthete - various writers grappling with this growing wave of AI "art".

What is art? What is AI? Is AI created art really art? Can AI do what humans do? How would self-aware AI interpret art? How will humans exploit each other and AI as this burgeoning technology grows? All these questions are grappled with in the stories here, to varying success. There is horror and humor and great ideas, each story taking different turns on what the AI-Art clash means to them.

Like any anthology there will be ups and downs, stories that strike a chord more than others, some worlds you want more of and some you're fine with as they are. The Digital Aesthete has some very strong stories, and I think that was in part because the selection of authors is strong - and international. The variety of authors from around the globe really elevated this from a single neat idea into a great way to discover new (or new to me) talent.

If you are interested in the overall theme here, or even just a few authors included, I highly recommend checking out this anthology.

The Digital Aesthete will be available on November 14, 2023. Many thanks to NetGalley and Arc Manor for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I haven’t read much of Alex Shvartsman’s work as an editor, but I’ve enjoyed a bit of his translated short fiction, and I’ve been impressed with his efforts to bring international authors to American genre readers. So when I saw that he was publishing a themed anthology on art and AI, with contributions from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ray Nayler, Ken Liu, and Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, I couldn’t hit the “request” button fast enough on an ARC of The Digital Aesthete: Human Musings on the Intersection of Art and AI.

The Digital Aesthete features 17 stories by 17 different authors from across the globe, with ten originally written in English and seven translated from other languages. Sixteen of them are roughly short story length, with two or three coming near the boundary between short story and novelette (normalize publishing word counts!) and one short novella serving as the anthology’s extended capstone. Each one considers the themes of art and AI, with the expected smattering of fiction-writing language models joined by tales of virtual reality, AI art critics, and even one AI comedian.

Ordinarily, if I pick up an anthology with 15-20 stories, I’m hoping to find about three that really impress me, hopefully supplemented by a lot more that are enjoyable and no more than a couple that I have to slog through. Any additional benefit from the act of anthologizing—resonance between stories, tales in conversation with each other, etc.—is purely a bonus.

The Digital Aesthete exceeded my expectations on almost every count. I found five stories to love, with the other twelve almost all coming in various shades of good. Only one–Vajra Chandrasekera’s reflections on Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? folded into a predictably disorienting main narrative in “The Mercer Seat”–proved a struggle, and that may be due in part to me having relatively little familiarity with the source material. My worries that a collection of nothing but AI art stories would start to feel a bit repetitive dissipated fairly quickly as I began reading. While many authors did choose to tackle the topic of language models writing fiction, they offered such a variety of approaches on the subject that I never felt like I was reading a collection of variations on a theme. This was not an anthology either feting generative AI or raising the alarm bells, but a group of authors from across the world providing a variety of perspectives in an even wider variety of stories, from those explicitly focused on contemporary problems to those relegating the anthology’s theme to background setting or supporting piece to a more human story.

Even limiting to my list of favorites, the stark disparity between different approaches was undeniable. Adrian Tchaikovsky opens the anthology with a straightforwardly topical tale—“Silicon Hearts,” available online in a free preview of the anthology—of humans fine-tuning language models to make as much money as possible writing fiction. It’s a short piece, but it’s set apart by the humor suffusing the entire story, along with a clever ending that makes it something more than sheer satire. H. Pueyo, on the other hand, takes a different tack with “Torso,” telling of an abuse survivor working feelings of fear, anger, and shame into grotesquely beautiful ceramics. In this story, the AI is not itself a creator, existing rather to buttress her lost dexterity. But it cannot help but try to spur her forward, in a piece as memorable as it is intense.

Changing gears almost entirely, Auston Habershaw writes a surprisingly poignant piece about an AI comedian, trained on the last generation of human comics, trying to figure out why one of the regulars keeps coming back if she isn’t going to laugh. “The Laugh Machine” certainly brings a chuckle or two, but it’s the heart underneath that makes it worth the read. Then Ray Nayler’s “Hermetic Kingdom” sets the AI theme almost entirely aside, returning to the world of the acclaimed “Winter Timeshare” for a story about the consciousnesses of the dead working alongside bots to run virtual reality games and simulations. Like so much of Nayler’s work, it focuses on human cogs in the machine and their efforts to make the best they can with the hands they’re dealt. And like so much of Nayler’s work, it’s excellent.

My favorite of the translated works, and one of my favorites full stop, is the anthology’s extended capstone: “Prompt” by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey. The premise isn’t especially audacious—an ambitious young director tries to put on a show for the notoriously critical AI theater Prompt—but the story is intense. There are a lot of people who don’t want the lead to succeed, and the price of failure may be the end of a promising career. It certainly touches on some important themes regarding the calcification of trends with machine learning, but mostly it’s just a wonderfully well-told and gripping story.

While those are my favorites, they aren’t the only ones worth reading in the anthology. Jane Espenson’s “Forgery” sees a drone become a master forger and build an entire criminal empire, and Ken Liu’s “Good Stories” provides perhaps the most direct engagement with the main theme of the anthology in its exploration of AI content mills. Both very much worth the read, even if for different reasons. In contrast, Tina Connolly’s “Stage Shows and Schnauzers” leans into the fun side of things, to great effect.

For all that Chandrasekera’s idiosyncratic blend of weirdness and pop culture references didn’t really work for me, I wouldn’t say there’s a bad story in the whole collection. In general, it ranges from good to great, with “not really for me” the harshest evaluation I could give any of the 17. With the exception of “Prompt” and “Torso,” I did find myself connecting a little less to the works from outside the Anglosphere, but that’s not especially surprising when reading outside one’s comfort zone. And if my foray into stories from well outside my own cultural context produces a handful of solidly enjoyable 3.5-star pieces and a pair of favorites, I’d say that’s a wildly successful foray.

In my eyes, The Digital Aesthete is really only missing a show-stopping, “drop everything and buy this anthology just to read this one work” sort of story. Of course, those are few and far between, so it’s hard to complain too much about the lack. Instead, it gets by on depth and breadth, with more than its fair share of five-star entries and fewer than its fair share of misses. Combined with a table of contents that spans the globe and a theme that’s deeply relevant but never devolves into repetitiousness, the result is a fantastic anthology that’s well worth seeking out for fans of sci-fi that feels deeply grounded in the real world.

Recommended if you like: near(ish)-future sci-fi, AI stories, stories about art.

Overall rating: 17 of Tar Vol’s 20. Five stars on Goodreads.

This was an interesting read. I enjoyed it overall, but I don't think this is something that I'll purchase for our library at this time.

What a timely, thought-provoking anthology. If there was ever a subject worth throwing into the hands of speculative SF community, it's sure this one: the relationship between generative AI & art.

It feels surreal, just how recent are the ripples that shook through all walks of life with genAI becoming accessible for anyone. Makes me wonder if this is how it felt to watch Internet emerge, in a way: something big and unstoppable, a transformation of a kind where we have little idea of what the evolution will lead to, and are too caught up in the transformation to pause it for reflection. At times like these, it feels natural to turn to speculative fiction for answers -- to understand, to work through anxiety and apprehension, interminable capitalist greed and yes, hope.

Alex Shvartsman's foreword sets up the scene well for the theme of the anthology, which offers a range stories that vary in tone, length, and provenance: I definitely appreciated translated additions (from Russian-language Ukrainian authors, Chilean writers, Czech, Chinese and a few more), and the mix of lesser-known voices with names who have established themselves in SFF. I think the readers' opinions will vary in what worked best for whom - no two cooks are the same, but it's great when there is a lot of different dishes on the table. A few notes on the stories that resonated with me:

* Tchaikovsky is one of the renowed authors whose work made it to the collection, and with a good reason. <i>Silicon Hearts</i> opens the collection, and cuts to the chase with the question that burns in the minds of the entire book-writing community: what does it mean immediately for publishing? The story pokes at the concept of "farming" the publishing industry with sheer mass of AI-generated stuff, but the ending surprised me: it was very eerie in a strange but compelling way.
*Ken Liu's the second big name in the collection, and his interest takes him to a similar place, but armed with a question of what entertainment consumption means. Not going to lie, the idea was equal measures compelling and off-putting, and isn't that a good illustration of temptation.
*On the wistful side of things - <i>The Forms of Things Unknown</i> (a translation from Czech), the Laugh Machine.
*Less wistful and more purely entertaining: Tina Connolly's <i>Stage Shows and Schnauzers</i> was great fun. <i>Forged</i> by Jane Espenson was more of a satire, but one I read with a smile.
*Punchy and hopeful - <i>The Unknown Painter</i> by H.L.Oldie. It's a translation from one of the most prominent voices in Ukrainian SF, and features the war with Russia, and it hurt to read and was at the same time fiercely hopeful about both the end of things and the interaction people people and AI. There were two more translated from Ukrainian writers, but this one I found the most compelling. Dyachenko one was very grabbing, but I admit I was confused with the ending of that one.

Overall verdict: an easy recommendation for people who also can't help wondering about the collision course of creative thought and genAI. I really enjoyed the collection. Many thanks to #Netgalley and CAEZIK SF & Fantasy for an advance copy.

3.5

I received an ARC via NetGalley for an honest review.

This one was a bit of a mixed bag for me. About half of the stories didn't really impact me as much as they probably should've. Many of the stories just feel too short to really be good, especially when the subject matter revolves around AI. Often, I understand what the author wanted to achieve, I just didn't think it worked, or sometimes, I just didn't think what the author tried say is anything special. And a couple of times, I just didn't understand what the point of the short story is, perhaps I'm just not smart enough to understand those stories. But there are also a decent amount of these short stories that might stick in my mind for a while, where the authors managed to really create something special, one of those stories happened to be the longest story here, which makes sense. Overall, I think it's still worth reading just because of the varied nature of the stories (despite the fact that they're all about AI and art in some ways)

Received this as an eARC on netgalley

Overall it's a masterclass by some of the current greats of SciFi in how to write speculative fiction. Some of these short stories were 5/5 blackmirror-esq masterpieces articulating a bleak but realistic picture of where the current AI obsession is taking us. There are a couple of the stories though they completely lost me on what they are trying to convey and didn't have nearly the witty point of the majority of the stories bringing this down to an overall 4.5.

I'd recommend this as a read for anyone into sci-fi, speculative fiction or who works on or with AI.

The Digital Aesthete
Edited by Alex Shvartsman

This has been the first review appearing on the website for quite a while. Why is that? The reason is, I did not find anything worth reviewing. Sure, I have read quite a few books in the interim, some modern, some old; but have they been any good? The truth is, no they have not. I’ve read Science Fiction, Fantasy, short stories, speculative and I have to say, I was disappointed. I have been in a state of disappointment with the literature (if you can call it that) coming out for months. So, enter The Digital Aesthete. Did I like all the stories? No. Where there ones that stood out? Most definitely. If you’re a regular reader you know how this works. I’ll talk about the short stories I liked and then tell you if I recommend the book.

Ergonomic?
But before we get into it, I would just like to thank Shvartsman! What for? A contents page and clickable links! Who would have thought something so simple is omitted from so many books. But here we have a normal ebook, for it was an ebook I received, and can I click on all of the links? Yes. Does it take me to each story? Yes. Why is this so important? Because when flicking through an anthology, you want to be able to easily manoeuvre around the book. Not struggle clicking the buttons to go back and forth several pages. The only thing I would say is, I prefer author biographies to precede stories, but maybe I’m old fashioned and in the minority.

Shvartsman eloquently describes what is happening with “AI”, the silicon valley buzzword of the time, in relation to art.
Personally, having worked as a Software Engineer, I can appreciate both sides. It is impressive what these engineers have done, using machine learning models to create something in the style of art, because, in my opinion, a machine creating “art” is not really art, merely an imitation. A.R.T Animatronic Replication Technology. That is what they generate. Art is something uniquely human.
Style is what separates artists from machines. Can a machine ever truly have it’s own style? Would C317 have a different way of writing, than C318, if they were both fed the same information? The question I would like to ask these engineers is, why would anybody want to read something written by a machine?
When I read a novel, a short story, a poem, I want to connect to the author, I want to understand what they were feeling, their message, much like the short story placed in this collection “The Laugh Machine” by Auston Habershaw. Personally, the only reason why I would look at AI generated, for that is what it is, a machine’s A.R.T is generated, not painted, or written, it is generated by 0’s and 1’s. If I were to look at “AI” A.R.T, it would be nothing more than for amusement. Just like the way in which you would look at technology of by gone eras, or if you were to go to a Science and Industry museum and see a timeline of computers and mobile phones. It would be a brief moment in which I would be able to see how far humanity has come in terms of technology.
Is it impressive that we have come this far since Turing and his team created the first modern computer? Yes. Do I ever want to read, or look at a piece of A.R.T made by a machine, no. Why would you? Writing is a craft. It takes years for the good writers to hone their skills. Nobody starts good. Nobody writes a masterpiece the first time they set pen to paper. Then when they do, it’s not finished! It then takes a team behind that writer to hone that vision. A team that little publisher’s seem to place in new writers nowadays.
Publishing is a money-making model. Publishing is not about art, it’s about money. Publishers do not take risks, they want new writers to already have accolades of awards, before they even consider them. Gone is the day you would read a story first and then judge it for what it is worth. No, publishers read what awards you have, how big a social media following you have, then if its not up to satisfaction; goodbye. They want the market to already be receptive to the concept a writer puts onto it, even if it’s not a concept that has not been done before.
My fear with “AI” generated A.R.T, is that the publishers will grab hold of it with both hands, because why pay a real person, when you can place hundreds of thousands of pounds into a machine, that does not need royalties, that does not need payment and if you feed it all of Shakespeare’s work, it will probably knock out another play.
Writers are already suffering, they always suffer. They are the ones that have had enough. That look around at the world and write what they think down. Writing is so much more than fiction or entertainment. It is philosophy. I don’t think modern publishers understand that. I think fiction is going steadily downhill. So add “AI” A.R.T into the mix and I think it’s only going to make things worse. There have been so many writers that have not even been recognised in their time. So many thrown under the bus by marketing teams.
What’s going to change that now, we can have machines do all the work?

The Ones I liked:
You know how this works. Here’s the stories I liked and a little bit about them. No spoilers!

Short Stories:
Forged
Jane Espenson
This story is about a machine learning to become a forgery. It’s satirical, humorous and depressing. But due to the anthropomorphism of the robot, even though I am against “AI” generated art, I was rooting for the little thing! A brilliant gem of an idea, well written, but with dark undertones. Showing you different sides of humanity and a depressing future. One where capitalism still reigns.

A Beautiful War
Fang Zeyu
Brilliant. I can’t really talk about the story without spoiling it. But I was impressed. I connected with the character immediately, I think a lot of modern citizens these days despise war. We all see the pointlessness of it, I try to believe we are past that. But there are still some countries that don’t seem to understand we live in a modern world. But Zeyu’s idea was brilliant. It was built on other concepts that come before it. Even concepts in modern video games like the Fallout’s VAT’s system. BUT. Here was a well written story, with interesting symbolism and character development.

The laugh Machine
Auston Habershaw
Comedy is hard to write. Not everyone is funny. We all know humour is subjective, it doesn’t even matter if you’re a famous comedian, not every joke lands on it’s feet. But here we have the concept of a robot as a stand up comedian. I will say no more about the story, other than it is told from the perspective of the robot. I thought it was a really clever idea, my only annoyance was that the robot told jokes, but instead of hearing the actual joke, it was replaced with a line of code. BUT, I understand that writer’s direction with this. Jokes are hard to come up with, Isaac Asimov wrote a brilliant story about humour, Jokester. In it he talks about jokes and whether there are actually ever any new ones. He says we always only ever hear the jokes, certainly I have never created a joke in my life. There should be a certain award for the people who come up with all the jokes we tell, and if Habershaw had actually written the jokes themselves, one it would have distracted them from the sentiment and direction of the overall story, two it would have been very difficult! So I don’t judge Habershaw for not telling us the actual jokes, in fact I applaud them, for writing a very good story with a satisfying ending and making it quite humours as well.

Hermetic Kingdom
Ray Nayler
This was a sad tale of love and life. I respect it for it’s realism. It builds on concepts like UBIK and artificially created afterlife’s, but it brings something more to the table. It builds a world full of darkness, full of truth. What would we do if we could satiate all our desires in a virtual world? How many of us immerse ourselves in board games, in video games, in literature, plays, films and poems? What is happening with VR now? Another level of immersion, it will constantly improve, in a few years they may even simulate feeling, like in Ready Player One. I know they are already working on that technology and there have even been articles about the perverseness of the direction it is going in. That’s human nature. We are dark creatures. In this modern world we grow up without respect for the world around us. Just look at how we are poisoning ourselves with plastic and oil, making the very air we breathe less breathable! So, what would you do with a world built to satiate any of your needs, without any repercussion, laws or rules? Only you can answer that question yourself. But read Hermetic Kingdom, see what other people would do, and ask yourself, would you do it too?


Would I recommend?
As I said at the start of this review, I have been disappointed by the books I have read for months. Nothing has interested me, nothing has been well written, nothing has made me think. For that, I call out the publishing industry, it seems to be going bland and stale. But, just when I was becoming morose and diving into a pit of literary despair, along comes this book. With a great introduction by Shvartsman, that does not treat the reader like an idiot, with some writers I have heard before, like Ken Liu, and others I have not. The stories I have listed above did make me think. While sitting on the train to work I was able to immerse myself in their world, escape the monotony of a grey routine and think about the future, think about the world, “AI” and A.R.T. So, although there were 17 stories and I only picked out four of them, they were four good stories.
My only grievance is, reading through the authors bios, most of them, although I had not heard of some, seem to be already decorated in the field.
Take a chance on new writers. I would like to see anthologies with a mix of new and existing writers.
In the time of “AI” generated A.R.T, we all need to help each other out, so all of these already decorated writers, should be doing everything within their power to help out the new guys.
They can do that with anthologies like this one and prompting publishers that they need to be more welcoming of new science fiction writers.