Tag Archives: AI

Shhh… it’s a Library

Yesterday was the launch event for Eating Robots and Other Stories at The Libary Club in central London and what a great evening it was. There’s nothing quite like hearing an audience laugh and gasp at the exact moment you want them to, and they did.

I was really pleased that Christine Aicardi and Laura Prime, both contributors to the expert responses at the back of the book, were able to come along to speak and take questions from the audience. I think there’s something special about collaborating and they epitomised this perfectly.

For me the pinnacle of the evening was Gigi Lynch performing the story US (photo above). It’s not easy to hold an audience for thirty minutes with one story, but she managed it effortlessly.

US was emotional to write and Gigi was brilliant at bringing out the deep sense of loss, loneliness and optimistic hope that I believe is an integral part of the story. In fact she was so good that I was moved to tears (by my own story!) and even people who already knew it came up afterwards to say how captivated they’d been.

You can find out more about the collection at stephenoram.net/eatingrobots


On 22 June 2017, Eating Robots and Other Stories is featured as a part of the Fitzrovia Festival literary event – Collaboration Works

Intelligence & Cuttlefish

Yesterday, I met up with Danbee Kim, a researcher at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour and Scientist-in-Residence at the Brighton Sea Life Centre.

This was the second time we’d met, this time with her labmates, and wow, what a wonderful, welcoming and extremely bright, in both senses of the word, bunch of people.

I was invited to a ‘teach-in’ for the lab about machine learning and I had one of those afternoons where you think you’re just about keeping up until someone asks a question and another layer of complexity is exposed. I loved it.

Danbee and I are collaborating on a story based around her research and the work of the centre. After four hours in her company I know more than I ever thought I would about the difficulties of defining intelligence, cuttlefish and what puts the deep into machine learning. 

I’m really hoping this is the start of a long collaboration because these guys are great, there’s loads more I’d like to understand and I reckon between us there’s a lot of near-future fiction waiting to be written.

Now, if you want to know a bit more about these things too you’ll have to come along to the Fitzrovia Festival event – Collaboration Works – where I’ll be reading the story and Danbee will be responding. You can then join in the Q&A and chat over a glass of wine at the end.


photo credit: q.phia cuttle, tanjung kusu-kusu, lembeh, indonesia, 2017 via photopin (license)

Pumped Up Presidents

I’m making a slight deviation from the usual monthly written story to bring you a video of me reading Pumped Up Presidents as part of the Virtual Futures Near-Future Fictions Series.

The spark for this tale of future presidents was a piece I saw from Futurism on In-Ear Translators.

Take a look – I hope you enjoy it.

 



And, don’t forget…

Eating Robots and Other Stories is out on 31 May 2017.


photo credit: txmx 2 via photopin (license)