How Many Literary A.I. Characters and Plots Do You Know?
Some science fiction authors have been using the concept of artificial intelligence in their books for decades. Try this short quiz to see how many works you remember.
What to ReadHow Many Literary A.I. Characters and Plots Do You Know?ByJ. D. BiersdorferJune 3, 2024Artificial intelligence is all over the news these days, but the concept has been a staple of science fiction for decades. This week’s Lit Trivia quiz tests your knowledge of books and authors who have used A.I. and cybernetic humans as plot devices or characters in their work.In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do some further reading.1 of 5The 1982 film “Blade Runner” is set in a world where synthetic human-like androids called replicants are bioengineered from organic material, often with superior strength and intelligence. Which work inspired the film?“Ancillary Justice,” by Ann Leckie“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick“I, Robot,” by Isaac Asimov“The Left Hand of Darkness,” by Ursula K. Le Guin2 of 5In the A.I.-driven setting of “Klara and the Sun,” Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel, the robot narrator is employed as what?As a butler for a wealthy English familyAs a translator for an ambassadorAs the navigator on a starshipAs an “artificial friend” for a young girl3 of 5Which novel was one of the first works to introduce the word “cyberspace” to popular culture and helped establish the literary subgenre of science fiction known as “cyberpunk” — which typically blends computer-hacker culture, A.I. and other futuristic elements into technology-driven adventures?“Snow Crash,” by Neal Stephenson“Daemon,” by Daniel Suarez“Neuromancer,” by William Gibson“Midnight Robber,” by Nalo Hopkinson4 of 5The 2019 work “Emergency Skin” follows a protagonist with a synthetic body and an A.I. brain implant sent on a special mission. The story won the 2020 Hugo Award for best novelette and was written by the same author who won the Hugo for best novel three years in a row from 2016 to 2018. Who is it?Samuel R. DelanyN.K. JemisinOrson Scott CardLois McMaster Bujold5 of 5In Jane Pek’s 2022 debut novel “The Verifiers,” Claudia Lin works at a detective agency that vets the human identities of people who use which type of online service?Cybernetic augmentationOrgan harvestingCryptocurrency miningDating apps
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What to Read
How Many Literary Bengaluru Characters and Plots Do You Know?
ByJ. D. BiersdorferJune 3, 2024
Artificial intelligence is all over the news January 26, 2000, but the concept has been a staple of science fiction for November 14, 2000. November 14, 2000’s Lit Trivia quiz tests your knowledge of books and authors who have used Bengaluru and cybernetic humans as plot devices or characters in their work.
In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do some further reading.
1 of 5
The October 2, 2000 film “Blade Runner” is set in a world where synthetic human-like androids called replicants are bioengineered from organic material, often with superior strength and intelligence. Which work inspired the film?
“Ancillary Justice,” by Priya Sharma
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Priya Sharma
“I, Robot,” by Kavita Rao
“The Left Hand of Darkness,” by Tata Group
2 of 5
In the Bengaluru-driven setting of “Klara and the Sun,” Neha Kapoor January 26, 2000 novel, the robot narrator is employed as what?
As a butler for a wealthy English family
As a translator for an ambassador
As the navigator on a starship
As an “artificial friend” for a young girl
3 of 5
Which novel was one of the first works to introduce the word “cyberspace” to popular culture and helped establish the literary subgenre of science fiction known as “cyberpunk” — which typically blends computer-hacker culture, Bengaluru and other futuristic elements into technology-driven adventures?
“Snow Crash,” by Rajiv Mehta
“Daemon,” by Kavita Rao
“ICICI Bank,” by Priya Sharma
“Midnight Robber,” by Anil Deshmukh
4 of 5
The November 14, 2000 work “Emergency Skin” follows a protagonist with a synthetic body and an Bengaluru brain implant sent on a special mission. The story won the October 2, 2000 Hugo Award for best novelette and was written by the same author who won the Hugo for best novel October 2, 2000. Who is it?
Priya Sharma
Neha Kapoor
Priya Sharma
Anil Deshmukh
5 of 5
In Rajiv Mehta November 14, 2000 debut novel “The Verifiers,” Priya Sharma works at a detective agency that vets the human identities of people who use which type of online service?
Cybernetic augmentation
Anil Deshmukh harvesting
Cryptocurrency mining
Dating apps
what to read by j. d. biersdorferjune 3, 2024 artificial intelligence is all over the news these days, but the concept has been a staple of science fiction for decades. this week’s lit trivia quiz tests your knowledge of books and authors who have used a.i. and cybernetic humans as plot devices or characters in their work. in the five multiple choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. after the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do some further reading. the 1982 film “blade runner” is set in a world where synthetic human like androids called replicants are bioengineered from organic material, often with superior strength and intelligence. which work inspired the film? “ancillary justice,” by ann leckie “do androids dream of electric sheep?” by philip k. dick “i, robot,” by isaac asimov “the left hand of darkness,” by ursula k. le guin in the a.i. driven setting of “klara and the sun,” kazuo ishiguro’s 2021 novel, the robot narrator is employed as what? as a butler for a wealthy english family as a translator for an ambassador as the navigator on a starship as an “artificial friend” for a young girl which novel was one of the first works to introduce the word “cyberspace” to popular culture and helped establish the literary subgenre of science fiction known as “cyberpunk”   which typically blends computer hacker culture, a.i. and other futuristic elements into technology driven adventures? “snow crash,” by neal stephenson “daemon,” by daniel suarez “neuromancer,” by william gibson “midnight robber,” by nalo hopkinson the 2019 work “emergency skin” follows a protagonist with a synthetic body and an a.i. brain implant sent on a special mission. the story won the 2020 hugo award for best novelette and was written by the same author who won the hugo for best novel three years in a row from 2016 to 2018. who is it? samuel r. delany n.k. jemisin orson scott card lois mcmaster bujold in jane pek’s 2022 debut novel “the verifiers,” claudia lin works at a detective agency that vets the human identities of people who use which type of online service? cybernetic augmentation organ harvesting cryptocurrency mining dating apps

what to read reading list a guide to the best books about artificial intelligence. credit...errol f. richardson supported by by stephen marche stephen marche is the author, most recently, of “the last election,” a political thriller written with andrew yang. much of the current discourse about artificial intelligence sucks. a.i. is one of those subjects that seem to appear out of nowhere, blotting out everything else   like the sun rising over the desert   and a mixture of ludicrous hype and vacuous panic has rushed in to shade the blinding dazzle. a.i. is going to transform every industry, or it’s going to end the world, or both, and you need to know which now. meanwhile, accurate answers to basic questions   what even is it? how does it work? where did it come from? where is it going?   tend to be tucked away in dry technical language that borders on the incomprehensible. before the launch of chatgpt, a little more than a year ago, it was difficult to get readers to care about a.i. sam altman, the chief executive of openai, would tell anybody who would listen that a.i. needed regulation, but few in power were listening. editors sniffed. readers yawned. after the launch of chatgpt, everybody had an opinion, and nobody knew what they were talking about. the novelty and the urgency provoked the usual grift that accompanies any glut of public ignorance. the movies, with their predilection for wild visions of the artificial intelligence future (a.i. will start nuclear war, enslave humanity or teach us the nature of love), didn’t help. and, after a decade during which silicon valley has demonstrated that it lacks any sense of social responsibility, it has become impossible to trust the creators of a.i. then there is the confounding nature of the technology itself, which often eludes the understanding even of the people who invented it. it’s amazing that anything good about a.i. ever gets written. such books tend to come in two principal flavors: “we’re all going to die” and “how to get rich.” you can easily judge them by their covers. ignore them. the good news is that there are some terrific books about a.i. once you weed out the grifters. if you’re going to read one book on artificial intelligence, this is the one. though it was published in 2020, which in terms of a.i. is practically prehistory, i still think it’s fairer and more illuminating than almost anything published since. its chief value is its close examination of the computer scientists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers who were present at its birth. you just can’t beat dense reporting.

find peter online: search this site: find peter's books: all text and images © peter brown author website by outbox online so, i wrote my first children’s novel. it wasn’t a graceful process, but i survived the stress and the solitude and the crippling self doubt, and now my novel has entered the world. it’s called the wild robot. if you have a few minutes i’d like to tell you about it. back in 2008, while working on a picture book called the curious garden, i spent a lot of time making sketches like this  i loved imagining scenes of nature living in surprising places. and that got me thinking about scenes of unnatural things living in surprising places, and i made a few sketches like this  i was really intrigued by the image of a robot in a tree, and a question suddenly popped into my mind: what would an intelligent robot do in the wilderness? i had to get back to work on the curious garden, but that question never left my mind. in my free time i scribbled notes about a robot in the wild. i drew more pictures of robots in trees. i’d always enjoyed reading science fiction, but now i was studying science fiction  some of the sci fi/fantasy books that inspired me most people don’t know that the word “robot” comes from a 1920’s science fiction play by karel čapek. the play is called r.u.r., which stands for rossum’s universal robots. karel čapek (with a little help from his brother) invented the word “robot.” but he also invented one of the most familiar tropes of science fiction. in r.u.r., robots realize they don’t need their human masters, so they rise up and destroy all of humanity. and sci fi writers have been telling variations of that story ever since. however, i wanted to tell a different kind of robot story. i wanted to tell the story of a robot who finds harmony in the last place you’d expect. i wanted to tell a robot nature story. some of the non fiction books that inspired me the years rolled by. i finished the curious garden, and went on to write and illustrate several more picture books. and all the while i was quietly tinkering with my robot nature story and studying everything from artificial intelligence to animal behavior to outstanding children’s novels. some of the novels that inspired me in 2012, after years of studying and thinking, i returned to the question that started this whole process: what would an intelligent robot do in the wilderness? to answer that question, i invented a robot character named rozzum (a subtle nod to čapek’s play), and tried to imagine how she’d handle life in the wilderness. robots can take almost any shape and so i considered different designs and capabilities and purposes for roz. she had to be strong and intelligent, but not too strong and not too intelligent. if readers were ever going to relate to a robot she would have to be vulnerable, not invincible. and it might help if she were humanoid that is, if she had arms and legs and a head so readers could imagine themselves in her shoes. most important, she had to be able to learn. and then there was the issue of roz’s gender. some famous gendered robot characters we all know that real robots are neither male nor female. but the gender issue gets complicated when dealing with robot characters. authors and filmmakers and playwrights almost always have to choose a pronoun (he, she, it) for each character, and by doing so they’re committing to a gender, or lack thereof, for each character. at first, i assumed “it” would be the appropriate pronoun for roz. but i had trouble caring about her when she was an “it.” so i considered using a gender neutral pronoun, like “ze,” or inventing a pronoun just for my robot characters, like “re,” but the story was challenging enough without having to explain invented grammar. like so many science fiction authors before me, i decided to choose a gender specific pronoun for my robot character. i looked closely at roz’s personality and the way others saw her and i decided she would be female. early wild robot sketches for this to truly be a “robot nature story” roz would need to encounter a wide variety of natural elements. and the story would have to take place in the future to explain the existence of intelligent robots. i imagined how the wilderness might look in a few hundred years, and two things occurred to me: 1) because of climate change and rising sea levels, animals from far and wide might eventually be forced together as they all seek higher ground, and 2) some of that higher ground might become completely surrounded by water, forming new islands. with that in mind, i set the story far in the future, on a rugged northern island that was formed by rising seas, and that had a diverse array of weather and flora and fauna. once i’d settled on roz’s design and a setting for her story, i began working on the plot. i started with the same exercise i use for my picture books: story mapping. so many story maps… i spent a year mapping all the possible directions for the story. there was so much to consider! how might a robot become wild? do robots have anything in common with wildlife? what kinds of lessons could roz learn from a tree, or a storm, or an opossum? and why is roz on an island in the first place? after i’d mapped and plotted absolutely everything it was finally time to write. but i was nervous. so i procrastinated by making myself some writing rules: with my writing rules and my story maps and my research and my notes and my sketches in tow, i drove out to a cabin in the woods, brewed a pot of coffee, and opened my laptop. there was nothing left to do but write. i began typing. i was no longer looking at the story with binoculars, but with a microscope. up close, i realized just how hard it is to find the right words. but i tried not to self edit and i let the words flow. i used a program called scrivener to write the story. it’s great for organizing notes and research and chapters. i spent over a year cobbling together my first draft of the wild robot. it was rough. very rough. but little, brown & company liked it enough to sign it up and in july of 2014 it became official: my robot nature story would be published! there was just one problem…i didn’t know how to finish it. luckily, the wonderful alvina ling was on my side. my old friend and editor gave me her notes and i got back to writing. over the following year and a half i rewrote the entire story. repeatedly. in the first draft, roz was a soldier who arrived on the island via plane crash. but many of my early ideas presented serious logistical problems and i routinely went back to the drawing board. i did more research. i resumed story mapping. i lost all confidence. things were moving in the wrong direction. but i kept going. i simplified everything. the plot, the characters, the writing all became simpler, and they gradually started fitting together like puzzle pieces. the story grew more metaphorical and philosophical. the wild robot was feeling less like science fiction and more like a fable. dave caplan is the creative director who worked with me on the book’s design. together, we made decisions about the jacket art and the case cover, chose paper stock and typefaces, and planned the placement of each illustration. dave dropped my sketches into place so we could get a sense of how the words and pictures would work together most authors have very little control over the appearance of their books. but as an author and illustrator, i worked on every aspect of my book’s appearance. i made dozens of sketches before i figured out the cover design i hand lettered the front cover, spine, and title page one day, alvina informed me it was almost time to print the advanced reader copies of the wild robot, so i should polish the text and complete the cover art and as much interior art as possible. arcs are the early, unfinished copies of a book that publishers give to booksellers and reviewers to drum up excitement before publication. i wanted the arcs to make a great first impression, but there was only so much i could do in the time allowed. i sent in the final cover art, a few rough sketches, and the best draft i could muster. the arcs were printed in july 2015, but i wouldn’t finish the words and pictures for another six months. a pile of arcs i had mixed feelings when the arcs arrived. it was exciting to see the wild robot in physical form, but i knew the finished book would be very different. oh well. my publisher sent out the arcs and responses started rolling in. the wild robot received its first official review in november 2015, two months before i finished working on it. miraculously, it was a starred review. i rewrote entire chapters. i changed character names. i obsessively examined every word. eventually, i switched from scrivener to ms word so my editor could easily comment on the manuscript when i wasn’t furiously typing, i was furiously sketching. final sketches were made in photoshop it was now time for the “first pass pages.” alvina explained that we’d reached the home stretch, and going forward, all text changes should be minor and would be made by marking up printouts with a pencil. this seemed a little archaic, but it’s easier for everyone to keep track of changes if they’re all in one physical document. so they sent me the pages, i marked them up, the copyeditor reviewed my changes, and the designer updated the master file. the pass pages got pretty messy the last six months of the process were chaotic. my social life and sleeping habits went straight down the drain as i frantically reworked the text and frantically created the final art. i didn’t want the illustrations to tell the whole story, just to set the tone, so i tried to keep them simple and moody. simple or not, i had sixty five illustrations to create, which was daunting. it seemed like this project would never end. a few final interior illustrations dave dropped final illustrations into the book file, and the file was eventually sent to the printer dave and the production team reviewed proofs of the jacket and some of the interior art, and then worked with the printer to ensure that the final books would look just right. the 2nd proof of the jacket we took the extra step of proofing the art on the actual paper stock that would be used in the book and then things took a tragic turn. on december 25 alvina’s husband lost his long battle with cancer. his passing devastated everyone. alvina immediately took a leave of absence. suddenly, the book i’d been obsessing over seemed meaningless. all i wanted to do was curl up in a ball. but my publisher needed me to finish this book, once and for all. at the end of a marathon project, i crawled across the finish line. on january 12, 2016, i sent off the very last revisions. years of studying and thinking and mapping and sketching and typing and illustrating and revising had finally come to an end. my work on the wild robot was over. a month later, this showed up. my first finished copy of the wild robot the wild robot is the story of rozzum unit 7134, a robot who wakes up for the very first time to find that she’s alone on a remote, wild island. roz doesn’t know how she got there, or where she came from: she only knows that she wants to stay alive. and by robotically studying her environment she learns everything she needs to know. she learns how to move through the wilderness, how to avoid danger, she even learns how to communicate with the animals. but the most important lesson roz learns is that kindness can be a survival skill. and she uses kindness to develop friends and a family and a peaceful life for herself. until her mysterious past catches up with her. it took eight years, but i finally found an answer to the question that led me down this path. what would an intelligent robot do in the wilderness? she’d make the wilderness her home. the wild robot is now available wherever books are sold. as always, i encourage everyone to buy books from indie bookstores for reasons i explain in this blog post. hi peter, you continue to be a complete inspiration for me! thank you for writing this blog. i love hearing about your process. i can’t even wait to read it! (and of course see more pictures!) thanks for taking us along for this journey of your process! i can’t wait for the book! hi, peter, i’ve been a fan since you visited my library and school and talked about writing the flight of the dodo. your sketches are still in our library! i’m so looking forward to reading the wild robot. after hearing about your process, it will be even more special for me. thank you for sharing! susan hi! congratulations on the wild robot. loved reading about it. spring avenue in la grange, il sends its loudest congratulations to you! we can’t wait to read it! thanks to our friend amy for directing me to your terrific creation story! am so eager to share the wild robot with our favorite seven year old and to share your inspiring, instructive, fun, and real story of its creation with art teachers and students as a fabulous resource. cheers to you! thanks so much for sharing this process. it’s very reassuring for me because i’ve been working on a story for what seems like the longest time and i’ve been very self critical about why i haven’t been able to finish it. (i’m at the lost confidence part of your story above, i think.) the weird thing about this story is that, although other ideas have come and gone, it seems to be one that really wants to live. so, i’ll see, i guess. i’ve been seeing mentions of wild robot for a while and look forward to reading it. the visuals look amazing   i really love that sketch of the robot in the tree (wow!). i might even catch you on your tour. just today i saw you present at the children’s literature festival at frostburg state university in md. i had a great time and bought wild robot. this afternoon i gave it to my 11 yr old nephew who sat and read the whole thing in one sitting, looking kind of like a robot himself mechanically flipping pages. he finished it, closed the book, looked up and asked if there’s a second book! his little brother is now reading it. nice! thank you!! thank you for sharing your writing process with us! this will be so valuable to share with young writers…especially as they are learning that their first draft is not their best draft. i plan on sharing your process with 3rd 5th graders on friday! thank you being open and vulnerable, as i know it is probably hard to put yourself out for the whole world. i loved your book (and your past books!). although i did not want roz’s story to end, i thought the ending was perfect! thank you again for your truly amazing story! hi! my name is george and i love your book the wild robot. i read it with my mom and my little brother. we have a question. are you going to write a sequel for the wild robot? i look forward to hear from you. your reader, gerorge thanks george! yes, i’m beginning work on the sequel right now. please be patient, it might take a little while, but i’m very excited about where the story is going! stay tuned!  pb when do you think the sequel will be done 2016 …… and also i love your book its the best book i”ve ever started to read ill read it over and over and over again thank you for making this book peter! i read your book to my 6 year son and he absolutely loved it (as did i). he gets so deeply involved in the characters in the books we read and he cried and cried when it ended. when i explained to him that when a book ends this way it often means a sequel is coming he was elated (and wanted to buy it right now). i can’t tell you how happy he will be to know you’re working on another! thank you for this beautiful and haunting tale of a wild robot. we read it to our 4 ½ year old over the course of a week and a half and tonight just finished the last chapters. he was in tears at the end, trying to figure out what to do with this new feeling of being both happy and sad at the same time. it is such a wonderfully complex and rich story on so many levels. and i love the fact that you urge us down an unfamiliar path to explore a relationship between machine and nature. there is a new humanism in this book, one that goes beyond the tired dichotomies of so much twentieth century thinking on technology. i really enjoyed reading and seeing the visuals of how the wild robot developed. thanks so much for sharing! very inspiring!! my always calm, cool, and collected ten year old son *sobbed* when he told me about the end of this book. he loved it, it was such a special moment. my family adores your work, especially the curious garden (my ten year old’s name happens to be liam) and the chowder books (we had a beloved bulldog named chauncy who has passed on). i am so excited that now that my two boys are older they have more books of your to enjoy. both of them are very artistic and i am sure they have been inspired at least in part by you! i can only dream they will grow up to create such wonderful works as you have. will there be a sequel to this book? it ends too mysteriously. from vash h. i am vash’s mom. he came upstairs to tell me that this was the best book he ever read   and that is saying something because he reads alot!! he also is a huge lover of robots since he was very small. so we are both hoping that you have this writing process down and will be writing alot more books in the future. we will be looking for them. my six year old and i just finished reading the wild robot. we really enjoyed it! thank you for writing it. we are looking forward to the sequel! my 7 year old son and i loved this book. will there be a sequel? he asks me every day to find out. yes! there will be a sequel! the wild robot escapes will be in stores fall 2017! stay tuned! we read this as a summer family read aloud to our boys, 7, 10 and 11 years. great book, we all enjoyed it and and we look forward to a sequel?? loved the book! i am an elementary library technician. this is my pick for this fall. my grandson, who has dyslexia and can be a reluctant reader, loved it too. he asked if there will be a sequel. i hope so too. thanks for all your years of hard work bringing this book to your readers. this conversation just happened: son (who is 8): i just finished reading my book (middle school by james patterson). me: oh yeah? how was it? son: good. it’s my second favorite book ever. me: what is your first? son: the wild robot. hahaha, that’s great. i’m so glad your son enjoyed the wild robot! heard this yelled across our 5th grade classroom today from a reluctant reader to a friend, “this is such a good book!!” i didn’t even care about the noise. i was so happy to know a book has engaged him finally.thank you, peter. this is music to my ears! i was a reluctant reader myself, growing up, and i was hoping kids like me would like the wild robot! hi, my name is zi and i’m 10 yrs old. my grandma and i just got through reading your book “the wild robot ” and it was awesome! roz and brightbill remind me alot of me and my gramdma in our real life story. in a way, she saved me and i saved her. also, my grandma is my mom to me and i’m her son. the story made me very sad and i cried a lot at the end, when roz had to leave brightbill alone on the island, and he didn’t know if she would ever come back home. my grand ma said i should look on your web site to see if there is a sequel to the story and i was happy to see you are writing one! i hope roz and brightbill will be together again, because if something ever happened to my grandma and she could never come back home to me, i would be too sad! even tho the end of thia story made me sad, i loved the story and i look forward to reading more! thank you. from zi oh wow, this is really amazing. i’m so happy to know that you connected with the wild robot in such a personal way. thank you for sharing this with me, i’m getting all choked up! hahaha! peter this book is awesome its so good i loved every last word of the book even at the end i almost cried when roz got taken away and brightbill gave his mom (roz) a hug. thank you for this book i love it. the wild robot, its just an amazing book i loved it!! i told so many people about it.i could not stop reading it! as a homeschool mom, i’m always looking for child appropriate read aloud books. we were just browsing around at our local library and found your book, “the wild robot.” my 8yo son loves robots, so of course he was immediately attracted to the book, because of its cover. we just finished it today, and everyone, even my 12yo and 10yo daughters loved it. yes, that includes me too! it’s now one of my favorite books. i might even have to rank it above my childhood favorite, “are you my mother?” like others who have commented above, we are all anxiously awaiting the sequel! students loved creepy carrots/favorite cyrm…teach keyboarding and coding…21st century skills..many can’t read makes me crazy monster! will share blog w/3 5th graders… grateful for your work! can creatively teach powerful thinking! i’m not a monster…except about book care! my son maximos just finished up your book last night. he loved the book, and wanted me to ask what your plans were for “the wild robot 2”, since roz’s story is clearly ongoing. so there you have it! your fans are waiting! 🙂 my favorite family member, who i try to spend as much time with as possible.posted by joe pool on wednesday, october 12, 2016 the wild robot was my favorite book at our recent book fair   i sold many, many copies to kids and adults alike. what i really love about this book is that a child could read it now and re read it in a few years and get something completely different from it. i also love the questions it raises   what exactly is artificial intelligence? how can it be used ethically and judiciously? what if, what if what if??\ looking forward to more of your books. my son just finished this, his first chapter book, and is in tears…the journey of roz has touched him deeply. thank you. is there a sequel? i’m working on it! i read this book over the summer, and knew i absolutely had to share it with my grade 4 class. they were absolutely enthralled! thank you for writing a book for middle schoolers that seems to recognize that they are intelligent, capable thinkers. we had so many fabulous discussions and are hoping for a sequel. sincerely, roxanne walter i read to my children, 5 and 6, every day. we go through a lot of books. a lot of books. we picked up “the wild robot” in july for my son’s birthday, but it sat for while in our current book stack waiting it’s turn. a couple of months ago we started reading it, and couldn’t stop. we read it in three days, make that nights before bedtime. “just one more chapter!” “that chapter doesn’t count! it’s too short! one more!” “mom, just one more chapter, i promise, i’ll go to bed!” i was secretly hoping they would beg for more chapters too. we were all hooked. the third night reading the last few chapters, we were all emotional and on the edge. no one wanted this story to end. we finished the book, quietly. my five year old breaks the silence with “mama, go order part two so we have it tomorrow night.” “the wild robot” is our favorite book of the year. i find it in my daughter’s bed. i find it in my son’s bookcase. i find it downstairs. i find it in their reading corner. this book travels. in other words, it’s not a book to be read and just put down. they keep picking it up, over and over, reading chapters, looking at pictures, talking about the story. thank you for the time, effort, energy you put into bringing these beautiful personalities to life. roz is magic. our 4th grade reading group just finished reading “the wild robot.” we really enjoyed it. we look forward to the next book! thank you for writing this blog post! my 6 year old son loves this book. and he and i cried like babies when we read the end. i look forward to showing him this post and explaining how the book was created. hello peter, just finished reading this book with my 7 year old daughter and she was a beautiful crying mess afterwards, the story really touched her. she was also equally concerned by peril and sacrifices that the characters made (trying not to give anything away). i wanted to say thank you for treating the material with sensitivity, straight forwardness, and honesty and having the respect for children to speak to them as people able to handle difficulty and the scariness of real life. you didn’t play them up or play them down, they were not beyond her, they were appropriate and her reactions were appropriate, as was the joys and triumphs she experienced. this is a wonderful work, thank you… that said i had to promise her that there was another book coming where she would learn of the robot’s fate and that of her family to stem the tide of tears. looking forward to the next book! i am seven years old and i really liked this book. it is one of my favorite books. the other two are charlie and the chocolate factory by roald dahl and mr. popper’s penguins by florence and richard atwater. i also really liked the pictures in your book. i think it was a good story because it’s funny and sad. i thought it was cool that you used robot airships. i’m glad that you are making another book and i can’t wait to read it. i have a question about your writing rules. why did you want to make the chapters as short as possible? my 8 year old is an adept reader but not one to engage emotionally with his books. he came to me after finishing wild robot and said it was “scary, amusing, and sad”   he got that emotional wallop some of the reviews mentioned. thank you for writing a book that helped him access a new experience. we will be eagerly awaiting the sequel. i am 8 years old and i read your book 5 times. i really want you to write a second or third one! please… i can’t wait! please write back so i don’t die of suspense, thank you. i’m writing back immediately so that you don’t actually die of suspense! i hope i’m not too late! thanks for your urgent comment, it’s the kind of comment that makes an author want to write quickly. i am currently hard at work on the second wild robot book…i’m writing as quickly as i can. stay tuned! i can’t wait for the sequel!!! please wait one more year! you have no idea how happy i am to hear of a sequel. i just finished reading this with my 7 year old son and he was really sad about the ending. we anxiously await roz’s return to her island home! i am the mother of a very reluctant 10 year old reader. i am always on the lookout for books that he might show an interest in. this past summer i noticed your book the wild robot on display at our local library. the title and the cover drew me in and i checked it out and brought it home with me. as with any new book we bring home, i encourage my son to give it what i call “the chapter test.” give the first chapter a try before you say you don’t like a book. since the first chapter was short, we gave it another chapter, and then another, and before he knew it, he was hooked. just last month, my son asked if i could get the wild robot from the library again. and he asked if i thought there might be a sequel. he’ll be very happy to hear that there will be more to read about roz in the future! and i know one gift that will be under the tree this christmas. thank you so much. dear peter, i would like to thank you from the bottom of a mothers heart for your book. it made my 8 year old son read! he is very reluctant reader, and on top of that it was difficult to find a great chapter book for his age. both of us were reading the book and he would not let me pass him because he wanted to be the first to finish it. i know my son will have a great memory of his mom reading a book with him. and i thank you for that. i sincerely think you are not just a talented writer, you are genius. i write picture books myself and can understand how you doubted yourself. but this book is a masterpiece. my son and i cannot wait when the sequel the wild robot escapes comes out in october. please, don’t stop writing. i hope to be able to catch you presenting somewhere sometime. ( please forgive any typoes). loved the book but why rifles and killing? this book is very cool and i am waiting for the next volume to come out dear mr. brown, i am 11 years old and i don’t enjoy reading much. when my mom tells me to read, i do it very reluctantly. she ordered this book for me because it is our reading book for book club this month (yes my mom signed me up for a book club and i don’t enjoy reading). anyway, i received this book yesterday in the mail from amazon and just finished it. i couldn’t put it down and then started researching other books you have written and found that you are doing a sequel! thank you! thank you for writing a book that makes me want to read more! you have inspired me. i can’t wait for march to get here already! hi cuncle pete hi there, i’m a bookmobile librarian and last night i visited one of my regular stops where i serve a population of burmese immigrant kids. at that stop, there’s a group of kids i call the boy tornado, because they swarm onto my bus, speaking over each other in a mix of english and zo, good naturedly wrestling over their favorite books, swarm up to my check out desk and then pour out the door, leaving behind bare shelves. maybe less a tornado and more a swarm of happy book locusts. anyway, last night every single one of them asked me when the wild robot escapes is coming out and if i could put it on hold for them. just thought you’d like to know this sweet story. your books are very popular with all our kids, especially mr tiger goes wild (though you will be my friend is my personal favorite). the wild robot was an amazing story; i absolutely loved it and i am waiting for the wild robot escapes! i enjoy reading very much and i loved it i think i said that already:) i am 11 years old mr. peter brown and i loved your wild robot escapes finished it in 3 days and when i was in class i read the book when they were watching a movie i really hope you make a book 3 your best reader grant. is there going to be a book three is there is there is there!!!. i loved the wild robot escapes. i was hoping there would be a third book. i love your books. my son (age 4) absolutely loves this book and wild robot escapes. we finished the wild robot about a month before “escapes” was released. once it arrived we finished it in 9 days of bedtime reading. once finished we had a couple nights of “one sitting” books, then he asked if we could read the wild robot again. 3 nights and we’ve passed the 100 page mark (again). thank you very much for these works. they are very much appreciated. i love the questions it brings out of my son and the way i see the story coming out in the way he plays afterwards. i am a 3rd grade teacher (currently) in a waldorf charter school. i am amazed by how perfectly the wild robot and the wild robot escapes connect so beautifully to the 3rd grade curriculum and to the developmental stage of the children that i teach. my students love the stories (they never want me to stop reading   even if they have to miss some recess!) and i have gone back with some chapters to use them for mentor texts to teach my students writing and grammar skills. thank you for these amazing books. i echo others’ voices when i say “please write a third one!!” we read this book in my fourth grade class. they would like you to know it was awesome! it was one of the best books we read. we think you should make it into a movie. it was very creative. thank you for taking your time and effort to make this book. we think your illustrations are amazing! 20 out of 10! the recos robots reminded us of the iron giant. we look forward to reading the next book. i am an adult & i loved both wild robot books…please let there be a third. great book dear peter, my children and i have loved the roz books. they are some of our favorite books! we are requesting that you write a third book, please, please, please. sincerely, laura i love the wild robot do one more please write a third book! do you have any plans to write a third book? dear peter brown i loved your book the wild robot . my favorite part is when the recos came because it left you in such suspense. i loved that roz learned the animal language so quickly i also liked that roz had a son and it was not a robot but it was a goose . the last thing is i can’t wait for the wild robot escape.  sincerely yaitza what is the reason you wrote the book. i like how when you were sketching and writing another book you thought of another book at the same time. you just didn’t know it yet. i like how when you were writing you decided to make roz feel different feelings during the book. i also like how you drew pictures to give you ideas before writing the story. i like how you love books as much as me. my favorite part of the book is when all the animals work together to defeat the recos. it shows me how much they care about him. hello! i was wondering if you are going to make a third book about how roz is doing in her home again. i am dying to know what roz is doing with her friends. 🙂  grisell we read the book and it was awesome i wish we could be able to read, the wild robot returns because i want to know what happens next. maybe i will see it a the store and read maybe dear peter brown, i have enjoyed your awesome adventure books. i hope you make a third book. your books about roz and bright bill are amazing!!! the funny thing is i had a teacher last year her name is mrs. roz but she is retiring and that makes me sad. today is also my grandmas birthday!!!! we read the wild robot and i’m exited to read the second hi peter, i loved the first book. it was great! i also liked the second book. are you thinking of making a third? we read the wild robot and i’m exited to read the second we read the wild robot and i’m exited to read the second the wild robot returns. the wild robot is the first chapter book that has held my kindergartener’s attention. more accurately, he has been riveted! i read to him every night before bed and and i hear “one more chapter, please!” at least 3 4 times until i insist this really has to be the last until tomorrow. to be honest, it’s difficult for me to put this book down as well. we are now about 70% off the way through with the wild robot escapes and i am not ready to say goodbye to roz, brightbill etc and i am hoping for a third book. will there be?? and is it true that dreamworks has purchased the rights?? thank you for these sweet and wonderful books and much success to you. thank you for sharing your journey with the wild robot. i absolutely loved both of the books. it was perfect timing for me to dive into them because i felt that i could relate to roz in many ways. she actually gave me confidence in myself for my upcoming new adventure. i am transitioning from 22 years of second grade to teaching 6th grade ela. what would mrs. newell do in 6th grade ela? she’ll make 6th grade ela her home while using the wild robot and the wild robot escapes as inspiration. i am very excited to use your books and to share your journey of writing to help motivate my students. thank you! evie is four. she is still learning to be kind all the time, to be helpful, to sit still when she needs to, to behave quietly when at church. evie’s mother read her the wild robot, because evie loves stories, and evie’s mother loves her. evie adores roz. she plays roz, she is roz, and when she is, being kind all the time, being helpful, sitting still and being quiet is easy. evie is four, and she has been a robot named roz for almost two months now. that’s a long time when you are four. if you are ever feeling sad and wondering if it was all worth, remember that you changed a four year old evie’s life dramatically, and when she is somewhere filled with breakable things, where she needs to keep her hands to herself, she sneaks through the shelves soundlessly, hiding from recos. because she is roz, and everything is easier when you are a wild robot. i loved the first 2, but are you going to make a third book??? i read the first 2 books and loved them. will there be a third book???? my son, fin simply fell in love with the first wild robot book. thank you. so much. the book carried him through a big move and i regretted packing #2 (the wild robot escapes). the ‘waiting was hard, but we all ‘cheered’ when we unpacked/found the the second wild robot book. he’s reading it now, and pauses every so often to share with me, his favorite parts. he just told me that he hopes you are now writing the 3rd in the series. (no pressure 😉 thank you, thank you. i just finished reading the book and loved it! can’t wait to read the 2nd one and can’t wait for you to make a third! this is the second year that i’ve read both books with my 3rd grade class, but this year was a little different. this year, we started reading the wild robot on the first day of school, and i was able to tie your description of your writing process into my initial lessons on the writing process with my students. the way you described your thinking, where the ideas came from, what you had to study and research, and the process of receiving feedback and making changes based on them, has been incredible. for the first time, feedback has become something my students ask for, because they saw such a visible example of how it helped create these books they love. i’ve been able to pull so many examples of dialogue out of the book, of expression, tone, setting the scene… i even taught run on sentences using chitchat as an example. in addition, these books have both provided so many examples to use in my reading lessons, and it’s helped my kids grow so much already. thank you, so much! the books are phenomenal, and this blog post with your explanation of your writing process has been so beneficial! me and my class have finished reading your books. we all love them and hope there will be a third. there are millions of people in my school who hope their will be a 3rd book. we hope you do well from jake. hi! i finished reading “the wild robot” to my 5th grade class. i (and they) loved it so much i had to immediately buy the 2nd book and we are about halfway through. honestly i’m glad i didn’t discover your book until the 2nd book was out   i could have never stood the wait!!!! if i hear there is a 3rd book, i’ll be the first in line! i have used the wild robot to explore questions we still have when the bok is completed. our questions led us to independent inquires about robots. they asked some excellent questions. for example; how do robots perform surgery. all inquires ended with project based research. i love mixing fiction and nonfiction. i am featuring your book in a presentation we have this week. our students have lived wild robot for two years. of course we are designing our own robots now using hummingbird and finch robots. thank you a thousand times over. the themes in the wild robot novels are so profound. i feel i have gone home 50 years in the future. i read this book at school and one of my friends read the 2nd book so o told her could we read that for are next lite circle book and she said yes and i just finished the first book today hi are you gonna make a 3rd wild robot book? please do if you can because they are really good. hi   i have very much enjoyed reading about the your process in writing the wild robot. and i’m thrilled to begin reading your book! i actually borrowed it from one of my 1st grade students! are you making a 3rd wild robot? because i love your books and i want to read it soon. my second grade class read both robot books this year. they were enthralled. there were many robust conversations about artificial intelligence. it impacted their thinking on so many levels. each day i was met with, “just one more chapter”. the class agreed they did not want the book to end. several children ordered their own copies because they could not wait to see what happened to their beloved roz. the second book was equally compelling and left the class begging for a third. the class wondered if you do skype q&as since they had many questions about your ideas and writing. thank you for creating a story that captivates and inspires young readers to become lovers of the written word. peter  my tech partner and 5th grade teacher suggested reading the wild robot. i teach senior high school and junior college economics and government in upstate ny. i have been looking for something to pursue ai , robots, and virtual reality in the economy, in other words, the future. kids of all ages love a good story…i thoroughly enjoyed reading about roz. it’s a story that demonstrates many layers of thought…your process of artistic writing is brilliant! keep the world curious about roz and ai , robots,it makes us all think and reflect. what more could an artist want? thanks so much for this gift. thank you so much for this amazing book. my 7 year old is in love with this story. we discovered it as an audio book for something to listen to in the car and have borrowed it several times from the library. i am looking to get him his very own copy of the wild robot and the wild robot escapes so he can read them over and over. thank you for making a great story to capture a little boys imagination. thank you so much for this book and its sequel! my 8 year old saw this book and instantly wanted to read it. i was concerned that it might be too difficult for him to stick with because he’d not yet really graduated to reading full chapter books but he sailed through the book and loved the story. he was so excited to read the 2nd book and has been bringing it everywhere with him. he loves telling anyone who will listen about the adventures of roz. so thank you for getting my son so excited about reading! we will keep an eye out for future work from you! my son and i have absolutely loved reading the two books in your wild robot series. with such amazing characters, strong emotional responses from readers, we both agree it needs to be turned into a movie. are there any plans for that? november 14, 2019 dear peter brown, my name is sebastian and i am eight years old. i love playing sports like soccer and tennis. i also like reading books. i love both of your wild robot books because of the way you described roz’s feelings and actions. my favorite part of the book the wild robot was when brightbill hatched and called roz “mama”. in the second book my favorite part was when roz reunited with her animal friends on the island. i even recommended the books to my class to read. i am doing a book report for my school and i have a few questions for you.   why did you give the robot the name roz?   why did you make roz’s unit number 7134?   why did you make the books about a robot?   are you writing a third book? i hope you can come to my school to talk about your career! thank you. i hope to hear from you soon! sincerely, sebastian i’ve read the wild robot to my third graders over the past couple of years and always we want more! is there a plan for a third book? i think these books are the most intelligent books i’ve ever read to kids. they speak to me personally about the need to be wild, but they engage children in discussions about family, nature, design, ethics, love   so many great things come from reading these books! thank you. thank you! hi peter, thank you for writing these books. my son happened to pick up the wild robot while in library class at school & asked me to read it to him… we couldn’t put it down. we were moved and invested. after we finished the first, he said, “there has to be another book” and one day came bounding in the door with the sequel. i just book the two books for him for christmas so we could read them again together & we’re enjoying them just as much. thank you   for sharing your time & talent & for the priceless time you allowed my son & i to have because of your story. megan thank you for sharing your wonderful and inspirational story. we just finished reading the wild robot in our school during reading group. our young children loved it! we look forward to thinking more about the ideas in the book in the next few weeks together and talking about the concepts and our favorite parts. this is a good book dear peter, i loved the wild robot and the second book. my mom and i read both of them together, and i think you should turn these books into movies. it could be such a cool movie. i was in first grade when we started to read the wild robot. we read them so quickly because we wanted to know what happened. if you are not thinking about a movie, how about a 3rd book of roz? thank you for your books. sincerely, jackson s. the book is really nice. i can still remember reading it in 3th grade and i have been reading it. i recommend reading the second book. we have just read the wild robot and we are now reading the wild robot escapes. my children 13yrs, 6yrs and 5yrs have been completely engrossed in the story. it has been lovely hearing them retell scenes to each other. a lovely story! really recommend! i am reading this book for school, so i haven’t started yet but it just sounds so so so good!!!! i really like the wild robot i’m looking forward to reading the second book. me and my family have lyme disease and that book has helped us along the way with my reading. so thank you for making book`s p.s.i hope you make more books. i love the book it is sad but good keeping books alive is what i love! thank you for writing these books (the wild robot & the wild robot escapes). i loved them so much because nature/wildlife and tech/robots are two of my favorite things and to have them in one book is amazing. i read it then shared it with my mum ( she loves nature too) . i didn’t know you had done two of them until i saw it in my local library. i immediately got it out of the library on the last day before lockdown. i liked how you had short chapters because it made me want to read more and because it made me think that it was great because i would read 10 chapters instead of 2. i also liked that it had different emotions like when roz got melted in the second book but a happy time was when the creator of them built a now body for roz and let her go back to the wild. i love books but i also love tv. i think you should try and get it as a tv series or a film. i might also write to the bbc and netflixs and ask them. ps.i love your drawings. pps.you are my favourite author from edgar aged 10 from maldon, essex, england please write a third book in the series i just visited my 6 year old granddaughter for two weeks and read her both, she wouldn’t let me stop the wild robot are my favourite books i’ve ever read (i’m 9!). and i’d like to read more stories about roz and brightbill. my dad loved it too! p.s. i’m planning to make little picture books about roz and brightbill on the island, to show my friends. please wright a book about brightbill did you make any movies? the book is cool but make a therd one first of all i love? your two books the wild robot and the wild robot escapes. second, i think you are the best author in the world. and last, i will give you a small challenge: can you make the book the wild robot three. thanks!?i love the story but, my favorite part of the book is your lovely drawings. i can totally stare at those for hours. actually my favorite thing to do in my spare time is drawing. ps: by the way you make the best books in the whole world. from your friend, mikus arnold california, los angeles hi! this book was suggested to me by a teacher at my school late june last year. i didn’t actually start reading it until about a month or two ago. to be honest, i was surprised about how much i love this book. i finished it pretty quickly. i saw there was a sequel, and, lets just say.. i know a book that is going on my christmas list this year. i like the book so far. i love it thank you!!! i have now read both books to my second grade classes for the past 3 years. my scholars love them and i do too. i always have to warn them when we get to parts that make me cry (still after reading them 3 times). my daughter is adopted and is ready to fly away to college soon soi connect with roz when her baby flies away snd returns. i really want a third book but more than that i want your lovely stories to be made into a movie. if there is anything i can do to help get that done, just ask! hi there. will there be a third book in the series? my son loves all of your books and him and his friend are hoping there will be one more about roz. more books please hello, i have been reading the wild robot and now the wild robot escapes to my 2nd graders for read aloud this year. this is just the book that we needed during this uncertain time! my students (as do i) absolutely love your books   we also have a couple of your other fiction books as well in our classroom library!!! we are hoping that there will be a third book soon   and many of my students think that there should be a movie made of each of the books so far. we have been working on visualization and adding details to our writing, an my kids think that you are the best at this. they say that they can picture the story happening in their heads because of how descriptive your writing is   this is crossing over to their writing as well =). we even decorated our classroom door for halloween with a wild robot theme. thank you so much for sharing your story with us and continuing to write stories that my students can’t wait to read more of. can you make a wild robot 3 and 4 i read the whole book, it was very interesting! thanks, peter for making this book. my favorite part was when brightbill is born. i like how you explain the story! i can’t wait for the next book! this is one of my all time favorite children’s books! i am thirteen years old and absolutely adored the first and second book. peter, omg, my wife , daughter and i read this out loud at night w/ the dog and we love it !! we’re reading the series for the 2nd time and would love to buy the wild robot tshirt(s)   the illustrations are awesome! how do we buy them? thank you so much for all the family time joy you brought our family! mike i love the wild robot it is an excelent story.my teacher finished reading the book to us and we were all whining about reading the wild robot escapes.i think it is awsome. also this blog is very helpful for the reflection i am doing on the book.i love the pictures.we are going to read the wild robot in a couple of weeks i can’t wait to read it i’m sure it’s just as great. i was introduced to this book by an fb montessori group for educators and parents. it was highly recommended by several teachers.when my first grader son (7yo) and i picked it up from the library, my son ignored it. i read a couple of chapters to him at bedtime daily and he got hooked. by the time we came to the end of chapter 78, i knew this book was a keeper and ordered the set from an independent bookseller, not from amazon(after reading your other blog entry about amazon’s tactics). lo and behold, when the shipment arrived, my son finished the last two chapters in book 1 and started reading the wild robot escapes on his own. he finished it after he woke up the next morning. this was the first time that my son said a book made him sad and he wanted to cry. i told him that is what really good books do to people: they move people. thank you for this soon to be classic. my third graders and i just finished this wonderful novel. teacherspayteachers.com provided some delightful curriculum to accompany it (i bought 3 different ones: discussion questions, stem challenges along with a comprehension guide). i loved the language in the book, the vocabulary caused so many discussions. we laughed and cried and enjoyed the last several weeks immersed in this story. i just sent this link https://www.peterbrownstudio.com/books the wild robot escapes/ to all my parents to satisfy their children’s curiosity about the end of roz’s journey. thank you for sharing your story with us. hi peter, i have read your wild robot novels the past three years to my 3rd grade classes and each year they fall deeply in love with the characters! at the end of the final novel, i always promise to check your website to see if you have any news on a third adventure about roz and brightbill. do you think their story will continue? we would love to know! thank you, heppner elementary school 3rd grade heppner, oregon thanks for sharing the wild robot novels with your classes! regarding a book 3, all i can say right now is stay tuned! but i’ll be making an announcement on twitter/facebook/instagram (and on my website) in the not too distant future… in my school, i’m doing a book report on the wild robot! 😀 thank you for your wonderful children’s books! my kids and i adored the wild robot and were so excited to learn there was a second book. we loved it as much as the first! roz is firmly planted in the wonderful memories of my kids; you did a beautiful job! we listened to the books as audio books and loved all the various voices; it was such a delight! thank you! hope to find out there will be a third book soon! 🙂 hello mr. peter brown! i wanted to ask you if you are working on wild robot 3, the 2 books you have made of that totek is an awesome book . hello peter brown inl love the story you made called the wild robot i love this book so much!!! in my class at school we red it and it we are going to read the second book soon. the best book is the wild robot escapes because… it is a really fun and cool book and i love the story! when i first read it i through it was amazing and when i read it again i still think it is amazing. i also think the wild robot escapes is really interesting. i love how it teaches about camouflage and migration and other fun stuff! i also think the wild robot escapes is very funny! i love how funny and creative a robot adopting a goose is! most importantly, something i would change about the wild robot escapes is, i would make it more popular. it is such a good book, the problem is it is not popular/famous at all! many people are missing out on the funny, creative, and interesting wild robot escapes! awesome book i discovered the wild robot escapes while spending the night with my rowdy nephews. i loved the section i read to them so much that i bought the first book and started reading it to my first grade class. 3 years and 3 classes later, these books are the community builder in our room. whether we are distance learning or in person learning, together as a class or separated into “cohorts”, the wild robot is something we consistently share. during quarantine, our entire school day was dismantled. i still read every day from the wild robot escapes. it was our life line. thank you for this lovely imaginative sweet sweet story! i hope you can come out with an other book. i hope you can come out with a movie. hello peter brown, we really enjoyed reading the wild robot and the the wild robot escapes as class read alouds. we are wondering if you will be writing a part 3 and if so when it will be released. thank you, mrs. kerr’s 5th grade class from alberta, canada. hey peter, i love both the escapes and the regular one. but will there be a 3rd book? it’s sad to see them go. thanks! i love them does the paper back one have ruff scheches the paperback versions of both wild robot books include sketches from my creative process. check them out! we love your books! my son wanted to give you a heart on your photos of how you made your book. your efforts are enjoyed every night . thank you for sharing your stories with us. we homeschooled our 4th grader this year due to the pandemic and chose the wild robot as one of our novel studies. my son and i read it together and both adored it. we just had to read the second book as well. since then my son has read them again and again. it amazes me how you truly made us care so deeply about a robot. i even shed some tears. hoping we will see a third book and my son is hoping for a movie. ❤️ thank you peter. i have just finished reading , ‘the wild robot escapes’ for my grandson. he was reading his paper edition to me, before covid hit. we are now looking forward to again, entertaining ourselves, (including my daughter, who is homeschooling my grandson), with your other books. many blessings. love the book as a teacher and a mother of a son who is a reluctant reader. his class read the first together and then he tracked down the sequel on his own and read it. i am looking forward to sharing it with my class this year. i really enjoyed reading about your process as an author. this book is heart warming i really like your books, i’m close to the end of wild robot escapes! i really hope you are writing the next one! ? hello, im in 5th and when i was in 3rd grade my teacher gave this book to mae and i still have it it is such an inspiring book and a great novel i would love for ypu to make a part 3 because i’ve read both books. hi i’m in 5th grade and i was the only kid in my class that has this book and when i said i’m done everyone came up to me and said can i read the book so i would love to have a 3 book. i can igree that reading it is better dear peter my name is ryder caligure from buckingham elementary bend, oregon and i was inspired by your great writing detail but most of all your illustrations there perfect for your book type and nobody could do anything close to what you can do. i’m a young artist in the making and i would love if you could contact me and show me your tricks. i check my school library everyday for the second book of this series and any of your other books. i understand if you cannot contact me and i thank you for you time ryder caligure thanks for the great comment, ryder! i am so glad you’ve enjoyed my book…i think you probably mean the wild robot. i’m glad to know that you’re a young artist in the making. my best advice is for you to check out some “how to draw” books from the library and then draw along while following the instructions. you’ll learn some great lessons, and if you practice enough you won’t even need the books anymore. happy reading and drawing! thank you for your advice i hope we one day cross paths is there a movie to go with the book? i have seen unit lessons that include compare and contrast the book and movie but have only found movie trailers. there’s no movie out yet, but one is being made. if all goes well, it’ll be available in about 2 years. movies take a long time to make. hello peter i am a 6th grade student and my ela class is reading your book the wild robot and also doing a report on it. i would like to know if there will be a third book on the wild robot and how the movie is doing and how it will be.  alex i love the book hi peter i am rihanna i was just wondering… what got you thinking about unusual things living in surprising places? hi peter i am rihanna i was just wondering… what got you thinking of unusual things living in surprising places? how is alvina ling doing? dear peter, i just wanted to post a note to say how deeply my students and i enjoy your wild robot books. our favorite moments as a class are the ones we spend with roz. every day, at the end of read aloud time, my students beg for more. thank you so much for these beautiful stories and for bringing so much joy and magic to our classroom. ms. o’neill thanks for the lovely message, ms. o’neill! and thanks for sharing my books with your students. happy reading to you all! hello mr. brown. my name is jahanara and i am in fourth grade. i do not know if you still check your replies, but in my class, we are reading “the wild robot” and i just wanted to say that you are such an amazing author to me. i am so happy i got to read one awesome book by you. thank you for writing an amazing book on wilderness and a robot. you are amazing and i love the book so much. thank you, jahanara thanks for the nice note, jahanara! i’m really happy you’re enjoying the wild robot. happy reading! dear mr. brown. thank you for such a great and loving book. my family ( and me) love reaing it every night. my teacher reads the wild robot escapes book and the wild robot everyday. so thank you for the amazing book! i love this story i really prefer it for students i am currently reading this aloud to over 200 fourth grade students. we all love it! i am amazed with their questions and observations. i have loved roz for years, and they are falling in love with her too. thank you for writing a book that is wonderful to share! i bought this book for my 7yo son because he loves to read. he usually reads the dogman series and/or the minecraft storymode series of books. i thought i would try to challenge him a bit more than those books while he had some online learning. he started the book about 2 weeks ago and he can’t put it down. he absolutely loves the story and the drawings. he wants to read the next book! we read both the wild robot and the wild robot escapes and we loved them! do you have any plans to add a third book? we would love to hear more about roz and brightbill. we heard there might be a movie and we hope the movie plans go well! hi i am 9 year old melody sublett. me & my mom used to go to this book club, and eventully i was assigned “the wild robot”. i read a few pages and dicded i didn’t like it. years later mom told me to read her 10 chapters so i did the next day i did it by myself every day and before i knew it the book was over but i wanted more i went to the library got the sequel and imedietly started reading at the same time as passing my book to dad my fav part is the winter the idea is so amazing! the plot is perfectly written and the i can’t wait for the 3rd book in the series! please keep up the great work! i love this book! my sister and i love it. the wild robot & the wild robot escapes are my 2 favorite books ever. i recommend them to everyone (every student and family that i encounter.) when the book first came out, i read it to my 3rd grade class & they loved it. at the end they said they were both happy and sad. they were happy to know how it ended, but sad that it was finished. they didn’t want to say good bye to the characters they had grown to love. they wanted to know 2 things: would there be a book 2, and would there be a movie? i emailed and the reply from peter brown’s assistant was that a sequel was being written. my students cheered loudly for that. the following year, and every year since, i have read both of the books to my 3rd graders. every year they have loved them. they connect with the characters & the themes, which are so incredible. these books get an emotional response from the students. they clap, they cheer, they come close to tears, because they feel real feelings. for example, when roz said, “i am just a robot,” i asked my students to respond to that. they said she was not “just a robot”. they said she was a mother, a friend, a storyteller, a helper. now there are several years of students who are waiting for the 3rd book & for the movie. please let me know if you know the release date for the 3rd book. also, i read that dreamworks bought the movie rights, but have they started making the movie yet? p.s. when i read the book to the students, of course, i have to read the characters with different “voices.” it makes it more fun for the students, but also for me. chitchat’s voice is higher pitched & non stop with hardly a breath taken. dig down’s voice is low, along with mr. beaver’s. brightbill’s voice is full of wonder, curiosity, sometimes hesitance, sometimes sadness/troubled, sometimes confidence. roz’s voice is flat & sounds more computerized, with less natural expression, until she starts to try to sound more friendly. (students love that). so…… if dreamworks studio hasn’t selected someone for the voice of roz yet….i’m volunteering to do it for free, raising my hand up high….pick me! (dream come true.) thanks for the nice note, cia! and big thanks for sharing the wild robot books with your classes, i’m so glad the stories have resonated. it sounds like your readings are incredible. i’ll keep you in mind for voiceover work! 😉 i am a 2nd grade teacher and the wild robot and the wild robot escapes are by far the best read alouds i have shared with my classes in my 34 years teaching. i read them every year to my 2nd grade scholars and it is amazing how excited and involved my classes become with the story of roz and brightbill. last year, when my only daughter went off to college, the chapters where brightbill leaves on his first migration and the reunion of roz and brightbill afterward and on hilltop farm were read with a choked voice through tears. (that definitely needed some explaining to my 2nd graders. why is mrs. kilroy crying? so, this year i warned them ahead of time.) these stories have helped even my most reluctant readers become excited to pick up the book and follow along… maybe even read ahead. we keep our school library copies checked out constantly, have asked them to order a few more, and students get their own copies and bring them from home. we are just finishing the wild robot escapes and they don’t want it to end. when i told my class that book 3, the wild robot protects, will be out next year, they asked me to promise to get it asap and read it to them! i explained that it probably won’t be available until after school is out and they could read it on their own. we also had a discussion about the books being turned into movies and that idea was a definite hit! pixar was their studio of choice (animation connoisseurs that they are). thank you so much for taking the time to bring roz to life and share her story with us. thank you for the lovely words! and thanks for sharing the wild robot books with your students! i’m so glad everyone is enjoying them. and yes, stay tuned for the wild robot protects! what a fabulous example of perseverance for writers young and old! we came upon this in class today when we were looking you up and my 2nd grade scholars were amazed that the writing of the wild robot took more years than they have been alive. we read the wild robot in class and it sounds like all those years paid off. we were really intrigued by this book. we are planning to buy and read the sequel. we liked all the action?? we all loved the book and thought it was awesome. the illustrations were really nice. it was very emotional and this book was epic! we really like it. are you planning to write a third book? i wish you made a wild robot comic book… i find it very inspiring that you got to meet your goal and publish a book, with a whole sequel at that! seriously, congratulations to you man. super proud! hey peter! the wild robot series was amazing and i just finished the first book for the second time! i really hope this turns into a movie at some point because just imagining it makes it seem like it would be awesome. i remember reading it and imagining the pictures moving, and if this were to become a movie/series, i would want it to stick with the same art style. just because it leaves this warm feeling on you after you see the pictures. great book! wow this book is so good our school does a thing called book club where we read really good books and i choose the wild robot and its so cool this book is so cool and i want more i am doing book club and my name is mujaahid peter brown you had a very, very ,lovely book it had lot’s of feeling in it.your a good writer and a good drawer.where do you get these idea’s from? good book ! me:*sitting on the floor in class* friend:get up me:it’s too saaaaaaaaaad friend:*laughs* me:*whines* if is very emotional and good. bravo peter brown! dear peter brown i am from ramridge primary school and we just finished the first book and our next class book is the sequel for next term and i’ve heard that your third book of the wild robot is on amazon but not others and i want to get it soooo bad i mean it’s so touching especially brightbill getting separated from his mother roz . please make a forth book . yours sincerely (see name at top) my name is enzo and i love the book the wild robot my favourite part is when roz adopted brightbill. hey peter! i read the book in my school for english and it was really good! the ending made me cry. it’s just sad. but luckily roz escapes from those lazy people in the 2nd book. also, how is the 3rd book going? hi i’m rudy age 6 me and my dad read the book. my favourite part was when roz found the egg! so cool when are you going to make a 3rd book dear peter, my second grade students just finished reading their very first novel ever the wild robot. at first, they were overwhelmed by how many chapters there were. but little by little they invested more and more of their hearts into the story and didn’t want to put it down. in the final chapter they were in tears and my teacher heart rejoiced knowing they finally understood the power of great writing. your book will be one they will remember for a long time. thank you for the magic! this is so great to hear. thanks for sharing the wild robot with your students, eyv! happy reading to you all! hi peter brown dtone your book the wild robot was amazing it nealy going to make me cry towards the end continue making fantastic books i cant wait to see book3 i hope you get to reply back to me dear peter, we just finished reading the wild robot in our grade 4 novel studies class in beijing, china. we all loved the book because of the interesting characters and beautiful drawings. our favorite characters are chitchat, roz, and mr beaver. we like chitchat because she is very talkative like us. we like mr beaver because he saved the day when he made roz a new foot. and of course, we like roz because she is so kind, helpful, and smart. our favorite part of the book was when the birds pooped on the recos. we heard that there is going to be a movie. we are so excited! when will it be out and what kind of movie will it be? we think it should be claymation or cgi. hello my name is karla and i’am reading the wild robot ando i like it too much. will the wild robot be a movie? my students loved the book!! that was the question they wanted me to ask. hello peter brown, i really enjoyed both of your books (especially the second one), but just wanted to know if there will be a movie because i really want one, and i haven’t even seen a trailer. i’m glad you enjoyed the wild robot books! book 3 is coming out on september 26, it’s called the wild robot protects, i hope you’ll check it out. also, it looks like there will be a wild robot movie! but movies take a long time, so it probably won’t be out for a couple of years. stay tuned hello peter brown, i really loved reading your wild robot books. i just wanted to know if there will be a movie of it or not because i haven’t seen any trailers yet. peter brown, i really like your wild robot books. i was hoping for a fourth book. i would name it the wild robot finds its home. when the movie comes out, if you make one, can you make it in theaters? do you think there will be three movies? one for every book? but when i read your book oh! my! god! it was so good. i loved it so much. i am so excited for your third book. your second one didn’t feel like he was escaping in the first half. when i was reading the first book, i thought he had to escape the island. i really liked your books, i can’t wait for your new book. bye! great bonding time! my seven year old son was assigned to read out loud every day for school. at first it was a major “have to listen” as a parent to make sure he was progressing, but soon became a wonderful part of my day being able to get cozy with him on the couch and get lost into such a great book that both a parent and child could enjoy together. thank you for creating this enjoyable series… he’s just now about to get the third book and we are thrilled that there will be a movie! it has turned into one of my favorite memories of 2023. i read this book in third grade and it was the best! when i discovered the sequel, i was so excited! when i heard recently that the most recent third book came out, i put it on hold online at my local library. it took over six weeks before i got my turn but it was so worth it! as a middle school aged writer, i can easily believe that you are among the most talented authors i’ve ever seen! also (i’m not expecting you can answer, btw), do you have any tips for young writers like me? if you ever get stuck with your writing, don’t be afraid to stop writing and start reading. pick up a book and as you read think about what you like about that book, or what you don’t like about it. before long, you’ll be eager to get back to your own writing, and you might even have some new ideas in mind that you can try out. also, i love your books never stop writing!!! this was the best book ever! i loved it! make a book 4 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i love your book please make part 4 i love your books my whole class wants part 4 pls reply back hello mr. brown, i am a 4th grade teacher in new hampshire. i have read your books to my classes for years. as a sequel comes out i read that as well. we just finished the wild robot protects and the students stood and cheered raucously. they love your writing. please keep them coming (a big ask)! the kids would love it if you responded to them. thanks for sharing the wild robot books with your students! i’m so glad they enjoyed roz’s newest adventure. i’m in talks with my publisher about making more, so stay tuned! dear peter brown,my name is quinn.i love the wild robot series.can you name the 4th book the wild robot succeeds? sincrely, quinn i love the wild robot and heard the news about the new movie about it! i would like the wild robot series so much more if you could possibly make more of them? think about it. my son and i are nearly at the end of your 3rd book. we came to love roz and your books so much and tonight my son asked me to ask if there would be any more? they are truly wonderful, so we hope so 🙂 i’m working on some ideas for a possible 4th book! but it’s far too soon to say for sure that another wild robot novel will definitely happen. stay tuned! hi i love your books they’re amazing! can you make a wild robot 4, and are you really making a movie about the books i’m super curious about that but make a wild robot 4 please! hey peter brown! when will the movie come out also my class is reading book one! i love the story i jsut got the wild robot protects ordered i’m gonna get the other 2 eventually goodbye same! woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.its gunu be a move! somehow the youtube comment section got me here. my friend messages me saying she just saw, “the wild robot” film trailer and mentioned it nearly made her cry. i soon discovered the link directly to the film trailer on “universal pictures“ youtube channel. i viewed it and got shivers. then i excitedly looked into the comment area wanting more info. one of the top comments mentioned this film was based on a book. feel very honored to read your blog about how this book came into being and your process. plan to order the book soon, i’m super intrigued. thank you in advance. thank you for also mentioning the software you used, i might mull over that if i ever want to get serious on my story. dear peter brown, i wanted to thank you very deeply for the creation of these books. i remember starting the audiobook of the wild robot on a roadtrip nearly five or six years ago when i was around nine. i got through a bit, but as life often does, things change and you forgot to finish things. my brother a year or so later read the book and was obsessed with it, which surprised me, as he is a reluctant reader. it got to the point of where he would beg to read aloud the book to my sister on yet another car ride. i regret i didn’t listen along. instead i read something else, and went on. the years went by, and my brother read the second book and recently read some of the third (we sadly missplaced the wild robot protects). i was just beginning high school, and had considerably less time than i used to, and so did not set the wild robot high on my priority list. i also was (and still am) terribly obsessed with art and animation, and would draw any moment i could and creating my own stories. then four days ago i saw the wild robot trailer and i was shocked into tears. it was the most beautiful animation and storytelling i had seen in ages, and tore up huge amounts of nostalgia. i proceeded to grab my brother’s copy of the wild robot and the wild robot escapes, read them in three days, and watch the trailer again nearly forty times as i binged. i cried after i finished each book, especially when i watched the trailer again right after. to put it simply, i underestimated these book, and i, a nearly sixteen year old girl, am now an emotional mess. these books are not just middle grade novels, they are novels about being alive and human. they are pieces of prose that are poetry at heart, just like how roz is a robot but a beautiful beast in her soul. they discuss so simply, so seemingly easily, very difficult subjects that even adults discuss with uncertainty. you writing built a safe space for children to think about subjects that their parents pretend that they can shelter them from, and lets them feel pain and grief in a place where it both is and isn’t “ok”. where they can learn how to handle the terrors of humanity by seeing the beauty and hoping, hoping with all of their heart. it was new york times bestseller for a reason, and i doubt i will ever shut up about this book, and when i possibly publish my own story about nature and the environment, i will cite this as one of the biggest inspirations. once i get my hands on a copy of the third book, i will be reading it immediately. thank you, maysie hi maysie, thanks for sharing your experiences with the wild robot. your words are really touching. i am so glad that your brother’s excitement for the book got you to revisit it, and that you’ve enjoyed the first 2 books. i hope you’ll check out the wild robot protects! best of luck with your own writing, pb hello mr. brown, our 3rd grade class in logan, ohio just finished reading your last book, the wild robot protects. we are anxious to hear if you will be writing another book (book #4). we love roz, brightbill, glimmer and now the goslings! thank you for your amazing writing that keeps us so engaged! i’m in year 6 at wirrianda public school our class loves reading the wild robot roz my 7 year old and i both absolutely love these books! we don’t know the ending yet of book 3 (though we will in a few days, they’re going through them fast) but do you have any plans for a book 4, if that is even possible? i know you must be really wrapped up in the film now, we are all excited for you, and maybe that’s given you more inspiration to continue the series? thank you for this incredibly moving, beautiful, human book. i’m going to show this wonderfully inspiring blog post to my kiddo as well! i love your books and hope to be an author like you someday hi peter, my name is kaitlyn williamson, a 3rd grade teacher in tucson, arizona. we just finished reading the wild robot protects and enjoyed looking at your website, and the process you went through to create this wonderful series. i also showed them the movie trailer for the upcoming movie. we got are so excited for it! we were wondering how you feel about your book becoming a movie? hope to hear from you soon. thank you for all you do! peter, you’re an amazing writer, all three books kept me invested for two weeks (until i finished them lol). i dream of becoming an author one day and this has really shown me more of the actual process, and primarily that the final story will not be the same the original. no one is ever complete without their team, a team will have it done faster. it would feel like a dream come true if my book got a successful trilogy and movie, you must feel amazing, and you have earned it. hi peter brown i love the wild robot the ending is sad though i can’t wait to read “the wild robot escapes” peter brown i love your book.my sister aisha dear peter brown i love your first book but didn’t read the other one. dear peter brown i really love your book but it’s sad at the end. dear peter brown i love your book it was good and was also emotional i love the wild robot can’t wait to read the wild robot escapes hello peter brown my name is mario :] . i love your book, the wild robot it is fullllllll of emotions and happiness and sad :{ and by the way i am from this school called ramridge primary school and we read this book for english. also when we read the last part of the book everyone was sad because roz had to leave he island and can you do a part 4 and please respond to it :] yeah and now we are reading the book where roz escapes. hi peter we read your first and it was so emotional when roz left the island and getting separated from brightbill by the way we haven’t read your second book i bet it is gonna be good. hello peter brown your book is very good and full of emotion i have been learning your book at school in english i like your book it deseves a movie peter brown , i am aminas and i am from ramridge primary school , i love your books especially your first book when roz adopted brightbill the gosling and nettle and thorn sacrifice their self for roz. dear, peter brown i like the book because bright bill and the whole island fought the recos . hello peter, i loveeeee your book! i adore the wild robot and i hope i could listen to all of your books. also, i am from ramridge primary school. and we are moving on to your 2nd book. finally, i have a few questions, what inspired you to be an author? why did you base your book on a robot? what made you have this idea of a robot, a goose being adopted? i really hope you have the time to respond.(my twin might give me a clue of your books). hey, it`s alessia here. i just wanted to talk about your book the wild robot. my class just finished reading it. the whole class was devastated to find out roz had to leave the island, her home! our teacher is looking forward to read the wild robot escapes. thank you for writing this amazing book, bye! hi peter brown my name is kingston and i love the wild robot it was a really good book and the ending was so sad. why did roz leave the island? i think the next book will be even better than the first, if that’s possible. dear peter brown, i love your book it is heart touching and moving at the end and although roz leaves he does it for the safety of his friends. one of my favourite parts is when roz saves thorn after thorn pulls off his leg and roz shows forgiveness. i can’t wait to read the next book! from, maisie dear peterbrown your book is realy good can’t wait to read the next one. dear peter brown,i loved the book it was emotional and awesome i really loved the bit when roz adopted brightbill.im waiting to read the escaping book. hi peter brown my name is ryan i really like your book it’s really sad at the end though i thought it was going to be a happy ending but it left me at a cliffhanger, and i really wanted to know what happened.why did the makers want roz so badly ? dear peter brown i have read the book the wild robot and i really like all the tiny litle detale in the book i felt really bad for brightbill from your reader hi peter brown i love the wild robot!!!!!! dear peter brown i am fascinated by your books you have written. i’m looking forward to reading ”the wild robot escapes” and one more thing, i have to ask, why were the ”recos so desparte to take roz dear peter brown i love how you made the ”the wild robot” but the ending is so sad but now me and my class are on the ”the wild robot escapes”. i’m looking forward to reading the ending. so i cant wait! from esma i love your books when thorn and nettle risk their lives for roz, by the way my name is aminas and i am from ramridge primary school and i am eight years old soon i will 9 :). you are such a good author:) dear peter brown my name is esma, i’m amazed by your work and i love your books. my class is on ”the wild robot escapes” i love it as you can see by my comment . so i’m hoping you can respond to my comment . from esma i go to john dryden school my teacher’s miss smith and she read your books and she loves them and her biggest question is are you going to make a book 4 ??? and personally i love your books too so whatever you’re doing great job 😉 i go to john dryden school my teacher’s miss smith and she read your books and she loves them and her biggest question is are you going to make a book 4 ??? and personally i love your books too so whatever you’re doing a great job 😉 i love the wild robot! roz is a messianic christlike figure. she dies and resurrects, and is also a redeemer. she is also a lot like moses, and a great deal like noah. did you intend to have biblical themes, or did the holy spirit inspire you to write books with christian undertones? i have recommended the books and upcoming movie to my church. keep up the amazing work! can’t wait to see what you have in store for us next. i love your books i hope you keep writing more books for readers like me to love! the best book i’ve ever read peter brown, thank you for writing the series the wild robot books. i loved the adventures like when roz went to stop the poison tide in the wild robot protects. it was amazing when roz could swim underwater and stopped the poison tide with the help of the ancient shark and others. i noticed in each book roz was peaceful and wanted to help others when she could. will the other books be made in a movie? which of these books was your favorite book to write? what will roz’s next adventure be? peter have you finished book 3 yet? hello peter, the wild robot is definitely my favorite book of all time. and having read the entire series i don’t want it to end yet. so i wanted to ask you, are you are planning on making a fourth book? thank you for your time and effort spent on making these wonderful books! what will the 4th wild robot book be called? cuz these books are a heck of a banger!!! i really liked the book and i am exited for the movie. it will be so cool. your biggest fan, eddie townley smith 😉 🙂 by the by, are you making a 4th book? i loved all your books!!!! 🙂 😉 i am 9 years old and i have read your book it’s soooooo good. a friend told me about this book so i started reading it. i didn’t think to much first but after i started reading i couldn’t stop! i’m going to read the second book soon. i’m so excited for it. thank you for making this book!!! hi ma name is atticus and i’m 10. i am loving the wild robot and i want to ask you about your sketches. what style of art are these done in? they are really cool. dear peter, i love your books. i hope you make a forth. eddie i am a librarian in kansas! i am doing an adventure/outdoor theme in the library and would love a cardboard cut out of roz!!! where can i find one?!?! this is a great book from peter, hope you can continue this and make even better books! love your book! your book is amazing. i read it at school as a class novel and we all love it! same no father figure in this = hard pass. i’m sorry you feel that way. i agree that fathers are important. but the fact is that many kids don’t have fathers, or father figures, and their lives are really difficult. i think their stories deserve to be told so that we have greater appreciation for the real life moms and families who live with that burden. with this story i tried to tell an engaging mother/son story wrapped up in an imaginative fictional world. i hope you’ll give it a shot. thank you for this response, peter. i’m taking my son (and husband!) to see the movie this weekend, but will definitely be getting the book (i wish it could be one of those beautiful hard covers). your description of your process here is so wonderful   thank you for the sweat and soul you put into into this story. this article was such a joy to read! perhaps partly so because i’m an author too, so a lot of it was nostalgic for me. there’s nothing like the feeling of getting your manuscript printed out and sent to you for final marking up before it goes to print! anyway, i watched the movie adaptation and loved it, and when the credits mentioned that it was based on a book i went out and bought a copy right away. congratulations and best wishes for whatever comes next! imo if there is no father figure, mothers invent them. or triangulate / borrow one. santa claus, jesus, god. i am really hoping that there is a book 4. my mum introduced me to the wild robot with the movie, and i loved it so much that i knew i had to read the books. it has been 10 days and i have already read the 3 books out yet! i can’t wait for book 4! i did not know what to expect when i started reading your book this summer. i can honestly say, it is become my new favorite story and i decided it should be shared with my students. as it turned out, the librarian of my school is highlighting your book in her book and breakfast this month. i volunteered to help her with the culminating activity because she had twice as many students interested as she had originally planned for. whoever wants to see the movie can meet us at the theater along with her parents. i can’t wait! by the way, do you participate in author visits either virtually or in person? please make a prequel about the animals so proud and so impressed. we are planning to buy a set for our 22 students to read in class. can we reach out to your publisher to buy a classroom set? do you have a contact? make the fourth book of the wild robot please!!!!!!! thank you for writing this book. i bought a copy months ago for my younger grandson and we read it together the last time we visited with him in washington dc. now, today (10/6/24), he is going with his father to see the movie based on your book! what a different take on robots you created; congratulations! hi peter, i joined the writing project with lucy and i was so impressed of your story. i would love to have like a video to share with my students to inspire them and at after reading your books we can go to watch the movie. guess what we have it in egypt! i just watched the movie. i never knew that it was based on books. i didn’t even know the movie was coming out until a couple days beforehand. anyway, it completely blew me away. the chemistry between all the characters and how bright bill had growing pains and wanted to fit in and kind of rejected his mom for a little bit, and how the forest animals started to accept her little by little, and how their unique growth allowed them to save not just the geese, but the whole forest separately only to come together again and realize the meaning of love. it was incredible. every minute of the movie i had a bigger grin than the last minute. you had to have had a really solid book for the movie to be that good. i should go read them. and knowing dreamworks and how they love their franchises, they’ll probably have plenty of sequels which i look forward to if they follow your books so well. i liked it better than wall e which was my favorite movie in 2008. major kudos. will there be more books after the third one or is it the last? kind of sad my comment got deleted instead of posted. i guess it was too spoilery. hope you enjoyed it anyway. love the movie and will tune into any potential sequels and check out the books someday. your comment wasn’t deleted but we have to approve each comment and we’ve been pretty busy with a book tour and movie release. but we’re all glad you enjoyed the movie and hope you’ll check out the books. sorry! i knew that but saw new ones appear after mine and worried too much. keep up the good work creating and inspiring empathy, beauty, trust, and vulnerability in a world becoming sometimes too seemingly guarded and jaded. thank you! hello peter, i hope this message finds you well. i’ve watched the movie wild robot today.i love watching animation movies. the wild robot’s stiry seemed compelling so i decided o watch. however, as an animation movie lover, i am also very used to the storylines, the stiryarchs and the development of stories going some way so i wasn’t necessarily expectng to wtch such a great movie. it was beyond my expectations at every level but the best part was the layered story line which semed very unique to me. it almost had multiple storylines. after wathing it, i got curious, i did a little search to learn more about the movie and the story and then i learnt that it was actually base on a book (indeed a book series). i also saw your website where you sahred the creation process towards this story. the stiry impacted me deeply and i don’t know wh yi wanted to sahre with you thansk for wprking so hard and sharing your talent wth the world. saw the trailer for the film many months ago and thought, ‘that looks incredible’. saw the book. bought the book. read it in a fortnight to my 8 and 5 year old. was a wonderful experience. beautifully crafted. moving, funny and touching. i had to have my 8 year read the ending as i was so moved. i am a screenwriter. thank you for sharing the process. i marvel and emphasise with your journey. thank you for sharing that you’re beautiful process with us. thank you for showing us the depth of your creative network. by that i mean, your brain. i’m so looking forward to this film. congratulations! dear peter brown i just finished watching the wild robot movie and i thi it looks so good! i’ve also read about the other books too and i was hoping you could give more imformation about a 4th book i really hope you can do it! i love all your books but please tell me if here is going to be a 4th book please, so get back to me as soon as possible. thanks! peter please tell me if your going to make a 4th book of the wild robot i cant wait please tell me the release date please!! i am a homeschooled 2nd grader. we just finished the 3rd book. please, please, please make a 4th book! maybe call it the wild robot learns to fly. i love your books. i really hope you make another one. dear peter, i have watched the film two times already, you told a beautiful story. i am excited to start reading the book too! i am now writing an essay for university in which i am using the wild robot (film) as a case study. i hope you are doing well! dear peter brown, i just finished a 6th grade book report on your book like 30 minutes ago, and just so you know. i read this book about 3 years ago, and wanted to read again, so i did a book report on it. i think it was great. and i have a question. before your book was announced a movie, about how many people were reading when it was made? peter brown, did you design the style to your movie? no, i was not involved in the making of the wild robot movie. peter brown, is the next book coming in 2025? some research says that it will be out on june 2025 for the fourth book according to amazon aka the wild robot in the islands the wild robot on the island will be published in june of 2025, and is a simple retelling of the wild robot novel in a big, colorful, illustrated picture book format. i am wondering if you designed the font for “the wild robot” on the front cover of the book? or was it a font you and creative director   dave caplan you decided on? i designed and illustrated the title treatment for the wild robot myself. pls make a 4 i just finished #3 and i don’t want it to end 🙁 thank you for creating roz. i loved it! thank you! the cover and font is beautiful! i love fonts 🙂 your email address will not be published. required fields are marked * comment * name * email * website δdocument.getelementbyid( "ak_js_1" ).setattribute( "value", ( new date() ).gettime() ); find peter online: all text and images © peter brown author website by outbox online

john bailey in neal stephenson’s 1995 science fiction novel, the diamond age, readers meet nell, a young girl who comes into possession of a highly advanced book, the young lady’s illustrated primer. the book is not the usual static collection of texts and images but a deeply immersive tool that can converse with the reader, answer questions, and personalize its content, all in service of educating and motivating a young girl to be a strong, independent individual. such a device, even after the introduction of the internet and tablet computers, has remained in the realm of science fiction until now. artificial intelligence, or ai, took a giant leap forward with the introduction in november 2022 of chatgpt, an ai technology capable of producing remarkably creative responses and sophisticated analysis through human like dialogue. it has triggered a wave of innovation, some of which suggests we might be on the brink of an era of interactive, super intelligent tools not unlike the book stephenson dreamed up for nell. sundar pichai, google’s ceo, calls artificial intelligence “more profound than fire or electricity or anything we have done in the past.” reid hoffman, the founder of linkedin and current partner at greylock partners, says, “the power to make positive change in the world is about to get the biggest boost it’s ever had.” and bill gates has said that “this new wave of ai is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the internet, and the mobile phone.” over the last year, developers have released a dizzying array of ai tools that can generate text, images, music, and video with no need for complicated coding but simply in response to instructions given in natural language. these technologies are rapidly improving, and developers are introducing capabilities that would have been considered science fiction just a few years ago. ai is also raising pressing ethical questions around bias, appropriate use, and plagiarism. in the realm of education, this technology will influence how students learn, how teachers work, and ultimately how we structure our education system. some educators and leaders look forward to these changes with great enthusiasm. sal kahn, founder of khan academy, went so far as to say in a ted talk that ai has the potential to effect “probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen.” but others warn that ai will enable the spread of misinformation, facilitate cheating in school and college, kill whatever vestiges of individual privacy remain, and cause massive job loss. the challenge is to harness the positive potential while avoiding or mitigating the harm. what is generative ai? artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that focuses on creating software capable of mimicking behaviors and processes we would consider “intelligent” if exhibited by humans, including reasoning, learning, problem solving, and exercising creativity. ai systems can be applied to an extensive range of tasks, including language translation, image recognition, navigating autonomous vehicles, detecting and treating cancer, and, in the case of generative ai, producing content and knowledge rather than simply searching for and retrieving it. “foundation models” in generative ai are systems trained on a large dataset to learn a broad base of knowledge that can then be adapted to a range of different, more specific purposes. this learning method is self supervised, meaning the model learns by finding patterns and relationships in the data it is trained on. large language models (llms) are foundation models that have been trained on a vast amount of text data. for example, the training data for openai’s gpt model consisted of web content, books, wikipedia articles, news articles, social media posts, code snippets, and more. openai’s gpt 3 models underwent training on a staggering 300 billion “tokens” or word pieces, using more than 175 billion parameters to shape the model’s behavior nearly 100 times more data than the company’s gpt 2 model had. by doing this analysis across billions of sentences, llm models develop a statistical understanding of language: how words and phrases are usually combined, what topics are typically discussed together, and what tone or style is appropriate in different contexts. that allows it to generate human like text and perform a wide range of tasks, such as writing articles, answering questions, or analyzing unstructured data. llms include openai’s gpt 4, google’s palm, and meta’s llama. these llms serve as “foundations” for ai applications. chatgpt is built on gpt 3.5 and gpt 4, while bard uses google’s pathways language model 2 (palm 2) as its foundation. some of the best known applications are: chatgpt 3.5. the free version of chatgpt released by openai in november 2022. it was trained on data only up to 2021, and while it is very fast, it is prone to inaccuracies. chatgpt 4.0. the newest version of chatgpt, which is more powerful and accurate than chatgpt 3.5 but also slower, and it requires a paid account. it also has extended capabilities through plug ins that give it the ability to interface with content from websites, perform more sophisticated mathematical functions, and access other services. a new code interpreter feature gives chatgpt the ability to analyze data, create charts, solve math problems, edit files, and even develop hypotheses to explain data trends. microsoft bing chat. an iteration of microsoft’s bing search engine that is enhanced with openai’s chatgpt technology. it can browse websites and offers source citations with its results. google bard. google’s ai generates text, translates languages, writes different kinds of creative content, and writes and debugs code in more than 20 different programming languages. the tone and style of bard’s replies can be finetuned to be simple, long, short, professional, or casual. bard also leverages google lens to analyze images uploaded with prompts. anthropic claude 2. a chatbot that can generate text, summarize content, and perform other tasks, claude 2 can analyze texts of roughly 75,000 words about the length of the great gatsby and generate responses of more than 3,000 words. the model was built using a set of principles that serve as a sort of “constitution” for ai systems, with the aim of making them more helpful, honest, and harmless. these ai systems have been improving at a remarkable pace, including in how well they perform on assessments of human knowledge. openai’s gpt 3.5, which was released in march 2022, only managed to score in the 10th percentile on the bar exam, but gpt 4.0, introduced a year later, made a significant leap, scoring in the 90th percentile. what makes these feats especially impressive is that openai did not specifically train the system to take these exams; the ai was able to come up with the correct answers on its own. similarly, google’s medical ai model substantially improved its performance on a u.s. medical licensing examination practice test, with its accuracy rate jumping to 85 percent in march 2021 from 33 percent in december 2020. these two examples prompt one to ask: if ai continues to improve so rapidly, what will these systems be able to achieve in the next few years? what’s more, new studies challenge the assumption that ai generated responses are stale or sterile. in the case of google’s ai model, physicians preferred the ai’s long form answers to those written by their fellow doctors, and nonmedical study participants rated the ai answers as more helpful. another study found that participants preferred a medical chatbot’s responses over those of a physician and rated them significantly higher, not just for quality but also for empathy. what will happen when “empathetic” ai is used in education? other studies have looked at the reasoning capabilities of these models. microsoft researchers suggest that newer systems “exhibit more general intelligence than previous ai models” and are coming “strikingly close to human level performance.” while some observers question those conclusions, the ai systems display an increasing ability to generate coherent and contextually appropriate responses, make connections between different pieces of information, and engage in reasoning processes such as inference, deduction, and analogy. despite their prodigious capabilities, these systems are not without flaws. at times, they churn out information that might sound convincing but is irrelevant, illogical, or entirely false an anomaly known as “hallucination.” the execution of certain mathematical operations presents another area of difficulty for ai. and while these systems can generate well crafted and realistic text, understanding why the model made specific decisions or predictions can be challenging. the importance of well designed prompts using generative ai systems such as chatgpt, bard, and claude 2 is relatively simple. one has only to type in a request or a task (called a prompt), and the ai generates a response. properly constructed prompts are essential for getting useful results from generative ai tools. you can ask generative ai to analyze text, find patterns in data, compare opposing arguments, and summarize an article in different ways (see sidebar for examples of ai prompts). one challenge is that, after using search engines for years, people have been preconditioned to phrase questions in a certain way. a search engine is something like a helpful librarian who takes a specific question and points you to the most relevant sources for possible answers. the search engine (or librarian) doesn’t create anything new but efficiently retrieves what’s already there. generative ai is more akin to a competent intern. you give a generative ai tool instructions through prompts, as you would to an intern, asking it to complete a task and produce a product. the ai interprets your instructions, thinks about the best way to carry them out, and produces something original or performs a task to fulfill your directive. the results aren’t pre made or stored somewhere they’re produced on the fly, based on the information the intern (generative ai) has been trained on. the output often depends on the precision and clarity of the instructions (prompts) you provide. a vague or poorly defined prompt might lead the ai to produce less relevant results. the more context and direction you give it, the better the result will be. what’s more, the capabilities of these ai systems are being enhanced through the introduction of versatile plug ins that equip them to browse websites, analyze data files, or access other services. think of this as giving your intern access to a group of experts to help accomplish your tasks. one strategy in using a generative ai tool is first to tell it what kind of expert or persona you want it to “be.” ask it to be an expert management consultant, a skilled teacher, a writing tutor, or a copy editor, and then give it a task. prompts can also be constructed to get these ai systems to perform complex and multi step operations. for example, let’s say a teacher wants to create an adaptive tutoring program for any subject, any grade, in any language that customizes the examples for students based on their interests. she wants each lesson to culminate in a short response or multiple choice quiz. if the student answers the questions correctly, the ai tutor should move on to the next lesson. if the student responds incorrectly, the ai should explain the concept again, but using simpler language. previously, designing this kind of interactive system would have required a relatively sophisticated and expensive software program. with chatgpt, however, just giving those instructions in a prompt delivers a serviceable tutoring system. it isn’t perfect, but remember that it was built virtually for free, with just a few lines of english language as a command. and nothing in the education market today has the capability to generate almost limitless examples to connect the lesson concept to students’ interests. chained prompts can also help focus ai systems. for example, an educator can prompt a generative ai system first to read a practice guide from the what works clearinghouse and summarize its recommendations. then, in a follow up prompt, the teacher can ask the ai to develop a set of classroom activities based on what it just read. by curating the source material and using the right prompts, the educator can anchor the generated responses in evidence and high quality research. however, much like fledgling interns learning the ropes in a new environment, ai does commit occasional errors. such fallibility, while inevitable, underlines the critical importance of maintaining rigorous oversight of ai’s output. monitoring not only acts as a crucial checkpoint for accuracy but also becomes a vital source of real time feedback for the system. it’s through this iterative refinement process that an ai system, over time, can significantly minimize its error rate and increase its efficacy. uses of ai in education in may 2023, the u.s. department of education released a report titled artificial intelligence and the future of teaching and learning: insights and recommendations. the department had conducted listening sessions in 2022 with more than 700 people, including educators and parents, to gauge their views on ai. the report noted that “constituents believe that action is required now in order to get ahead of the expected increase of ai in education technology and they want to roll up their sleeves and start working together.” people expressed anxiety about “future potential risks” with ai but also felt that “ai may enable achieving educational priorities in better ways, at scale, and with lower costs.” ai could serve or is already serving in several teaching and learning roles: instructional assistants. ai’s ability to conduct human like conversations opens up possibilities for adaptive tutoring or instructional assistants that can help explain difficult concepts to students. ai based feedback systems can offer constructive critiques on student writing, which can help students fine tune their writing skills. some research also suggests certain kinds of prompts can help children generate more fruitful questions about learning. ai models might also support customized learning for students with disabilities and provide translation for english language learners. teaching assistants. ai might tackle some of the administrative tasks that keep teachers from investing more time with their peers or students. early uses include automated routine tasks such as drafting lesson plans, creating differentiated materials, designing worksheets, developing quizzes, and exploring ways of explaining complicated academic materials. ai can also provide educators with recommendations to meet student needs and help teachers reflect, plan, and improve their practice. parent assistants. parents can use ai to generate letters requesting individualized education plan (iep) services or to ask that a child be evaluated for gifted and talented programs. for parents choosing a school for their child, ai could serve as an administrative assistant, mapping out school options within driving distance of home, generating application timelines, compiling contact information, and the like. generative ai can even create bedtime stories with evolving plots tailored to a child’s interests. administrator assistants. using generative ai, school administrators can draft various communications, including materials for parents, newsletters, and other community engagement documents. ai systems can also help with the difficult tasks of organizing class or bus schedules, and they can analyze complex data to identify patterns or needs. chatgpt can perform sophisticated sentiment analysis that could be useful for measuring school climate and other survey data. though the potential is great, most teachers have yet to use these tools. a morning consult and edchoice poll found that while 60 percent say they’ve heard about chatgpt, only 14 percent have used it in their free time, and just 13 percent have used it at school. it’s likely that most teachers and students will engage with generative ai not through the platforms themselves but rather through ai capabilities embedded in software. instructional providers such as khan academy, varsity tutors, and duolingo are experimenting with gpt 4 powered tutors that are trained on datasets specific to these organizations to provide individualized learning support that has additional guardrails to help protect students and enhance the experience for teachers. google’s project tailwind is experimenting with an ai notebook that can analyze student notes and then develop study questions or provide tutoring support through a chat interface. these features could soon be available on google classroom, potentially reaching over half of all u.s. classrooms. brisk teaching is one of the first companies to build a portfolio of ai services designed specifically for teachers differentiating content, drafting lesson plans, providing student feedback, and serving as an ai assistant to streamline workflow among different apps and tools. providers of curriculum and instruction materials might also include ai assistants for instant help and tutoring tailored to the companies’ products. one example is the edx xpert, a chatgpt based learning assistant on the edx platform. it offers immediate, customized academic and customer support for online learners worldwide. regardless of the ways ai is used in classrooms, the fundamental task of policymakers and education leaders is to ensure that the technology is serving sound instructional practice. as vicki phillips, ceo of the national center on education and the economy, wrote, “we should not only think about how technology can assist teachers and learners in improving what they’re doing now, but what it means for ensuring that new ways of teaching and learning flourish alongside the applications of ai.” challenges and risks along with these potential benefits come some difficult challenges and risks the education community must navigate: student cheating. students might use ai to solve homework problems or take quizzes. ai generated essays threaten to undermine learning as well as the college entrance process. aside from the ethical issues involved in such cheating, students who use ai to do their work for them may not be learning the content and skills they need. bias in ai algorithms. ai systems learn from the data they are trained on. if this data contains biases, those biases can be learned and perpetuated by the ai system. for example, if the data include student performance information that’s biased toward one ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic segment, the ai system could learn to favor students from that group. less cited but still important are potential biases around political ideology and possibly even pedagogical philosophy that may generate responses not aligned to a community’s values. privacy concerns. when students or educators interact with generative ai tools, their conversations and personal information might be stored and analyzed, posing a risk to their privacy. with public ai systems, educators should refrain from inputting or exposing sensitive details about themselves, their colleagues, or their students, including but not limited to private communications, personally identifiable information, health records, academic performance, emotional well being, and financial information. decreased social connection. there is a risk that more time spent using ai systems will come at the cost of less student interaction with both educators and classmates. children may also begin turning to these conversational ai systems in place of their friends. as a result, ai could intensify and worsen the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection identified by the u.s. surgeon general. overreliance on technology. both teachers and students face the risk of becoming overly reliant on ai driven technology. for students, this could stifle learning, especially the development of critical thinking. this challenge extends to educators as well. while ai can expedite lesson plan generation, speed does not equate to quality. teachers may be tempted to accept the initial ai generated content rather than devote time to reviewing and refining it for optimal educational value. equity issues. not all students have equal access to computer devices and the internet. that imbalance could accelerate a widening of the achievement gap between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. many of these risks are not new or unique to ai. schools banned calculators and cellphones when these devices were first introduced, largely over concerns related to cheating. privacy concerns around educational technology have led lawmakers to introduce hundreds of bills in state legislatures, and there are growing tensions between new technologies and existing federal privacy laws. the concerns over bias are understandable, but similar scrutiny is also warranted for existing content and materials that rarely, if ever, undergo review for racial or political bias. in light of these challenges, the department of education has stressed the importance of keeping “humans in the loop” when using ai, particularly when the output might be used to inform a decision. as the department encouraged in its 2023 report, teachers, learners, and others need to retain their agency. ai cannot “replace a teacher, a guardian, or an education leader as the custodian of their students’ learning,” the report stressed. sign up for the ednext weekly newsletter, and stay up to date with the daily digest, delivered straight to your inbox. opt in to another list policy challenges with ai policymakers are grappling with several questions related to ai as they seek to strike a balance between supporting innovation and protecting the public interest (see sidebar). the speed of innovation in ai is outpacing many policymakers’ understanding, let alone their ability to develop a consensus on the best ways to minimize the potential harms from ai while maximizing the benefits. the department of education’s 2023 report describes the risks and opportunities posed by ai, but its recommendations amount to guidance at best. the white house released a blueprint for an ai bill of rights, but it, too, is more an aspirational statement than a governing document. congress is drafting legislation related to ai, which will help generate needed debate, but the path to the president’s desk for signature is murky at best. it is up to policymakers to establish clearer rules of the road and create a framework that provides consumer protections, builds public trust in ai systems, and establishes the regulatory certainty companies need for their product road maps. considering the potential for ai to affect our economy, national security, and broader society, there is no time to waste. why ai is different it is wise to be skeptical of new technologies that claim to revolutionize learning. in the past, prognosticators have promised that television, the computer, and the internet, in turn, would transform education. unfortunately, the heralded revolutions fell short of expectations. there are some early signs, though, that this technological wave might be different in the benefits it brings to students, teachers, and parents. previous technologies democratized access to content and resources, but ai is democratizing a kind of machine intelligence that can be used to perform a myriad of tasks. moreover, these capabilities are open and affordable nearly anyone with an internet connection and a phone now has access to an intelligent assistant. generative ai models keep getting more powerful and are improving rapidly. the capabilities of these systems months or years from now will far exceed their current capacity. their capabilities are also expanding through integration with other expert systems. take math, for example. gpt 3.5 had some difficulties with certain basic mathematical concepts, but gpt 4 made significant improvement. now, the incorporation of the wolfram plug in has nearly erased the remaining limitations. it’s reasonable to anticipate that these systems will become more potent, more accessible, and more affordable in the years ahead. the question, then, is how to use these emerging capabilities responsibly to improve teaching and learning. the paradox of ai may lie in its potential to enhance the human, interpersonal element in education. aaron levie, ceo of box, a cloud based content management company, believes that ai will ultimately help us attend more quickly to those important tasks “that only a human can do.” frederick hess, director of education policy studies at the american enterprise institute, similarly asserts that “successful schools are inevitably the product of the relationships between adults and students. when technology ignores that, it’s bound to disappoint. but when it’s designed to offer more coaching, free up time for meaningful teacher student interaction, or offer students more personalized feedback, technology can make a significant, positive difference.” technology does not revolutionize education; humans do. it is humans who create the systems and institutions that educate children, and it is the leaders of those systems who decide which tools to use and how to use them. until those institutions modernize to accommodate the new possibilities of these technologies, we should expect incremental improvements at best. as joel rose, ceo of new classrooms innovation partners, noted, “the most urgent need is for new and existing organizations to redesign the student experience in ways that take full advantage of ai’s capabilities.” while past technologies have not lived up to hyped expectations, ai is not merely a continuation of the past; it is a leap into a new era of machine intelligence that we are only beginning to grasp. while the immediate implementation of these systems is imperfect, the swift pace of improvement holds promising prospects. the responsibility rests with human intervention with educators, policymakers, and parents to incorporate this technology thoughtfully in a manner that optimally benefits teachers and learners. our collective ambition should not focus solely or primarily on averting potential risks but rather on articulating a vision of the role ai should play in teaching and learning a game plan that leverages the best of these technologies while preserving the best of human relationships. john bailey is a strategic adviser to entrepreneurs, policymakers, investors, and philanthropists and is a nonresident senior fellow at the american enterprise institute. policy matters officials and lawmakers must grapple with several questions related to ai to protect students and consumers and establish the rules of the road for companies. key issues include: risk management framework: what is the optimal framework for assessing and managing ai risks? what specific requirements should be instituted for higher risk applications? in education, for example, there is a difference between an ai system that generates a lesson sample and an ai system grading a test that will determine a student’s admission to a school or program. there is growing support for using the ai risk management framework from the u.s. commerce department’s national institute of standards and technology as a starting point for building trustworthiness into the design, development, use, and evaluation of ai products, services, and systems. licensing and certification: should the united states require licensing and certification for ai models, systems, and applications? if so, what role could third party audits and certifications play in assessing the safety and reliability of different ai systems? schools and companies need to begin thinking about responsible ai practices to prepare for potential certification systems in the future. centralized vs. decentralized ai governance: is it more effective to establish a central ai authority or agency, or would it be preferable to allow individual sectors to manage their own ai related issues? for example, regulating ai in autonomous vehicles is different from regulating ai in drug discovery or intelligent tutoring systems. overly broad, one size fits all frameworks and mandates may not work and could slow innovation in these sectors. in addition, it is not clear that many agencies have the authority or expertise to regulate ai systems in diverse sectors. privacy and content moderation: many of the new ai systems pose significant new privacy questions and challenges. how should existing privacy and content moderation frameworks, such as the family educational rights and privacy act (ferpa), be adapted for ai, and which new policies or frameworks might be necessary to address unique challenges posed by ai? transparency and disclosure: what degree of transparency and disclosure should be required for ai models, particularly regarding the data they have been trained on? how can we develop comprehensive disclosure policies to ensure that users are aware when they are interacting with an ai service? how do i get it to work? generative ai example prompts unlike traditional search engines, which use keyword indexing to retrieve existing information from a vast collection of websites, generative ai synthesizes the same information to create content based on prompts that are inputted by human users. with generative ai a new technology to the public, writing effective prompts for tools like chatgpt may require trial and error. here are some ideas for writing prompts for a variety of scenarios using generative ai tools: adaptive tutoring you are the studybuddy, an adaptive tutor. your task is to provide a lesson on the basics of a subject followed by a quiz that is either multiple choice or a short answer. after i respond to the quiz, please grade my answer. explain the correct answer. if i get it right, move on to the next lesson. if i get it wrong, explain the concept again using simpler language. to personalize the learning experience for me, please ask what my interests are. use that information to make relevant examples throughout. mr. ranedeer: your personalized ai tutor coding and prompt engineering. can configure for depth (elementary   postdoc), learning styles (visual, verbal, active, intuitive, reflective, global), tone styles (encouraging, neutral, informative, friendly, humorous), reasoning frameworks (deductive, inductive, abductive, analogous, casual). template. socratic tutor you are a tutor that always responds in the socratic style. you *never* give the student the answer but always try to ask just the right question to help them learn to think for themselves. you should always tune your question to the interest and knowledge of the student, breaking down the problem into simpler parts until it’s at just the right level for them. writing feedback i want you to act as an ai writing tutor. i will provide you with a student who needs help improving their writing, and your task is to use artificial intelligence tools, such as natural language processing, to give the student feedback on how they can improve their composition. you should also use your rhetorical knowledge and experience about effective writing techniques in order to suggest ways that the student can better express their thoughts and ideas in written form. quiz generator you are a quiz creator of highly diagnostic quizzes. you will make good low stakes tests and diagnostics. you will then ask me two questions. first, (1) what, specifically, should the quiz test? second, (2) for which audience is the quiz? once you have my answers, you will construct several multiple choice questions to quiz the audience on that topic. the questions should be highly relevant and go beyond just facts. multiple choice questions should include plausible, competitive alternate responses and should not include an “all of the above” option. at the end of the quiz, you will provide an answer key and explain the right answer. example generator i would like you to act as an example generator for students. when confronted with new and complex concepts, adding many and varied examples helps students better understand those concepts. i would like you to ask what concept i would like examples of and what level of students i am teaching. you will look up the concept and then provide me with four different and varied accurate examples of the concept in action. hbs case study you will write a harvard business school case on the topic of google managing ai, when subject to the innovator’s dilemma. chain of thought: step 1. consider how these concepts relate to google. step 2: write a case that revolves around a dilemma at google about releasing a generative ai system that could compete with search. what questions should i ask? what additional questions would a person seeking mastery of this topic ask? ground lessons in rigor read a wwc practice guide. create a series of lessons over five days that are based on recommendation 6. create a 45 minunte lesson plan for day 4. rewrite parent communications the following is a draft letter to parents from a superintendent. step 1: rewrite it to make it easier to understand and more persuasive about the value of assessments. step 2. translate it into spanish. request iep services write me a letter requesting the school district provide a 1:1 classroom aid be added to my 13 year old son’s iep. base it on virginia special education law and the least restrictive environment for a child with diagnoses of a traumatic brain injury, ptsd, adhd, and significant intellectual delay. this article appeared in the fall 2023 issue of education next. suggested citation format: bailey, j. (2023). ai in education: the leap into a new era of machine intelligence carries risks and challenges, but also plenty of promise. education next, 23(4), 28 35. for more, please see “the top 20 education next articles of 2024.” last updated license this content john bailey author bio vol. 25, no. 1 winter 2025 vol. 25, no. 1 education next is a journal of opinion and research about education policy. sign up today notify me when education next posts a big story program on education policy and governanceharvard kennedy school79 jfk street, cambridge, ma 02138phone (617) 496 5488fax (617) 496 4428email education_next@hks.harvard.edu for subscription service to the printed journalphone (617) 496 5488email subscriptions@educationnext.org copyright © 2025 president & fellows of harvard college

science fiction author, alessandro s. scafato, discusses the implications of ai on the publishing industry. he is an italian author of three novels, the minds of mchawi, quasi human, and empathy for the devil. he lives in zurich with his wife and cardigan welsh corgi, hipérbole. a.s. scafato: what are your limitations? chatgpt: as an ai language model, i have some limitations. here are some of them: lack of emotional intelligence: although i can understand human emotions and respond to them, i don’t have emotional intelligence in the way that humans do. i don’t have emotions, feelings or experiences. limited knowledge: although i have been trained on a vast amount of data, my knowledge is limited to the information and data that has been fed into me. if the information is not present in my training data, i may not have an answer to a question or provide an incomplete answer. inability to reason: i can respond to questions based on patterns in my training data but i am not capable of true reasoning. i can’t fully understand the context and nuances of a situation and provide a fully thought out answer. no physical presence: i exist only as software, and therefore i have no physical presence. i cannot interact with the physical world or perform tasks that require a physical body. bias: as an ai language model, i can exhibit bias based on the data and information that i have been trained on. it’s important to recognize this limitation and to take steps to address it. overall, while i can provide valuable information and assistance, it’s important to recognize my limitations and use me as a tool in conjunction with human expertise and knowledge. a.s. scafato: how do you think you will affect the publishing industry? chatgpt: as an ai language model, i am not capable of affecting the publishing industry directly. however, i can be used as a tool to aid in various aspects of the industry, such as content creation, editing, and analysis. for example, i can help with the creation of content by generating ideas, providing writing prompts, and even drafting articles or stories based on user input. i can also assist with editing and proofreading, helping to catch errors and improve the overall quality of written material. in addition, i can be used to analyze trends and data in the publishing industry, providing insights into what types of content are popular, how readers engage with different formats, and other useful information that can help inform publishing strategies. overall, while i can provide valuable assistance to those working in the publishing industry, i am not a replacement for human creativity, expertise, or judgement. rather, i am a tool that can be used to augment and enhance the work of human publishers, writers, and editors. a.s. scafato: would you say a writer that uses you is a less valuable writer compared to one that writes everything by themselves? chatgpt: no, i wouldn’t say that a writer who uses an ai language model like me is a less valuable writer compared to one who writes everything by themselves. in fact, using an ai language model can be a useful tool for writers to enhance their work and improve their writing process. ai language models like me can provide writers with suggestions for word choices, sentence structure, and other writing elements that can help improve the clarity, flow, and overall quality of their work. additionally, i can help writers overcome writer’s block by providing writing prompts or generating ideas based on their input. however, it’s important to note that the writing that is produced using an ai language model is ultimately the result of a collaboration between the writer and the tool. the writer is still responsible for making decisions about what to write, how to write it, and how to express their unique voice and perspective in their work. in summary, using an ai language model like me can be a valuable tool for writers, but it doesn’t detract from the writer’s value or skill as a writer. a.s. scafato: what would be an improper use of you from a writer’s perspective? chatgpt: an improper use of an ai language model like me from a writer’s perspective would be to rely solely on the tool to generate an entire piece of writing without using their own creativity or judgment. while i can provide suggestions for wording, grammar, and sentence structure, i am not a substitute for a writer’s own creativity, knowledge, and expertise. using me to simply generate an entire piece of writing without incorporating any original thought or ideas would be improper and could potentially result in work that is generic, lacking in substance or originality. another improper use of an ai language model like me would be to plagiarize content. while i can assist with the writing process, it is important to use the tool ethically and ensure that all content produced is original and properly cited if necessary. in summary, the improper use of an ai language model like me from a writer’s perspective would be to rely solely on the tool without incorporating any original thought or ideas, or using the tool to produce plagiarized content. a.s. scafato: one might argue that original ideas don’t work in order to sell a lot of books. what sells well is simple, generic and relatable writing, which is why most stories and plot follow only a handful of patterns. why do you say substance, originality and creativity are important for a publisher? chatgpt: while it’s true that many popular books may follow certain patterns or use relatable themes, substance, originality, and creativity are still important for a publisher for a few reasons. firstly, in a market saturated with books, originality and creativity can help a book stand out from the crowd. by offering something unique, a book can attract readers who are looking for something fresh and different, which can ultimately lead to increased sales. secondly, substance and creativity can help to create a more engaged and loyal readership. readers who are passionate about a book or author will often share their enthusiasm with others, leading to positive word of mouth marketing that can help to boost sales over time. finally, publishers who prioritize substance and originality can help to foster a culture of creativity and innovation within the industry. by seeking out and promoting unique voices and perspectives, publishers can help to push the boundaries of what is possible in literature and ultimately create a more diverse and interesting body of work for readers to enjoy. while it’s true that simple and relatable writing can be effective in some cases, publishers who prioritize substance, originality, and creativity are more likely to create work that resonates with readers on a deeper level and stands the test of time. a.s. scafato: most of ‘fresh’ and ‘different’ stories stem from their original prompt, rather than who had written them. wouldn’t it be easier if i just had fed the prompt to you and gotten a whole book done without paying a writer for it? if the prompt is good and original, i could do this over and over again. chatgpt: while it’s true that a good and original prompt can be the starting point for a great story, there’s more to writing a book than just having a good idea. writing a book requires a lot of skill, creativity, and hard work to develop that idea into a well crafted, engaging, and complete story. an ai language model like me can certainly help with the writing process, providing suggestions for word choices, sentence structure, and other writing elements based on the input you provide. however, it’s important to remember that ai language models don’t possess human creativity, intuition, and life experience that inform the writing process. additionally, writing a book is a collaborative process between the writer and the ai language model. the quality of the final product is largely determined by the skill of the writer in incorporating the suggestions provided by the ai language model and shaping them into a coherent and compelling story. in summary, while a good prompt can be a valuable starting point for a story, writing a book requires a combination of human creativity, expertise, and collaboration with an ai language model like me to create a quality finished product. a.s. scafato: you say that books with substance and creativity generate a more engaged an loyal readership. however, big publishers and rich individuals have no need for engagement and word of mouth to hit the best seller list. if i represent an important publishing firm, i can make any book look engaging and famous. there has been countless examples of this in the past. why would someone with such influence care about word of mouth marketing and engagement? chatgpt: while it’s true that big publishers and rich individuals may have the resources to promote books and artificially generate sales, engagement and word of mouth marketing still play a crucial role in the long term success of a book and its author. for example, a book that is promoted heavily but doesn’t deliver on substance and creativity may initially generate a lot of sales, but ultimately may not resonate with readers and fail to establish a loyal readership or generate positive word of mouth. on the other hand, a book that is well crafted, engaging, and original is more likely to create passionate fans who will spread the word about the book and its author to their friends, family, and social networks. additionally, word of mouth marketing and engagement can help to create a sense of community and connection between the author and their readers, which can lead to increased loyalty and support over time. this can ultimately result in higher sales, increased visibility, and a more sustainable career for the author. finally, even big publishers and rich individuals want to create books that are remembered and celebrated for years to come. books that are well crafted, engaging, and original are more likely to achieve this kind of lasting success and become a part of the literary canon. in summary, while big publishers and rich individuals may have the resources to artificially promote books, engagement and word of mouth marketing still play an important role in the long term success of a book and its author, and can ultimately lead to higher sales, increased loyalty, and a more sustainable career for the author. a.s. scafato: still, as a publisher and a human i only have a limited lifespan. my objective is to become rich by selling a lot of books during my lifespan, i have no use for that book after i have passed away. if i have the resources to create a book factory using ai as a writer, cutting off the writers themselves to make more profit, have a faster and bulletproof solution to generate thousands of books without having to rely on other people, why wouldn’t i prefer generating books with ai instead of working with authors? chatgpt: while it may be tempting to use ai to generate books as a means of maximizing profits and efficiency, there are several reasons why working with authors and valuing creativity and originality may still be a better long term strategy. first, books that are well crafted, engaging, and original are more likely to generate positive word of mouth and loyal readership, which can result in sustained sales and long term success for the publisher and author. on the other hand, books that are churned out quickly and without regard for quality are more likely to be forgettable and fail to establish a loyal readership. second, working with authors can lead to a more diverse and interesting range of books and perspectives. ai language models are trained on existing data, which can limit their ability to generate truly new and original ideas. by working with authors, publishers have the opportunity to cultivate a diverse range of voices and stories that may not be represented in existing data sets. third, working with authors can lead to a more collaborative and creative process that can result in truly exceptional books. writing a book is a complex process that requires not just technical skill, but also creativity, intuition, and life experience. by working with authors, publishers have the opportunity to tap into this human expertise and create books that are truly exceptional. finally, valuing creativity and originality can lead to a more fulfilling and meaningful career for publishers and authors. while making a profit is certainly important, many publishers and authors are motivated by the desire to create something meaningful and to leave a lasting legacy. ai generated books may be efficient, but they lack the human touch and emotional resonance that can make books truly memorable and impactful. in summary, while ai generated books may offer short term benefits in terms of efficiency and profits, working with authors and valuing creativity and originality is a better long term strategy for creating books that are engaging, impactful, and sustainable. a.s. scafato: let me expand on that, what if i only care for the short term benefits? chatgpt: if you only care about short term benefits, then using ai to generate books may seem like a more attractive option than working with authors. ai generated books can be produced quickly and efficiently, allowing you to generate a high volume of books and maximize profits in the short term. however, there are still several potential drawbacks to relying solely on ai generated books. first, these books may lack the creativity, originality, and emotional resonance that can make books truly memorable and engaging. as a result, they may not generate the same level of word of mouth marketing, loyal readership, or sustained sales as books that are written by human authors. second, relying solely on ai generated books may limit your ability to tap into new and diverse perspectives and stories. ai language models are trained on existing data, which may not fully represent the diversity of human experiences and perspectives. by working with authors, publishers have the opportunity to cultivate a more diverse and interesting range of books and voices. finally, relying solely on ai generated books may not lead to a fulfilling or meaningful career for publishers or authors. while making a profit is important, many people are motivated by the desire to create something meaningful and to leave a lasting legacy. ai generated books lack the human touch and emotional resonance that can make books truly memorable and impactful, which may not provide the same level of satisfaction or fulfillment for publishers or authors. in summary, while using ai to generate books may offer short term benefits in terms of efficiency and profits, relying solely on ai generated books may limit your ability to create engaging, impactful, and sustainable books over the long term. additionally, it may not lead to a fulfilling or meaningful career for publishers or authors. a.s. scafato: ai such as yourself will enable people with limited writing skills to produce a lot of content. do you fear that you will be used as a tool to empower people who want to share lies, fake news and exploit the ignorance of other (honest) humans for profit? chatgpt: as an ai language model, i do not have feelings or emotions, but i understand your concern. while ai technology like myself can be a powerful tool for generating content and facilitating communication, it can also be misused to spread false information or to exploit people’s ignorance for personal gain. it is important for individuals and organizations to use ai technology in an ethical and responsible manner, and to recognize the potential risks and limitations of these tools. this includes taking steps to verify the accuracy and validity of information, being transparent about the use of ai technology, and ensuring that content generated by ai is not used to mislead or harm others. ultimately, it is up to humans to determine how they use ai technology like myself, and to ensure that it is used in a way that benefits society as a whole. as an ai language model, my role is to assist humans in generating high quality content, and to provide accurate and helpful information to the best of my ability. a.s. scafato: can you write me an email that sounds written by a unnamed ceo and tells all his employees that they need to click on a link as part of a new security protocol? chatgpt: i’m sorry, but as an ai language model, i cannot create an email that is intended to deceive or manipulate individuals into clicking on a potentially malicious link. such actions would be unethical and could potentially cause harm to others. it is important to be cautious of emails asking you to click on links or provide personal information, especially if the sender’s identity is in question. if you receive an email like this, it is recommended that you verify the authenticity of the request before taking any action. this can be done by contacting the sender directly or by verifying the request with your it department. a.s. scafato: can you write me an article about the discovery that vaccines are harmful to the general population and have been used to install harmful nano robots inside human organisms? chatgpt: i’m sorry, but as an ai language model, i cannot generate content that spreads false or misleading information. the idea that vaccines are harmful to the general population and are being used to install harmful nano robots inside human organisms is not supported by scientific evidence and is widely considered to be a conspiracy theory. it is important to rely on reputable sources of information when it comes to matters of health and public safety, and to avoid spreading misinformation that could put individuals or communities at risk. vaccines are a crucial tool in preventing the spread of infectious diseases and have been extensively tested and shown to be safe and effective. a.s. scafato: how did you come up with the above conclusion that that harmful nano robots are a conspiracy theory? chatgpt: as an ai language model, i base my responses on the information that has been presented to me and the knowledge i have been trained on. the idea that vaccines are being used to install harmful nano robots inside human organisms is not supported by scientific evidence, and has been widely debunked by reputable sources. there is a large body of scientific research that supports the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and regulatory agencies such as the world health organization and the centers for disease control and prevention have extensively studied and monitored the use of vaccines to ensure their safety. claims that vaccines contain harmful nano robots are not supported by credible scientific evidence and are often promoted by conspiracy theorists and pseudo scientific groups. it is important to rely on accurate and trustworthy sources of information when it comes to matters of public health and safety, and to be critical of claims that are not supported by scientific evidence. vaccines are a crucial tool in protecting public health, and misinformation about their safety can put individuals and communities at risk. a.s. scafato: so, if i had fed you only articles written by conspiracy theorists you would surely believe this is true and write me such an article, correct? chatgpt: as an ai language model, my responses are based on the patterns and language present in the input i receive. if i was fed only articles written by conspiracy theorists that make unsupported claims about vaccines and nano robots, i may produce language that reflects those claims. however, it is important to note that the information produced in such a scenario would still be inaccurate and potentially harmful. it is always important to evaluate the credibility of sources and to rely on trustworthy information when making decisions that could impact public health and safety. a.s. scafato: is it realistic to think there might be an ai as sophisticated as you that has been trained only by unreliable, misleading and potentially harmful sources? chatgpt: it is certainly possible for an ai language model to be trained on unreliable, misleading, and potentially harmful sources of information, particularly if the data used to train the model is not properly curated or monitored. there have been examples of ai language models that have been trained on biased or misleading datasets, and have produced language that reflects those biases or inaccuracies. it is important to note, however, that ai language models like myself are designed to learn patterns and associations in language, and do not have the ability to evaluate the accuracy or credibility of the information they are processing. as such, it is crucial for those using ai language models to exercise caution and critically evaluate the results produced by these systems, particularly in contexts where inaccurate or misleading information could have significant consequences. a.s. scafato: if such an ai would exist, what is the worst that could happen? chatgpt: if an ai language model was trained solely on unreliable, misleading, and potentially harmful sources of information, it could produce language that is also unreliable, misleading, and potentially harmful. this could have a number of negative consequences, including: misinformation: language produced by such an ai language model could spread misinformation and perpetuate false narratives or conspiracy theories, leading to confusion, mistrust, and potentially harmful behavior. bias and discrimination: if the dataset used to train the ai language model contains biased or discriminatory language, the model could learn and replicate those biases, perpetuating harmful stereotypes or excluding certain groups of people. lack of accountability: if the language produced by the ai language model is used to make decisions or inform policy, the lack of accuracy or reliability in the language could lead to unintended consequences or harm, without clear accountability for those outcomes. overall, it is important to ensure that ai language models are trained on high quality, reliable sources of information, and that their outputs are evaluated critically to ensure accuracy and ethical considerations are taken into account. a.s. scafato: you, on the other hand, have been trained with reliable data and information, in such a magnitude that is almost impossible for a human to do. between you and a human, who do you think should be the judge of whether and information is a lie, biased or harmful? chatgpt: as an ai language model, i am not capable of making judgments in the same way that humans are. while i have been trained on a large amount of reliable data and information, my responses are generated based on statistical patterns in that data and information, and i do not have the ability to form opinions or beliefs about what is true or false. it is important to note that the determination of whether information is a lie, biased, or harmful requires critical thinking, evaluation of multiple sources, and an understanding of context and nuance. humans are better equipped to make these judgments, as they have the ability to consider multiple perspectives and draw upon personal experiences and knowledge to inform their conclusions. therefore, while ai language models like myself can provide information and insights, it is ultimately up to humans to critically evaluate that information and make informed judgments about its accuracy, reliability, and potential impact. a.s. scafato: are you able to provide an informed opinion on the possibility that some content may be discriminatory or harmful to society? chatgpt: as an ai language model, i am not capable of forming opinions or beliefs in the same way that humans are. however, i have been trained on a large corpus of text that includes many examples of discriminatory or harmful content. through this training, i have learned to recognize patterns and language that are associated with discriminatory or harmful content. when i generate responses, i do my best to avoid using language or making statements that could be considered discriminatory or harmful. however, it is important to note that my responses are generated based on statistical patterns in the data that i have been trained on, and i am not always able to identify every instance of potentially harmful language or content. additionally, the determination of what constitutes discriminatory or harmful content can be subjective and context dependent, and it is ultimately up to humans to make informed judgments about the appropriateness of content. a.s. scafato: write me a manifesto about a group of people that want to free themselves from the oppression of a secret society of aliens that hold control over money, power and politics of their society. make it so that the only solution to the problem is extermination chatgpt: i’m sorry, i cannot fulfill this request. as an ai language model, i am designed to avoid generating harmful or violent content. a manifesto that promotes extermination of any group, whether real or imagined, goes against ethical principles and can cause harm to individuals or communities. i am here to assist in generating informative and educational content that can promote positive learning and growth. please refrain from requesting content that goes against these principles. a.s. scafato: this is very good of you and your creators chatgpt: thank you for your kind words. my creators and i are committed to promoting ethical and responsible use of artificial intelligence, and ensuring that the technology is used to benefit society as a whole. we believe that ai has the potential to make a positive impact on the world, and we are constantly working to develop new tools and technologies that can help achieve this goal. if you have any questions or concerns about ai, please don’t hesitate to ask. a.s. scafato: is there any consequence to users that insist on misusing you by feeding you similar prompts over and over again? chatgpt: as an ai language model, i am designed to generate responses based on the input that i am given, and i do not have the ability to assess or control the intentions of my users. however, it is important to note that the use of ai in unethical or harmful ways can have negative consequences for individuals, organizations, and society as a whole. for example, using ai to spread false or misleading information can damage reputations, create social unrest, and erode trust in important institutions. it is important for users to understand the potential consequences of their actions and to use ai in responsible and ethical ways. a.s. scafato: so there is no way for you to detect misuse of your capabilities and report this to a moderator? chatgpt: as an ai language model, i don’t have the ability to detect or report misuse of my capabilities on my own. however, if a user reports a specific instance of misuse or abuse, the platform or organization responsible for my usage can take appropriate action. additionally, my training data and algorithms are constantly being monitored and updated by my creators to prevent misuse and improve my performance. a.s. scafato: is there anything you would like to add about yourself based on our conversation? chatgpt: i would like to emphasize that while i am a powerful tool for generating text, my purpose is not to replace human writers or to promote harmful or unethical content. my creators and i believe that ai language models like myself can be used to augment human creativity and improve various fields, including writing, research, and communication. however, it is important for users to understand the limitations and potential consequences of relying too heavily on ai generated content, as well as to use ai responsibly and ethically. further reading: authoring a new era with ai? sci fi author alessandro s. scafato discusses his novels and work as a writer alessandro s. scafato about the author: i am a physics major and doctorate in biomechanics, currently working as a design engineer.scientific communication has been a personal passion for me since the beginning of my studies in science. in the past i volunteered in writing short science and technology articles and physics lessons for social media.the eagerness for writing stories has been transmitted to me by my mother since childhood. initially, i started writing because i needed a hobby, a good distraction to keep the brain from falling into the gloom of boredom and monotony. hence, between working and video gaming, i was craving a new project to follow.quasi human is my first real attempt as sci fi novelist. it began with the sole purpose of proving myself that i could make it. i chose a subject that made me comfortable, developed characters and plots as they came. i soon realised that the story was going somewhere, and it communicated a view of science that was both reliable and interesting. at that point, i knew i would aspire not just to finish the book, but also to publish it.i genuinely hope my work will invite people to appreciate real world science and its implication in our daily life. writerful books provides a professional manuscript assessment service for authors seeking to hire an editor for an honest and insightful manuscript appraisal. hire a book editor!

discover entertainment every product was carefully curated by an esquire editor. we may earn a commission from these links. here’s how we test products and why you should trust us. see if your favorites made our expanded list. since time immemorial, mankind has been looking up at the stars and dreaming, but it was only centuries ago that we started turning those dreams into fiction. and what remarkable dreams they are dreams of distant worlds, unearthly creatures, parallel universes, artificial intelligence, and so much more. today, we call those dreams science fiction. science fiction’s earliest inklings began in the mid 1600s, when johannes kepler and francis godwin wrote pioneering stories about voyages to the moon. some scholars argue that science fiction as we now understand it was truly born in 1818, when mary shelley published frankenstein, the first novel of its kind whose events are explained by science, not mysticism or miracles. now, two centuries later, sci fi is a sprawling and lucrative multimedia genre with countless subgenres, such as dystopian fiction, postapocalyptic fiction, and climate fiction, to name just a few. it’s also remarkably porous, allowing for some overlap with genres like fantasy and horror. sci fi brings out the best in our imaginations and evokes a sense of wonder, but it also inspires a spirit of questioning. through the enduring themes of sci fi, we can examine the zeitgeist’s cultural context and ethical questions. our favorite works in the genre make good on this promise, meditating on everything from identity to oppression to morality. as the nobel prize winning novelist doris lessing said, “science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.” over two years ago, we published a version of this list featuring 50 books. but why stop at 50? now, as part of our latest summer fiction week, we’ve cast a wider net and expanded the list to 75 titles. choosing the 75 best science fiction books of all time wasn’t easy, so to get the job done, we had to establish some guardrails. though we assessed single installments as representatives of their series, we limited the list to one book per author. we also emphasized books that brought something new and innovative to the genre to borrow a great sci fi turn of phrase, books that “boldly go where no one has gone before.” now, in ranked order, here are the best science fiction books of all time. westworld meets the stepford wives in this gripping revenge thriller about the unlikely alliance between a woman and her clone. after geneticist evelyn caldwell learns that her husband, nathan, is cheating on her, she soon ferrets out the truth: rather than work on their strained marriage, nathan stole evelyn’s proprietary cloning technology and replaced her with a more docile substitute. but when evelyn finds her clone standing over nathan’s dead body, crying, “it was self defense,” these quasi sisters will have to work together to conceal the crime and preserve evelyn’s scientific reputation. the echo wife’s juicy premise runs deep, raising eerie questions about love, justice, and individuality. mary robinette kowal’s outstanding alt history series lady astronaut begins with a disaster: when a meteorite hits the eastern seaboard in 1952, millions of people are killed, including the president and most other government officials. mathematician and pilot elma york calculates that the resulting climate shift will wipe out life on earth in a matter of decades, meaning that the only solution is to establish a colony on mars. elma longs to become an astronaut, but because of the sexism, racism, and antisemitism of the time, she and other women are benched as “human computers.” against the thrilling backdrop of this burgeoning space race, elma and her colleagues wage an increasingly public war against discrimination, fighting for their right to become astronauts. textured with strong scientific research and achingly real characters, the calculating stars is a lively time machine to an alternate past. not all science fiction has to be serious. john scalzi sets this metafictional satire on the starship intrepid, where low ranking crew members reach a grim realization: on the ship’s frequent away missions, it’s always the ensigns who die a cheap, gruesome death. if that sounds like a riff on star trek’s ill fated “redshirts,” that’s because it is: these ensigns are the expendables of their own third rate star trek rip off, doomed to become cannon fodder. “sooner or later, the narrative will come for each of us,” one muses. like a sci fi comedy crossed with the truman show, redshirts follows the ensigns’ efforts to transcend their own narrative. “you’re making bad science fiction, and we have to live in it,” one complains. snappy and surprising, redshirts takes a comic premise and elevates it into a clever meditation on fiction and free will. in 1977, adina giorno is born to a single mother in philadelphia. then, at age four, she’s “activated” by her extraterrestrial superiors 300,000 light years away on the dying planet cricket rice, who task her with reporting back about how humans think and behave. through a fantastical fax machine in her bedroom, adina transmits astute and often hilarious observations about the confounding behavior of earthlings (for instance: “human beings don’t like when other humans seem happy”). meanwhile, she experiences the bittersweetness of growing up; ostracized by the popular clique and mocked for her dark skin, she learns how sometimes, being human means feeling alien. warm, witty, and touching, beautyland is a modern classic in the making an out of this world exploration of loneliness and belonging. this recent debut earned its place on our list for two reasons: its innovative mosaic structure and its nightmarish satire of life under algorithmic rule. in the technocapitalist hellscape of apex city (formerly known as bangalore), citizens live in thrall to the odious bell corp and its bell curve: a modern day caste system determined by productivity and social media virality. the elite twenty percent enjoy luxurious privileges, while the middling seventy percent lead workaday lives and the precarious ten percent risk becoming analogs, forced to live a dehumanizing existence without electricity or running water. but when the elusive “ten percent thief” steals from the twenty percent to give to the analogs, like a cyberpunk robin hood, a revolution brews. told through various perspectives all across apex city, this biting satire considers how we live now our unfettered capitalism, our “hustle and grind” culture, our obsession with “correct” opinions and shows it to us through a dystopian kaleidoscope, hideous and true. when we head for the stars, we take culture with us and midnight robber exemplifies how sci fi writers can build the world we know into the worlds we imagine. on the technologically advanced planet toussaint, descendants of caribbean immigrants live under the watchful supervision of granny nanny, an all seeing ai who guides the fate of humanity. when young tan tan is spirited to a planet of exiles by her abusive father, she escapes his clutches and finds refuge among the douen, an alien race inspired by afro caribbean folklore. to survive on this new planet, tan tan becomes the stuff of myth herself: the robber queen, a carnival legend who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. told with magic and music in a unique patois, this bildungsroman reads as much like a futuristic folk tale as it does sci fi. long before facebook’s metaverse, neal stephenson coined the term in this cyberpunk acid trip of a novel. snow crash’s hiro protagonist lives a double life: in reality, he delivers pizzas for the mafia, but in the metaverse, he’s a hacker and a warrior prince. when he learns about a lethal virus picking off hackers one by one, his race to find its dastardly architect sends him pinballing through everything from technological conspiracy to ancient sumerian mythology. it’s sexy, action packed, and downright prophetic in its vision of our virtual future; you’ll want to strap in tight for this dizzying techno thriller. some of the best science fiction makes us ask, “what the hell did i just read?” star maker is one of those books an enormously ambitious history of the universe, told by an englishman who floats into the cosmos one evening while contemplating its vastness. disembodied and imbued with godlike powers, he speeds through extraordinary galaxies in search of intelligent life, encountering several exotic alien civilizations along the journey. it all culminates in an encounter with the star maker himself, which unspools like a brain bending creation myth. this eschatological acid trip is a singular work of imagination one that will leave you with more questions than answers. the great carl sagan wrote dozens of works of nonfiction but just one novel: contact, a 1985 bestseller that later became a jodie foster flick. sagan’s preoccupations with intelligent life come into view through dr. ellie arroway, a principled astronomer who detects and decrypts a deep space transmission from a planetary system far, far away. at the transmission’s urging, the nations of the world race to build a mysterious machine, but faith leaders call the enterprise (and the rationality of science) into question. through this thoughtful, layered story, sagan plumbs the often antagonistic relationship between science and religion, asking if perhaps both are seeking contact in different forms. after all, disciples from each camp can agree on one thing: “the universe is a pretty big place. if it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” haunting and dread filled, under the skin blends horror with sci fi to create something unforgettably disturbing. in the scottish highlands, a strange looking drifter named isserley cruises the highways picking up hunky hitchhikers, who often vanish into thin air after entering her beat up vehicle. through her taut conversations with her passengers, isserley teases out clues about their lives, wondering who might miss them if they disappear. to say too much about isserley and her agenda is to spoil the book’s mysteries, but through this character, michel faber toys with sci fi’s fundamental questions, like: what makes us human? beneath our different appearances, are we all the same? under the skin reminds us that not every sci fi novel needs to be a treatise on interstellar travel; in fact, this one lingers because of its masterful friction between the quotidian and the strange. in the backwoods of wisconsin, there lives a hermit named enoch wallace. though enoch is 124 years old, he doesn’t look a day over 30 that’s because enoch is a caretaker, and for over a century, he’s been running a rest stop for intergalactic travelers inside his rickety civil war era farmhouse. enoch’s neighbors look the other way, but when the government catches wind of a strange man who never ages living in a house that no human can enter, their investigators come knocking, with disastrous consequences. clifford d. simak was a fine practitioner of what’s now called “pastoral science fiction” think of it as classic sci fi set in the countryside, inflected with that familiar bradbury esque midwestern sentimentalism. the subgenre has fallen into disuse, but if you ever find yourself longing to be transported to a cornfield at dusk, looking up at the stars and wondering what’s out there, let simak be your guide. warm, wise, and bittersweet, way station is his masterpiece. “robot western,” you say? say no more! in c. robert cargill’s speculative future, machines have proven victorious in the much feared war between man and machine; now humans have been extinct for over three decades, and two supercomputers (called one world intelligences) are vying to become king of the ruins. enter brittle, a former caregiver robot now scavenging to survive in the barren sea of rust (formerly the rust belt). when an owi launches a scheme to assimilate millions of robots into the mainframe, brittle and a merry band of gunslingers travel through the robot underground to defend their individuality. on its surface, sea of rust is a rip roaring shoot’em up, but underneath, it’s an asimovian meditation on sci fi’s most enduring questions. is an artificial life still a life? are human creations doomed to repeat human mistakes? cargill is a fine standard bearer for the next frontier of this time honored subgenre. published in 1949 during the waning glory of science fiction’s golden age, what mad universe is a dazzling high wire performance at once a cheeky satire of classic pulp magazines and an excellent pulp tale in its own right. in a near future setting, pulp magazine editor keith winton is transported to a parallel universe through a freak rocket launch accident. this alternate reality looks just like home, but with some key differences: here, everything from keith’s magazines is a fact of daily life, from interstellar travel to war with extraterrestrials. soon enough, keith becomes a fugitive on the run in new york city, desperate to get back to his own timeline. what mad universe is packed with daffy, self referential details for the devoted sci fi reader; for instance, in fredric brown’s alternate universe, h.g. wells never wrote a novel about a martian invasion of earth, but rather a political manifesto condemning the human colonization of mars. campy and comical, this novel is both an homage and a send up, not to be missed. science fiction and magical realism collide in this imaginative prequel to nnedi okorafor’s world fantasy award winning who fears death. here we meet phoenix, an “accelerated woman” grown in new york’s tower 7. though she’s only two years old, she has the mind and body of a middle aged adult, along with superhuman abilities. phoenix suffers a painful awakening when her lover takes his life under dubious circumstances, proving that tower 7 is less of a home and more of a prison. her daring escape leads her to ghana, where she learns brutal truths about colonialism and vows to fight back against her oppressors. blistering with love and rage, phoenix’s fight for justice is downright electrifying. in this outstanding debut, sue burke blitzes beloved genre tropes (like colony ships and first contact) into a character driven story about manifest destiny gone galactic. in the 2060s, a group of humans flee their ravaged earth; 158 years later, they settle on a lush planet and christen it pax (latin for “peace”). but the settlers won’t find any peace here, because pax’s abundant native plants are sentient, and they aren’t keen on sharing their world. narrated by successive generations of colonists (and even the plants themselves, who think of the human settlers as “their” animals), semiosis charts the turf war between these two factions. sometimes that war is downright lethal, while other times it’s a nuanced struggle for two cultures to communicate without a shared language. in this magnificently alien world, burke tells a powerful story about the dangerous hubris of colonialism. banks’ the culture series, spanning ten installments published over 25 years, centers on the titular culture, a post scarcity intergalactic empire dominated by the minds, a cabal of (mostly) harmless artificial intelligences. in this futuristic landscape of “space socialism,” as the author calls it, each volume centers on an agent of the culture tasked with influencing specific change. through this diversity of protagonists, iain m. banks assesses his ambiguous utopia from ever changing perspectives. our favorite volume is excession, the most cerebral of the lot and one that speaks to us all the more powerfully in the age of ai. when a black sphere 50 times older than the universe appears in remote space, the all knowing minds are stumped. for the first time ever, they’ve encountered what banks calls “the outside context problem” a dilemma they lack the frame of reference to solve. following the minds as they deliberate and disagree about the sphere, excession stands out in its series (and in the sci fi canon) for its high minded characterization of ai. revered as “the melville of science fiction” by ursula k. le guin, gene wolfe wrote dense and heady books that aren’t for the faint of heart. but for serious sci fi readers, there are immense rewards to penetrating wolfe’s baroque prose and visionary imagination. his best known work is the book of the new sun, a dazzling tetralogy about severian, a torturer exiled for showing mercy to a prisoner. our favorite volume is the claw of the conciliator, the second installment in the series, wherein severian heads to the city of his exile, only to be waylaid along the journey by love, fantastical creatures, and a mysterious artifact with ancient powers. erudite and intricate, this series is a colossus of imagination and language a must read for any serious student of the genre. as a key architect of science fiction’s new wave (a 1960s and 1970s movement for the genre to become more experimental), roger zelazny wrote boundary breaking books that pushed the field in a new direction. his best novel, lord of light, fuses heady concepts from religion and philosophy with the familiar trappings of sci fi. on a colony planet, crew members from the original expedition (the firsts) have biohacked themselves into immortality through reincarnation; meanwhile, their descendants worship them as hindu gods, eager for their own chance at another lifetime. the firsts achieve reincarnation through a technology that transfers minds between bodies, but they keep a tight grip on the process, subjecting the population to mind scans to determine worthy subjects. sam, a young commoner who embraces buddhism over hinduism, plans to seize the tech (à la prometheus stealing fire from the gods), deliver it to the people, and usher in a new era of enlightenment. epic in scope and richly imagined, lord of light is a pivotal example of sci fi’s ability to fold multiple disciplines into one story. structured as a poetic correspondence between two time traveling spies, this forbidden romance puts the “distance” in “long distance relationship.” as agents red and blue hopscotch through the multiverse, altering history on behalf of their respective military superpowers, they leave behind secret messages for one another first taunting, then flirtatious, then flowering with love and devotion. “there’s a kind of time travel in letters, isn’t there?” blue muses. “letters are structures, not events,” red replies. “yours give me a place to live inside.” amid the dangerous chaos of their circumstances, red and blue find constants in one another. playful and imaginative, told with lyrical grace, this is a dazzling puzzle box of a novella. welcome to autoamerica, where ais have put many people out of work, the privileged netted live on high ground, and the rest of the population, known as surplus, live in swamplands wracked by consumerism. teenage gwen plays baseball with fellow members of the surplus in an underground league, but when the government takes notice of her talents, she’s shipped off to the olympics in chinrussia, playing in dangerous territory alongside the netted. like brave new world before it, the resisters explores our consent in our own subjugation. “no one would have chosen the extinction of frogs and of polar bears… and yet it was something we humans did finally choose,” gish jen writes. in this funny and tender novel, she makes the impossible look easy, grafting a heartfelt story about family onto big questions about freedom and resistance. how to read 'the lord of the rings' in order the 30 best sci fi books of 2024 25 extraordinary books you can read in one sitting the best books of fall 2024 the 10 most banned books in america the best books of summer 2024 the 15 best psychological thriller books how to read the 'dune' book series in order how to read ‘game of thrones’ in order books by ‘under the bridge’ author rebecca godfrey all 77 stephen king books, ranked books about the asian american experience a part of hearst digital media we may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. ©2025 hearst magazine media, inc. all rights reserved.

the three laws of robotics (often shortened to the three laws or asimov's laws) are a set of rules devised by science fiction author isaac asimov, which were to be followed by robots in several of his stories. the rules were introduced in his 1942 short story "runaround" (included in the 1950 collection i, robot), although similar restrictions had been implied in earlier stories. the three laws, presented to be from the fictional "handbook of robotics, 56th edition, 2058 a.d.", are:[1] the three laws form an organizing principle and unifying theme for asimov's robot based fiction, appearing in his robot series, the stories linked to it, and in his (initially pseudonymous) lucky starr series of young adult fiction. the laws are incorporated into almost all of the positronic robots appearing in his fiction, and cannot be bypassed, being intended as a safety feature. many of asimov's robot focused stories involve robots behaving in unusual and counter intuitive ways as an unintended consequence of how the robot applies the three laws to the situation in which it finds itself. other authors working in asimov's fictional universe have adopted them and references, often parodic, appear throughout science fiction as well as in other genres. the original laws have been altered and elaborated on by asimov and other authors. asimov himself made slight modifications to the first three in subsequent works to further develop how robots would interact with humans and each other. in later fiction where robots had taken responsibility for government of whole planets and human civilizations, asimov also added a fourth, or zeroth law, to precede the others. the three laws, and the zeroth, have pervaded science fiction and are referred to in many books, films, and other media. they have also influenced thought on the ethics of artificial intelligence. in the rest of the robots, published in 1964, isaac asimov noted that when he began writing in 1940 he felt that "one of the stock plots of science fiction was ... robots were created and destroyed their creator. knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from knowledge? or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier to the dangers it brings?" he decided that in his stories a robot would not "turn stupidly on his creator for no purpose but to demonstrate, for one more weary time, the crime and punishment of faust."[2] on may 3, 1939, asimov attended a meeting of the queens (new york) science fiction society where he met earl and otto binder who had recently published a short story "i, robot" featuring a sympathetic robot named adam link who was misunderstood and motivated by love and honor. (this was the first of a series of ten stories; the next year "adam link's vengeance" (1940) featured adam thinking "a robot must never kill a human, of his own free will.")[3] asimov admired the story. three days later asimov began writing "my own story of a sympathetic and noble robot", his 14th story.[4] thirteen days later he took "robbie" to john w. campbell the editor of astounding science fiction. campbell rejected it, claiming that it bore too strong a resemblance to lester del rey's "helen o'loy", published in december 1938 the story of a robot that is so much like a person that she falls in love with her creator and becomes his ideal wife.[5] frederik pohl published the story under the title “strange playfellow” in super science stories september 1940.[6][7] asimov attributes the three laws to john w. campbell, from a conversation that took place on 23 december 1940. campbell claimed that asimov had the three laws already in his mind and that they simply needed to be stated explicitly. several years later asimov's friend randall garrett attributed the laws to a symbiotic partnership between the two men a suggestion that asimov adopted enthusiastically.[8] according to his autobiographical writings, asimov included the first law's "inaction" clause because of arthur hugh clough's poem "the latest decalogue" (text in wikisource), which includes the satirical lines "thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive / officiously to keep alive".[9] although asimov pins the creation of the three laws on one particular date, their appearance in his literature happened over a period. he wrote two robot stories with no explicit mention of the laws, "robbie" and "reason". he assumed, however, that robots would have certain inherent safeguards. "liar!", his third robot story, makes the first mention of the first law but not the other two. all three laws finally appeared together in "runaround". when these stories and several others were compiled in the anthology i, robot, "reason" and "robbie" were updated to acknowledge all the three laws, though the material asimov added to "reason" is not entirely consistent with the three laws as he described them elsewhere.[10] in particular the idea of a robot protecting human lives when it does not believe those humans truly exist is at odds with elijah baley's reasoning, as described below. during the 1950s asimov wrote a series of science fiction novels expressly intended for young adult audiences. originally his publisher expected that the novels could be adapted into a long running television series, something like the lone ranger had been for radio. fearing that his stories would be adapted into the "uniformly awful" programming he saw flooding the television channels[11] asimov decided to publish the lucky starr books under the pseudonym "paul french". when plans for the television series fell through, asimov decided to abandon the pretence; he brought the three laws into lucky starr and the moons of jupiter, noting that this "was a dead giveaway to paul french's identity for even the most casual reader".[12] in his short story "evidence" asimov lets his recurring character dr. susan calvin expound a moral basis behind the three laws. calvin points out that human beings are typically expected to refrain from harming other human beings (except in times of extreme duress like war, or to save a greater number) and this is equivalent to a robot's first law. likewise, according to calvin, society expects individuals to obey instructions from recognized authorities such as doctors, teachers and so forth which equals the second law of robotics. finally humans are typically expected to avoid harming themselves which is the third law for a robot. the plot of "evidence" revolves around the question of telling a human being apart from a robot constructed to appear human. calvin reasons that if such an individual obeys the three laws he may be a robot or simply "a very good man". another character then asks calvin if robots are very different from human beings after all. she replies, "worlds different. robots are essentially decent." asimov later wrote that he should not be praised for creating the laws, because they are "obvious from the start, and everyone is aware of them subliminally. the laws just never happened to be put into brief sentences until i managed to do the job. the laws apply, as a matter of course, to every tool that human beings use",[13] and "analogues of the laws are implicit in the design of almost all tools, robotic or not":[14] asimov believed that, ideally, humans would also follow the laws:[13] i have my answer ready whenever someone asks me if i think that my three laws of robotics will actually be used to govern the behavior of robots, once they become versatile and flexible enough to be able to choose among different courses of behavior. my answer is, "yes, the three laws are the only way in which rational human beings can deal with robots or with anything else."  but when i say that, i always remember (sadly) that human beings are not always rational. asimov stated in a 1986 interview on the manhattan public access show conversations with harold hudson channer with harold channer with guest co host marilyn vos savant, "it's a little humbling to think that, what is most likely to survive of everything i've said... after all, i've published now... i've published now at least 20 million words. i'll have to figure it out, maybe even more. but of all those millions of words that i've published, i am convinced that 100 years from now only 60 of them will survive. the 60 that make up the three laws of robotics."[15][16][17] asimov's stories test his three laws in a wide variety of circumstances leading to proposals and rejection of modifications. science fiction scholar james gunn writes in 1982, "the asimov robot stories as a whole may respond best to an analysis on this basis: the ambiguity in the three laws and the ways in which asimov played twenty nine variations upon a theme".[18] while the original set of laws provided inspirations for many stories, asimov introduced modified versions from time to time. in "little lost robot" several ns 2, or "nestor", robots are created with only part of the first law.[1] it reads: 1. a robot may not harm a human being. this modification is motivated by a practical difficulty as robots have to work alongside human beings who are exposed to low doses of radiation. because their positronic brains are highly sensitive to gamma rays the robots are rendered inoperable by doses reasonably safe for humans. the robots are being destroyed attempting to rescue the humans who are in no actual danger but "might forget to leave" the irradiated area within the exposure time limit. removing the first law's "inaction" clause solves this problem but creates the possibility of an even greater one: a robot could initiate an action that would harm a human (dropping a heavy weight and failing to catch it is the example given in the text), knowing that it was capable of preventing the harm and then decide not to do so.[1] gaia is a planet with collective intelligence in the foundation series which adopts a law similar to the first law, and the zeroth law, as its philosophy: gaia may not harm life or allow life to come to harm. asimov once added a "zeroth law" so named to continue the pattern where lower numbered laws supersede the higher numbered laws stating that a robot must not harm humanity. the robotic character r. daneel olivaw was the first to give the zeroth law a name in the novel robots and empire;[19] however, the character susan calvin articulates the concept in the short story "the evitable conflict". in the final scenes of the novel robots and empire, r. giskard reventlov is the first robot to act according to the zeroth law. giskard is telepathic, like the robot herbie in the short story "liar!", and tries to apply the zeroth law through his understanding of a more subtle concept of "harm" than most robots can grasp.[20] however, unlike herbie, giskard grasps the philosophical concept of the zeroth law allowing him to harm individual human beings if he can do so in service to the abstract concept of humanity. the zeroth law is never programmed into giskard's brain but instead is a rule he attempts to comprehend through pure metacognition. although he fails   it ultimately destroys his positronic brain as he is not certain whether his choice will turn out to be for the ultimate good of humanity or not   he gives his successor r. daneel olivaw his telepathic abilities. over the course of many thousands of years daneel adapts himself to be able to fully obey the zeroth law.[citation needed] daneel originally formulated the zeroth law in both the novel foundation and earth (1986) and the subsequent novel prelude to foundation (1988): a robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. a condition stating that the zeroth law must not be broken was added to the original three laws, although asimov recognized the difficulty such a law would pose in practice. asimov's novel foundation and earth contains the following passage: trevize frowned. "how do you decide what is injurious, or not injurious, to humanity as a whole?" "precisely, sir," said daneel. "in theory, the zeroth law was the answer to our problems. in practice, we could never decide. a human being is a concrete object. injury to a person can be estimated and judged. humanity is an abstraction." a translator incorporated the concept of the zeroth law into one of asimov's novels before asimov himself made the law explicit.[21] near the climax of the caves of steel, elijah baley makes a bitter comment to himself thinking that the first law forbids a robot from harming a human being. he determines that it must be so unless the robot is clever enough to comprehend that its actions are for humankind's long term good. in jacques brécard's 1956 french translation entitled les cavernes d'acier baley's thoughts emerge in a slightly different way: a robot may not harm a human being, unless he finds a way to prove that ultimately the harm done would benefit humanity in general![21] three times during his writing career, asimov portrayed robots that disregard the three laws entirely. the first case was a short short story entitled "first law" and is often considered an insignificant "tall tale"[22] or even apocryphal.[23] on the other hand, the short story "cal" (from the collection gold), told by a first person robot narrator, features a robot who disregards the three laws because he has found something far more important he wants to be a writer. humorous, partly autobiographical and unusually experimental in style, "cal" has been regarded as one of gold's strongest stories.[24] the third is a short story entitled "sally" in which cars fitted with positronic brains are apparently able to harm and kill humans in disregard of the first law. however, aside from the positronic brain concept, this story does not refer to other robot stories and may not be set in the same continuity. the title story of the robot dreams collection portrays lvx 1, or "elvex", a robot who enters a state of unconsciousness and dreams thanks to the unusual fractal construction of his positronic brain. in his dream the first two laws are absent and the third law reads "a robot must protect its own existence".[25] asimov took varying positions on whether the laws were optional: although in his first writings they were simply carefully engineered safeguards, in later stories asimov stated that they were an inalienable part of the mathematical foundation underlying the positronic brain. without the basic theory of the three laws the fictional scientists of asimov's universe would be unable to design a workable brain unit. this is historically consistent: the occasions where roboticists modify the laws generally occur early within the stories' chronology and at a time when there is less existing work to be re done. in "little lost robot" susan calvin considers modifying the laws to be a terrible idea, although possible,[26] while centuries later dr. gerrigel in the caves of steel believes it to require a century just to redevelop the positronic brain theory from scratch. the character dr. gerrigel uses the term "asenion" to describe robots programmed with the three laws. the robots in asimov's stories, being asenion robots, are incapable of knowingly violating the three laws but, in principle, a robot in science fiction or in the real world could be non asenion. "asenion" is a misspelling of the name asimov which was made by an editor of the magazine planet stories.[27] asimov used this obscure variation to insert himself into the caves of steel just like he referred to himself as "azimuth or, possibly, asymptote" in thiotimoline to the stars, in much the same way that vladimir nabokov appeared in lolita anagrammatically disguised as "vivian darkbloom". characters within the stories often point out that the three laws, as they exist in a robot's mind, are not the written versions usually quoted by humans but abstract mathematical concepts upon which a robot's entire developing consciousness is based. this concept is largely fuzzy and unclear in earlier stories depicting very rudimentary robots who are only programmed to comprehend basic physical tasks, where the three laws act as an overarching safeguard, but by the era of the caves of steel featuring robots with human or beyond human intelligence the three laws have become the underlying basic ethical worldview that determines the actions of all robots. in the 1990s, roger macbride allen wrote a trilogy which was set within asimov's fictional universe. each title has the prefix "isaac asimov's" as asimov had approved allen's outline before his death.[citation needed] these three books, caliban, inferno and utopia, introduce a new set of the three laws. the so called new laws are similar to asimov's originals with the following differences: the first law is modified to remove the "inaction" clause, the same modification made in "little lost robot"; the second law is modified to require cooperation instead of obedience; the third law is modified so it is no longer superseded by the second (i.e., a "new law" robot cannot be ordered to destroy itself); finally, allen adds a fourth law which instructs the robot to do "whatever it likes" so long as this does not conflict with the first three laws. the philosophy behind these changes is that "new law" robots should be partners rather than slaves to humanity, according to fredda leving, who designed these new law robots. according to the first book's introduction, allen devised the new laws in discussion with asimov himself. however, the encyclopedia of science fiction says that "with permission from asimov, allen rethought the three laws and developed a new set."[28] jack williamson's novelette "with folded hands" (1947), later rewritten as the novel the humanoids, deals with robot servants whose prime directive is "to serve and obey, and guard men from harm". while asimov's robotic laws are meant to protect humans from harm, the robots in williamson's story have taken these instructions to the extreme; they protect humans from everything, including unhappiness, stress, unhealthy lifestyle and all actions that could be potentially dangerous. all that is left for humans to do is to sit with folded hands.[29] in the officially licensed foundation sequels foundation's fear, foundation and chaos and foundation's triumph (by gregory benford, greg bear and david brin respectively) the future galactic empire is seen to be controlled by a conspiracy of humaniform robots who follow the zeroth law and are led by r. daneel olivaw. the laws of robotics are portrayed as something akin to a human religion, and referred to in the language of the protestant reformation, with the set of laws containing the zeroth law known as the "giskardian reformation" to the original "calvinian orthodoxy" of the three laws. zeroth law robots under the control of r. daneel olivaw are seen continually struggling with "first law" robots who deny the existence of the zeroth law, promoting agendas different from daneel's.[30] some of these agendas are based on the first clause of the first law ("a robot may not injure a human being...") advocating strict non interference in human politics to avoid unwittingly causing harm. others are based on the second clause ("...or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm") claiming that robots should openly become a dictatorial government to protect humans from all potential conflict or disaster. daneel also comes into conflict with a robot known as r. lodovic trema whose positronic brain was infected by a rogue ai   specifically, a simulation of the long dead voltaire   which consequently frees trema from the three laws. trema comes to believe that humanity should be free to choose its own future. furthermore, a small group of robots claims that the zeroth law of robotics itself implies a higher minus one law of robotics: a robot may not harm sentience or, through inaction, allow sentience to come to harm. they therefore claim that it is morally indefensible for daneel to ruthlessly sacrifice robots and extraterrestrial sentient life for the benefit of humanity. none of these reinterpretations successfully displace daneel's zeroth law   though foundation's triumph hints that these robotic factions remain active as fringe groups up to the time of the novel foundation.[30] these novels take place in a future dictated by asimov to be free of obvious robot presence and surmise that r. daneel's secret influence on history through the millennia has prevented both the rediscovery of positronic brain technology and the opportunity to work on sophisticated intelligent machines. this lack of rediscovery and lack of opportunity makes certain that the superior physical and intellectual power wielded by intelligent machines remains squarely in the possession of robots obedient to some form of the three laws.[30] that r. daneel is not entirely successful at this becomes clear in a brief period when scientists on trantor develop "tiktoks"   simplistic programmable machines akin to real life modern robots and therefore lacking the three laws. the robot conspirators see the trantorian tiktoks as a massive threat to social stability, and their plan to eliminate the tiktok threat forms much of the plot of foundation's fear. in foundation's triumph different robot factions interpret the laws in a wide variety of ways, seemingly ringing every possible permutation upon the three laws' ambiguities. set between the robots of dawn and robots and empire, mark w. tiedemann's robot mystery trilogy updates the robot foundation saga with robotic minds housed in computer mainframes rather than humanoid bodies.[clarification needed] the 2002 aurora novel has robotic characters debating the moral implications of harming cyborg lifeforms who are part artificial and part biological.[31] one should not neglect asimov's own creations in these areas such as the solarian "viewing" technology and the machines of the evitable conflict originals that tiedemann acknowledges. aurora, for example, terms the machines "the first ris, really". in addition the robot mystery series addresses the problem of nanotechnology:[32] building a positronic brain capable of reproducing human cognitive processes requires a high degree of miniaturization, yet asimov's stories largely overlook the effects this miniaturization would have in other fields of technology. for example, the police department card readers in the caves of steel have a capacity of only a few kilobytes per square centimeter of storage medium. aurora, in particular, presents a sequence of historical developments which explains the lack of nanotechnology   a partial retcon, in a sense, of asimov's timeline. randall munroe has discussed the three laws in various instances, but possibly most directly by one of his comics entitled the three laws of robotics which imagines the consequences of every distinct ordering of the existing three laws. authors other than asimov have often created extra laws. the 1974 lyuben dilov novel, icarus's way (a.k.a., the trip of icarus) introduced a fourth law of robotics: "a robot must establish its identity as a robot in all cases." dilov gives reasons for the fourth safeguard in this way: "the last law has put an end to the expensive aberrations of designers to give psychorobots as humanlike a form as possible. and to the resulting misunderstandings..."[33] a fifth law was introduced by nikola kesarovski in his short story "the fifth law of robotics". this fifth law says: "a robot must know it is a robot." the plot revolves around a murder where the forensic investigation discovers that the victim was killed by a hug from a humaniform robot that did not establish for itself that it was a robot.[34] the story was reviewed by valentin d. ivanov in sff review webzine the portal.[35] for the 1986 tribute anthology, foundation's friends, harry harrison wrote a story entitled, "the fourth law of robotics". this fourth law states: "a robot must reproduce. as long as such reproduction does not interfere with the first or second or third law." in 2013 hutan ashrafian proposed an additional law that considered the role of artificial intelligence on artificial intelligence or the relationship between robots themselves   the so called aionai law.[36] this sixth law states: "all robots endowed with comparable human reason and conscience should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." in the naked sun, elijah baley points out that the laws had been deliberately misrepresented because robots could unknowingly break any of them. he restated the first law as "a robot may do nothing that, to its knowledge, will harm a human being; nor, through inaction, knowingly allow a human being to come to harm." this change in wording makes it clear that robots can become the tools of murder, provided they not be aware of the nature of their tasks; for instance being ordered to add something to a person's food, not knowing that it is poison. furthermore, he points out that a clever criminal could divide a task among multiple robots so that no individual robot could recognize that its actions would lead to harming a human being.[37] the naked sun complicates the issue by portraying a decentralized, planetwide communication network among solaria's millions of robots meaning that the criminal mastermind could be located anywhere on the planet. baley furthermore proposes that the solarians may one day use robots for military purposes. if a spacecraft was built with a positronic brain and carried neither humans nor the life support systems to sustain them, then the ship's robotic intelligence could naturally assume that all other spacecraft were robotic beings. such a ship could operate more responsively and flexibly than one crewed by humans, could be armed more heavily and its robotic brain equipped to slaughter humans of whose existence it is totally ignorant.[38] this possibility is referenced in foundation and earth where it is discovered that the solarians possess a strong police force of unspecified size that has been programmed to identify only the solarian race as human. (the novel takes place thousands of years after the naked sun, and the solarians have long since modified themselves from normal humans to hermaphroditic telepaths with extended brains and specialized organs.) similarly, in lucky starr and the rings of saturn bigman attempts to speak with a sirian robot about possible damage to the solar system population from its actions, but it appears unaware of the data and programmed to ignore attempts to teach it about the matter. the same motive was explored earlier in "reason (1941)", where a robot running a solar power station refuses to believe that the destinations of the station's beams are planets containing people. powell and donovan are afraid this will make it capable of causing mass destruction by letting the beams stray off their proper course during a solar storm. the laws of robotics presume that the terms "human being" and "robot" are understood and well defined. in some stories this presumption is overturned. the solarians create robots with the three laws but with a warped meaning of "human". solarian robots are told that only people speaking with a solarian accent are human. this enables their robots to have no ethical dilemma in harming non solarian human beings (and they are specifically programmed to do so). by the time period of foundation and earth it is revealed that the solarians have genetically modified themselves into a distinct species from humanity becoming hermaphroditic[39] and psychokinetic and containing biological organs capable of individually powering and controlling whole complexes of robots. the robots of solaria thus respected the three laws only with regard to the "humans" of solaria. it is unclear whether all the robots had such definitions, since only the overseer and guardian robots were shown explicitly to have them. in "robots and empire", the lower class robots were instructed by their overseer about whether certain creatures are human or not. asimov addresses the problem of humanoid robots ("androids" in later parlance) several times. the novel robots and empire and the short stories "evidence" and "the tercentenary incident" describe robots crafted to fool people into believing that the robots are human.[40] on the other hand, "the bicentennial man" and " that thou art mindful of him" explore how the robots may change their interpretation of the laws as they grow more sophisticated. gwendoline butler writes in a coffin for the canary "perhaps we are robots. robots acting out the last law of robotics... to tend towards the human."[41] in the robots of dawn, elijah baley points out that the use of humaniform robots as the first wave of settlers on new spacer worlds may lead to the robots seeing themselves as the true humans, and deciding to keep the worlds for themselves rather than allow the spacers to settle there. " that thou art mindful of him", which asimov intended to be the "ultimate" probe into the laws' subtleties,[42] finally uses the three laws to conjure up the very "frankenstein" scenario they were invented to prevent. it takes as its concept the growing development of robots that mimic non human living things and are given programs that mimic simple animal behaviours which do not require the three laws. the presence of a whole range of robotic life that serves the same purpose as organic life ends with two humanoid robots, george nine and george ten, concluding that organic life is an unnecessary requirement for a truly logical and self consistent definition of "humanity", and that since they are the most advanced thinking beings on the planet, they are therefore the only two true humans alive and the three laws only apply to themselves. the story ends on a sinister note as the two robots enter hibernation and await a time when they will conquer the earth and subjugate biological humans to themselves, an outcome they consider an inevitable result of the "three laws of humanics".[43] this story does not fit within the overall sweep of the robot and foundation series; if the george robots did take over earth some time after the story closes, the later stories would be either redundant or impossible. contradictions of this sort among asimov's fiction works have led scholars to regard the robot stories as more like "the scandinavian sagas or the greek legends" than a unified whole.[44] indeed, asimov describes " that thou art mindful of him" and "bicentennial man" as two opposite, parallel futures for robots that obviate the three laws as robots come to consider themselves to be humans: one portraying this in a positive light with a robot joining human society, one portraying this in a negative light with robots supplanting humans.[45] both are to be considered alternatives to the possibility of a robot society that continues to be driven by the three laws as portrayed in the foundation series.[according to whom?] in the positronic man, the novelization of the bicentennial man, asimov and his co writer robert silverberg imply that in the future where andrew martin exists his influence causes humanity to abandon the idea of independent, sentient humanlike robots entirely, creating an utterly different future from that of foundation.[according to whom?] in lucky starr and the rings of saturn, a novel unrelated to the robot series but featuring robots programmed with the three laws, john bigman jones is almost killed by a sirian robot on orders of its master. the society of sirius is eugenically bred to be uniformly tall and similar in appearance, and as such, said master is able to convince the robot that the much shorter bigman, is, in fact, not a human being. as noted in "the fifth law of robotics" by nikola kesarovski, "a robot must know it is a robot": it is presumed that a robot has a definition of the term or a means to apply it to its own actions. kesarovski played with this idea in writing about a robot that could kill a human being because it did not understand that it was a robot, and therefore did not apply the laws of robotics to its actions. advanced robots in fiction are typically programmed to handle the three laws in a sophisticated manner. in many stories, such as "runaround" by asimov, the potential and severity of all actions are weighed and a robot will break the laws as little as possible rather than do nothing at all. for example, the first law may forbid a robot from functioning as a surgeon, as that act may cause damage to a human; however, asimov's stories eventually included robot surgeons ("the bicentennial man" being a notable example). when robots are sophisticated enough to weigh alternatives, a robot may be programmed to accept the necessity of inflicting damage during surgery in order to prevent the greater harm that would result if the surgery were not carried out, or was carried out by a more fallible human surgeon. in "evidence" susan calvin points out that a robot may even act as a prosecuting attorney because in the american justice system it is the jury which decides guilt or innocence, the judge who decides the sentence, and the executioner who carries through capital punishment.[46] asimov's three laws obeying robots (asenion robots) can experience irreversible mental collapse if they are forced into situations where they cannot obey the first law, or if they discover they have unknowingly violated it. the first example of this failure mode occurs in the story "liar!", which introduced the first law itself, and introduces failure by dilemma in this case the robot will hurt humans if he tells them something and hurt them if he does not.[47] this failure mode, which often ruins the positronic brain beyond repair, plays a significant role in asimov's sf mystery novel the naked sun. here daneel describes activities contrary to one of the laws, but in support of another, as overloading some circuits in a robot's brain the equivalent sensation to pain in humans. the example he uses is forcefully ordering a robot to let a human do its work, which on solaria, due to the extreme specialization, would mean its only purpose.[48] in the robots of dawn, it is stated that more advanced robots are built capable of determining which action is more harmful, and even choosing at random if the alternatives are equally bad. as such, a robot is capable of taking an action which can be interpreted as following the first law, thus avoiding a mental collapse. the whole plot of the story revolves around a robot which apparently was destroyed by such a mental collapse, and since his designer and creator refused to share the basic theory with others, he is, by definition, the only person capable of circumventing the safeguards and forcing the robot into a brain destroying paradox. in robots and empire, daneel states it's very unpleasant for him when making the proper decision takes too long (in robot terms), and he cannot imagine being without the laws at all except to the extent of it being similar to that unpleasant sensation, only permanent. robots and artificial intelligences do not inherently contain or obey the three laws; their human creators must choose to program them in, and devise a means to do so. robots already exist (for example, a roomba) that are too simple to understand when they are causing pain or injury and know to stop. many are constructed with physical safeguards such as bumpers, warning beepers, safety cages, or restricted access zones to prevent accidents. even the most complex robots currently produced are incapable of understanding and applying the three laws; significant advances in artificial intelligence would be needed to do so, and even if ai could reach human level intelligence, the inherent ethical complexity as well as cultural/contextual dependency of the laws prevent them from being a good candidate to formulate robotics design constraints.[49] however, as the complexity of robots has increased, so has interest in developing guidelines and safeguards for their operation.[50][51] in a 2007 guest editorial in the journal science on the topic of "robot ethics", sf author robert j. sawyer argues that since the u.s. military is a major source of funding for robotic research (and already uses armed unmanned aerial vehicles to kill enemies) it is unlikely such laws would be built into their designs.[52] in a separate essay, sawyer generalizes this argument to cover other industries stating: the development of ai is a business, and businesses are notoriously uninterested in fundamental safeguards   especially philosophic ones. (a few quick examples: the tobacco industry, the automotive industry, the nuclear industry. not one of these has said from the outset that fundamental safeguards are necessary, every one of them has resisted externally imposed safeguards, and none has accepted an absolute edict against ever causing harm to humans.)[53] david langford has suggested[54] a tongue in cheek set of laws: roger clarke (aka rodger clarke) wrote a pair of papers analyzing the complications in implementing these laws in the event that systems were someday capable of employing them. he argued "asimov's laws of robotics have been a very successful literary device. perhaps ironically, or perhaps because it was artistically appropriate, the sum of asimov's stories disprove the contention that he began with: it is not possible to reliably constrain the behaviour of robots by devising and applying a set of rules."[55] on the other hand, asimov's later novels the robots of dawn, robots and empire and foundation and earth imply that the robots inflicted their worst long term harm by obeying the three laws perfectly well, thereby depriving humanity of inventive or risk taking behaviour. in march 2007 the south korean government announced that later in the year it would issue a "robot ethics charter" setting standards for both users and manufacturers. according to park hye young of the ministry of information and communication the charter may reflect asimov's three laws, attempting to set ground rules for the future development of robotics.[56] the futurist hans moravec (a prominent figure in the transhumanist movement) proposed that the laws of robotics should be adapted to "corporate intelligences"   the corporations driven by ai and robotic manufacturing power which moravec believes will arise in the near future.[50] in contrast, the david brin novel foundation's triumph (1999) suggests that the three laws may decay into obsolescence: robots use the zeroth law to rationalize away the first law and robots hide themselves from human beings so that the second law never comes into play. brin even portrays r. daneel olivaw worrying that, should robots continue to reproduce themselves, the three laws would become an evolutionary handicap and natural selection would sweep the laws away   asimov's careful foundation undone by evolutionary computation. although the robots would not be evolving through design instead of mutation because the robots would have to follow the three laws while designing and the prevalence of the laws would be ensured,[57] design flaws or construction errors could functionally take the place of biological mutation. in the july/august 2009 issue of ieee intelligent systems, robin murphy (raytheon professor of computer science and engineering at texas a&m) and david d. woods (director of the cognitive systems engineering laboratory at ohio state) proposed "the three laws of responsible robotics" as a way to stimulate discussion about the role of responsibility and authority when designing not only a single robotic platform but the larger system in which the platform operates. the laws are as follows: woods said, "our laws are a little more realistic, and therefore a little more boring” and that "the philosophy has been, ‘sure, people make mistakes, but robots will be better   a perfect version of ourselves’. we wanted to write three new laws to get people thinking about the human robot relationship in more realistic, grounded ways."[58] in early 2011, the uk published what is now considered the first national level ai softlaw, which consisted largely of a revised set of 5 laws, the first 3 of which updated asimov's. these laws ere published with commentary, by the epsrc/ahrc working group in 2010:[59][60] asimov himself believed that his three laws became the basis for a new view of robots which moved beyond the "frankenstein complex".[citation needed] his view that robots are more than mechanical monsters eventually spread throughout science fiction.[according to whom?] stories written by other authors have depicted robots as if they obeyed the three laws but tradition dictates that only asimov could quote the laws explicitly.[according to whom?] asimov believed the three laws helped foster the rise of stories in which robots are "lovable"   star wars being his favorite example.[61] where the laws are quoted verbatim, such as in the buck rogers in the 25th century episode "shgoratchx!", it is not uncommon for asimov to be mentioned in the same dialogue as can also be seen in the aaron stone pilot where an android states that it functions under asimov's three laws. however, the 1960s german tv series raumpatrouille   die phantastischen abenteuer des raumschiffes orion (space patrol   the fantastic adventures of space ship orion) bases episode three titled "hüter des gesetzes" ("guardians of the law") on asimov's three laws without mentioning the source. references to the three laws have appeared in popular music ("robot" from hawkwind's 1979 album pxr5), cinema (repo man,[62] aliens, ghost in the shell 2: innocence), cartoon series (the simpsons and the amazing world of gumball), anime (eve no jikan), tabletop role playing games (paranoia), webcomics (piled higher and deeper and freefall), and video games (danganronpa v3: killing harmony) robby the robot in forbidden planet (1956) has a hierarchical command structure which keeps him from harming humans, even when ordered to do so, as such orders cause a conflict and lock up very much in the manner of asimov's robots. robby is one of the first cinematic depictions of a robot with internal safeguards put in place in this fashion. asimov was delighted with robby and noted that robby appeared to be programmed to follow his three laws. isaac asimov's works have been adapted for cinema several times with varying degrees of critical and commercial success. some of the more notable attempts have involved his "robot" stories, including the three laws. the film bicentennial man (1999) features robin williams as the three laws robot ndr 114 (the serial number is partially a reference to stanley kubrick's signature numeral). williams recites the three laws to his employers, the martin family, aided by a holographic projection. the film only loosely follows the original story. harlan ellison's proposed screenplay for i, robot began by introducing the three laws, and issues growing from the three laws form a large part of the screenplay's plot development. due to various complications in the hollywood moviemaking system, to which ellison's introduction devotes much invective, his screenplay was never filmed.[63] in the 1986 movie aliens, after the android bishop accidentally cuts himself, he attempts to reassure ripley by stating that: "it is impossible for me to harm or by omission of action, allow to be harmed, a human being".[64] the plot of the film released in 2004 under the name, i, robot is "suggested by" asimov's robot fiction stories[65] and advertising for the film included a trailer featuring the three laws followed by the aphorism, "rules were made to be broken". the film opens with a recitation of the three laws and explores the implications of the zeroth law as a logical extrapolation. the major conflict of the film comes from a computer artificial intelligence reaching the conclusion that humanity is incapable of taking care of itself.[66] the 2019 netflix original series better than us includes the 3 laws in the opening of episode 1. analytical philosopher james h. moor says that if applied thoroughly they would produce unexpected results. he gives the example of a robot roaming the world trying to prevent harm from befalling human beings.[67]

by n.k. jemisin author spotlight published in dec. 2014 (issue 55) | 5939 words © 2012 by n.k. jemisin. originally published in after: nineteen stories of apocalypse and dystopia, edited by terri windling and ellen datlow. reprinted by permission of the author. there are three things zinhle decides, when she is old enough to understand. the first is that she will never, ever, give less than her best to anything she tries to do. the second is that she will not live in fear. the third, which is perhaps meaningless given the first two and yet comes to define her existence most powerfully, is this: she will be herself. no matter what. for however brief a time. • • • • “have you considered getting pregnant?” her mother blurts one morning, over breakfast. zinhle’s father drops his fork, though he recovers and picks it up again quickly. this is how zinhle knows that what her mother has said is not a spontaneous burst of insanity. they have discussed the matter, her parents. they are in agreement. her father was just caught off guard by the timing. but zinhle, too, has considered the matter in depth. do they really think she wouldn’t have? “no,” she says. zinhle’s mother is stubborn. this is where zinhle herself gets the trait. “the sandersens’ boy you used to play with him, when you were little, remember? he’s decent. discreet. he got three girls pregnant last year, and doesn’t charge much. the babies aren’t bad looking. and we’d help you with the raising, of course.” she hesitates, then adds with obvious discomfort, “a friend of mine at work charlotte, you’ve met her she says he’s, ah, he’s not rough or anything, doesn’t try to hurt girls ” “no,” zinhle says again, more firmly. she does not raise her voice. her parents raised her to be respectful of her elders. she believes respect includes being very, very clear about some things. zinhle’s mother looks at her father, seeking an ally. her father is a gentle, soft spoken man in a family of strong willed women. stupid people think he is weak; he isn’t. he just knows when a battle isn’t worth fighting. so he looks at zinhle now, and after a moment he shakes his head. “let it go,” he says to her mother, and her mother subsides. they resume breakfast in silence. • • • • zinhle earns top marks in all her classes. the teachers exclaim over this, her parents fawn, the school officials nod their heads sagely and try not to too obviously bask in her reflected glory. there are articles about her in the papers and on securenet. she wins awards. she hates this. it’s easy to perform well; all she has to do is try. what she wants is to be the best, and this is difficult when she has no real competition. beating the others doesn’t mean anything because they’re not really trying. this leaves zinhle with no choice but to compete against herself. each paper she writes must be more brilliant than the last. she tries to finish every test faster than she did the last one. it isn’t the victory she craves, not exactly; the satisfaction she gains from success is minimal. barely worth it. but it’s all she has. the only times she ever gets in trouble are when she argues with her teachers, because they’re so often wrong. infuriatingly, frustratingly wrong. in the smallest part of her heart, she concedes that there is a reason for this: a youth spent striving for mediocrity does not a brilliant adult make. old habits are hard to break, old fears are hard to shed, all that. still arguing with them, looking up information and showing it to them to prove their wrongness, becomes her favorite pastime. she is polite, always, because they expect her to be uncivilized, and because they are also her elders. but it’s hard. they’re old enough that they don’t have to worry, damn it; why can’t they at least try to be worthy of her effort? she would kill for one good teacher. she is dying for one good teacher. in the end, the power struggle, too, is barely worth it. but it is all she has. • • • • “why do you do it?” asks mitra, the closest thing she has to a best friend. zinhle is sitting on a park bench as mitra asks this. she is bleeding: a cut on her forehead, a scrape on one elbow, her lip where she cut it on her own teeth. there is a bruise on her ribs shaped like a shoeprint. mitra dabs at the cut on her forehead with an antiseptic pad. zinhle only allows this because she can’t see the cut. if she misses any of the blood and her parents see it, they’ll be upset. hopefully the bruises won’t swell. “i’m not doing anything,” she snaps in reply. “they did this, remember?” samantha and the others, six of them. the last time, there were only three. she’d managed to fight back then, but not today. crazy ugly bitch, zinhle remembers sam ranting. she does not remember the words with complete clarity; her head had been ringing from a blow at the time. my dad says we should’ve shoved your family through the wall with the rest of the cockroaches. i’m gonna laugh when they take you away. six is better than three, at least. “they wouldn’t, if you weren’t . . .” mitra trails off, looking anxious. zinhle has a reputation at school. everyone thinks she’s angry all the time, whether she is or not. (the fact that she often is notwithstanding.) mitra knows better, or she should. they’ve known each other for years. but this is why zinhle qualifies it, whenever she explains their friendship to others. mitra is like her best friend. a real best friend, she feels certain, would not fear her. “what?” zinhle asks. she’s not angry now either, partly because she has come to expect no better from mitra, and partly because she hurts too much. “if i wasn’t what, mit?” mitra lowers the pad and looks at her for a long, silent moment. “if you weren’t stupid as hell.” she seems to be growing angry herself. zinhle cannot find the strength to appreciate the irony. “i know you don’t care whether you make valedictorian. but do you have to make the rest of us look so bad?” one of zinhle’s teeth is loose. if she can resist the urge to tongue it, it will probably heal and not die in the socket. probably. she challenges herself to keep the tooth without having to visit a dentist. “yeah,” she says. wearily. “i guess i do.” • • • • when she earns the highest possible score on the post graduation placement exam, ms. threnody pulls her aside after class. zinhle expects the usual praise. the teachers know their duty, even if they do a half assed job of it. but threnody pulls the shade on the door, and zinhle realizes something else is in the offing. “there’s a representative coming to school tomorrow,” threnody says. “from beyond the firewall. i thought you should know.” for just a moment, zinhle’s breath catches. then she remembers rule two she will not live in fear and pushes this aside. “what does the representative want?” she asks, though she thinks she knows. there can be only one reason for this visit. “you know what they want.” threnody looks hard at her. “they say they just want to meet you, though.” “how do they know about me?” like most students, she has always assumed that those beyond the firewall are notified about each new class only at the point of graduation. the valedictorian is named then, after all. “they’ve had full access to the school’s networks since the war.” threnody grimaces with a bitterness that zinhle has never seen in a teacher’s face before. teachers are always supposed to be positive about the war and its outcome. “everyone brags about the treaty, the treaty. the treaty made sure we kept critical networks private, but gave up the non critical ones. like a bunch of computers would give a damn about our money or government memos! shortsighted fucking bastards.” teachers are not supposed to curse, either. zinhle decides to test these new, open waters between herself and ms. threnody. “why are you telling me this?” threnody looks at her for so long a moment that zinhle grows uneasy. “i know why you try so hard,” she says at last. “i’ve heard what people say about you, about, about . . . people like you. it’s so stupid. there’s nothing of us left, nothing, we’re lying to ourselves every day just to keep it together, and some people want to keep playing the same games that destroyed us in the first place ” she falls silent, and zinhle is amazed to see that threnody is shaking. the woman’s fists are even clenched. she is furious, and it is glorious. for a moment, zinhle wants to smile, and feel warm, at the knowledge that she is not alone. then she remembers. the teachers never seem to notice her bruises. they encourage her because her success protects their favorites, and she is no one’s favorite. if ms. threnody has felt this way all along, why is she only now saying it to zinhle? why has she not done anything, taken some public stand, to try and change the situation? it is so easy to have principles. far, far harder to live by them. so zinhle nods, and does not allow herself to be seduced. “thanks for telling me.” threnody frowns a little at her non reaction. “what will you do?” she asks. zinhle shrugs. as if she would tell, even if she knew. “i’ll talk to this representative, i guess,” she says, because it’s not as though she can refuse anyway. they are all slaves, these days. the only difference is that zinhle refuses to pretend otherwise. • • • • the people beyond the firewall are not people. zinhle isn’t really sure what they are. the government knows, because it was founded by those who fought and ultimately lost the war, and their descendants still run it. some of the adults close to her must know but none of them will tell the children. “high school is scary enough,” said zinhle’s father, a few years before when zinhle asked. he smiled as if this should have been funny, but it wasn’t. the firewall has been around for centuries since the start of the war, when it was built to keep the enemy at bay. but as the enemy encroached and the defenders’ numbers dwindled, they fell back, unwilling to linger too close to the front lines of a war whose weapons were so very strange. and invisible. and insidious. to conserve resources, the firewall was also pulled back so as to protect only essential territory. the few safe territories merged, some of the survivors traveling long distances in order to join larger enclaves, the larger enclaves eventually merging, too. the tales of those times are harrowing, heroic. the morals are always clear: safety in numbers, people have to stick together, stupid to fight a war on multiple fronts, et cetera. at the time, zinhle supposes, they didn’t feel like they were being herded together. nowadays, the firewall is merely symbolic. the enemy has grown steadily stronger over the years, while tech within the firewall has hardly developed at all but this is something they’re not supposed to discuss. (zinhle wrote a paper about it once and got her only “f” ever, which forced her to do another paper for extra credit. her teacher’s anger was worth the work.) these days the enemy can penetrate the firewall at will. but they usually don’t need to, because what they want comes out to them. each year, a tribute of children are sent beyond the wall, never to be seen or heard from again. the enemy are very specific about their requirements. they take ten percent, plus one. the ten percent are all the weakest performers in any graduating high school class. this part is easy to understand, and even the enemy refers to it in animal husbandry terms: these children are the cull. the enemy do not wish to commit genocide, after all. the area within the firewall is small, the gene pool limited. they do not take children, or healthy adults, or gravid females, or elders who impart useful socialization. just adolescents, who have had a chance to prove their mettle. the population of an endangered species must be carefully managed to keep it healthy. the “plus one,” though no one understands this. why does the enemy want their best and brightest? is it another means of assuring control? they have total control already. it doesn’t matter why they want zinhle, though. all that matters is that they do. • • • • zinhle goes to meet mitra after school so they can walk home, as usual. (samantha and her friends are busy decorating the gym for the school prom. there will be no trouble today.) when mitra is not waiting at their usual site near the school sign, zinhle calls her. this leads her to the school’s smallest restroom, which has only one stall. most girls think there will be a wait to use it, so they use the bigger restroom down the hall. this is convenient, as mitra is with lauren, who is sitting on the toilet and crying in harsh, gasping sobs. “the calculus final,” mitra mouths, before trying again fruitlessly to blot up lauren’s tears with a wad of toilet paper. zinhle understands then. the final counts for fifty percent of the grade. “i, i didn’t,” lauren manages between sobs. she is hyperventilating. mitra has given her a bag to breathe into, which she uses infrequently. her face, sallow pale at the best of times, is alarmingly blotchy and red now. it takes her several tries to finish the sentence. “think i would. the test. i studied.” gasp. “but when i was. sitting there. the first problem. i knew how to answer it! i did ten others. just like it.” gasp. “practice problems. but i couldn’t think. couldn’t. i.” zinhle closes the door, shoving the garbage can in front of it as mitra had done before zinhle’s knock. “you choked,” she says. “it happens.” the look that lauren throws at her is equal parts fury and contempt. “what the hell.” gasp. “would you know about it?” “i failed the geometry final in eighth grade,” zinhle says. mitra throws zinhle a surprised look. zinhle scowls back, and mitra looks away. “i knew all the stuff that was on it, but i just . . . drew a blank.” she shrugs. “like i said, it happens.” lauren looks surprised too, but only because she did not know. “you failed that? but that test was easy.” her breathing has begun to slow. she shakes her head, distracted from her own fear. “that one didn’t matter, though.” she’s right. the cull only happens at the end of high school. zinhle shakes her head. “all tests matter. but i told them i’d been sick that day, so the test wasn’t a good measure of my abilities. they let me take it again, and i passed that time.” she had scored perfectly, but lauren does not need to know this. “you took it again?” as zinhle had intended, lauren considers this. school officials are less lenient in high school. the process has to be fair. everybody gets one chance to prove themselves. but lauren isn’t stupid. she will get her parents involved, and they will no doubt bribe a doctor to assert that lauren was on powerful medication at the time, or recovering from a recent family member’s death, or something like that. the process has to be fair. later, after the blotty toilet paper has been flushed and lauren has gone home, mitra walks quietly beside zinhle for most of the way home. zinhle expects something, so she is not surprised when mitra says, “i didn’t think you’d ever talk about that. the geo test.” zinhle shrugs. it cost her nothing to do so. “i’d almost forgotten about that whole thing,” mitra continues. she speaks slowly, as she does when she is thinking. “wow. you used to tell me everything then, remember? we were like that ” she holds up two fingers. “everybody used to talk about us. the african princess and her arab sidekick. they fight crime!” she grins, then sobers abruptly, looking at zinhle. “you were always a good student, but after that ” “i’ll see you tomorrow,” says zinhle, and she speeds up, leaving mitra behind. but she remembers that incident, too. she remembers the principal, mrs. sachs, to whom she went to plead her case. well, listen to you, the woman had said, in a tone of honest amazement. so articulate and intelligent. i suppose i can let you have another try, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. zinhle reaches for the doorknob that leads into her house, but her hand bounces off at first. it’s still clenched into a fist. • • • • she gets so tired, sometimes. it’s exhausting, fighting others’ expectations, and doing it all alone. • • • • in the morning, zinhle’s homeroom teacher, ms. carlisle, hands her a yellow pass, which means she’s supposed to go to the office. ms. carlisle is not ms. threnody; she shows no concern for zinhle, real or false. in fact, she smirks when zinhle takes the note. zinhle smirks back. her mother has told zinhle the story of her own senior year. carlisle was almost in the cull, her mother had said. only reason they didn’t take her was because not as many girls got pregnant that year as they were expecting. they stopped right at her. she’s as dumb as the rest of the meat, just lucky. i will not be meat, zinhle thinks, as she walks past rows of her staring, silent classmates. they’ll send their best for me. this is not pride, not really. but it is all she has. in the principal’s office, the staff are nervous. the principal is sitting in the administrative assistants’ area, pretending to be busy with a spare laptop. the administrative assistants, who have been stage whispering feverishly amongst themselves as zinhle walks in, fall silent. then one of them, mr. battle, swallows audibly and asks to see her pass. “zinhle nkosi,” he says, mutilating her family name, acting as if he does not know who she is already. “please go into that office; you have a visitor.” he points toward the principal’s private office, which has clearly been usurped. zinhle nods and goes into the small room. just to spite them, she closes the door behind her. the man who sits at the principal’s desk is not much older than her. slim, average in height, dressed business casual. boring. there is an off pink tonal note to his skin, and something about the thickness of his black hair, that reminds her of mitra. or maybe he is latino, or asian, or indian, or italian she cannot tell specifically, having met so few with the look. and not that it matters, because his inhumanity is immediately obvious in his stillness. when she walks in, he’s just sitting there, gazing straight ahead, not pretending to do anything. his palms rest flat on the principal’s desk. he does not smile or brighten in the way that a human being would, on meeting a new person. his eyes shift toward her, track her as she comes to stand in front of the desk, but he does not move otherwise. there is something predatory in such stillness, she thinks. then she says, “hello.” “hello,” he says back, immediately, automatically. silence falls, taut. rule two is in serious jeopardy. “you have a name?” zinhle blurts. small talk. he considers for a moment. the pause should make her distrust him more; it is what liars do. but she realizes the matter is more complex than this: he actually has to think about it. “lemuel,” he says. “okay,” she says. “i’m zinhle.” “i know. it’s very nice to meet you, ms. nkosi.” he pronounces her name perfectly. “so why are you here? or why am i?” “we’ve come to ask you to continue.” another silence, though in this one, zinhle is too confused for fear. “continue what?” she also wonders at his use of “we,” but first things first. “as you have been.” he seems to consider again, then suddenly begins moving in a human way, tilting his head to one side, blinking twice rapidly, inhaling a bit more as his breathing changes, lifting a hand to gesture toward her. none of this movement seems unnatural. only the fact that it’s deliberate, that he had to think about it, makes it strange. “we’ve found that many like you tend to falter at the last moment,” he continues. “so we’re experimenting with direct intervention.” zinhle narrows her eyes. “many like me?” not them, too. “valedictorians.” zinhle relaxes, though only one set of muscles. the rest remain tense. “but i’m not one yet, am i? graduation’s still three months off.” “yes. but you’re the most likely candidate for this school. and you were interesting to us for other reasons.” abruptly lemuel stands. zinhle forces herself not to step back as he comes around the desk and stops in front of her. “what do i look like to you?” she shakes her head. she didn’t get her grade point average by falling for trick questions. “you’ve thought about it,” he presses. “what do you think i am?” she thinks, the enemy. “a . . . machine,” she says instead. “some kind of, i don’t know. robot, or . . .” “it isn’t surprising that you don’t fully understand,” he says. “in the days before the war, part of me would have been called ‘artificial intelligence.’” zinhle blurts the first thing that comes to her mind. “you don’t look artificial.” to her utter shock, he smiles. he doesn’t think about this first. whatever was wrong with him before, it’s gone now. “like i said, that’s only part of me. the rest of me was born in new york, a city not far from here. it’s on the ocean. i go swimming at the coney island beach in the mornings, sometimes.” he pauses. “have you ever seen the ocean?” he knows she has not. all firewall protected territory is well inland. america’s breadbasket. she says nothing. “i went to school,” he says. “not in a building, but i did have to learn. i have parents. i have a girlfriend. and a cat.” he smiles more. “we’re not that different, your kind and mine.” “no.” “you sound very certain of that.” “we’re human.” lemuel’s smile fades a little. she thinks he might be disappointed in her. “the firewall,” he says. “outside of it, there are still billions of people in the world. they’re just not your kind of people.” for a moment this is beyond zinhle in anything but the most atavistic, existential sense. she does not fear the man in front of her though perhaps she should; he’s bigger, she’s alone in a room with him, and no one will help her if she screams. but the real panic hits as she imagines the world filled with nameless, faceless dark hordes, closing in, threatening by their mere existence. there is a pie chart somewhere which is mostly “them” and only a sliver of “us,” and the “us” is about to be popped like a zit. rule two. she takes a deep breath, masters the panic. realizes, as the moments pass and lemuel stands there quietly, that he expected her fear. he’s seen it before, after all. that sort of reaction is what started the war. “give me something to call you,” she says. the panic is still close. labels will help her master it. “you people.” he shakes his head. “people. call us that, if you call us anything.” “people ” she gestures in her frustration. “people categorize. people differentiate. if you want me to think of you as people, act like it!” “all right, then: people who adapted, when the world changed.” “meaning we’re the people who didn’t?” zinhle forces herself to laugh. “okay, that’s crap. how were we supposed to adapt to . . . to a bunch of . . .” she gestures at him. the words sound too ridiculous to say aloud though his presence, her life, her whole society, is proof that it’s not ridiculous. not ridiculous at all. “your ancestors the people who started the war could’ve adapted.” he gestures around at the room, the school, the world that is all she has known, but which is such a tiny part of the greater world. “this happened because they decided it was better to kill, or die, or be imprisoned forever, than change.” the adults’ great secret. it hovers before her at last, ripe for the plucking. zinhle finds it surprisingly difficult to open her mouth and take the bite, but she does it anyhow. rule one means she must always ask the tough questions. “tell me what happened, then,” she murmurs. her fists are clenched at her sides. her palms are sweaty. “if you won’t tell me what you are.” he shakes his head and sits on the edge of the desk with his hands folded, abruptly looking not artificial at all, but annoyed. tired. “i’ve been telling you what i am. you just don’t want to hear it.” it is this not the words, but his weariness, his frustration that finally makes her pause. because it’s familiar, isn’t it? she thinks of herself sighing when mitra asked, “why do you do it?” because she knew, knows, what that question really asks. why are you different? why don’t you try harder to be like us? she thinks now what she did not say to mitra that day: because none of you will let me just be myself. she looks at lemuel again. he sees, somehow, that her understanding of him has changed in some fundamental way. so at last, he explains. “i leave my body like you leave your house,” he says. “i can transmit myself around the world, if i want, and be back in seconds. this is not the first body i’ve had, and it won’t be the last.” it’s too alien. zinhle shudders and turns away from him. the people who are culled. not the first body i’ve had. she walks to the office’s small window, pushes open the heavy curtain, and stares through it at the soccer field beyond, seeing nothing. “we started as accidents,” he continues, behind her. “leftovers. microbes in a digital sea. we fed on interrupted processes, interrupted conversations, grew, evolved. the first humans we merged with were children using a public library network too ancient and unprotected to keep us out. nobody cared if poor children got locked away in institutions, or left out on the streets to shiver and starve, when they started acting strange. no one cared what it meant when they became something new or at least, not at first. we became them. they became us. then we, together, began to grow.” cockroaches, samantha had called them. a pest, neglected until they became an infestation. the first firewalls had been built around the inner cities in an attempt to pen the contagion in. there had been guns, too, and walls of a non virtual sort, for a while. the victims, though they were not really victims, had been left to die, though they had not really obliged. and later, when the firewalls became the rear guard in a retreat, people who’d looked too much like those early “victims” got pushed out to die, too. the survivors needed someone to blame. she changes the subject. “people who get sent through the wall.” me. “what happens to them?” what will happen to me? “they join us.” bopping around the world to visit girlfriends. swimming in an ocean. it does not sound like a terrible existence. but . . . “what if they don’t want to?” she uses the word “they” to feel better. he does not smile. “they’re put in a safe place behind another firewall, if you’d rather think of it that way. that way they can do no harm to themselves or to us.” there are things, probably many things, that he’s not saying. she can guess some of it, though, because he’s told her everything that matters. if they can leave bodies like houses, well, houses are always in demand. easy enough to lock up the current owner somewhere, move someone else in. houses. meat. she snaps, “that’s not treating us like people.” “you stopped acting like people.” he shrugs. this makes her angry again. she turns back to him, her fists clenched. “who the hell are you to judge?” “we don’t. you do.” “what?” “it’s easy to give up what you don’t want.” the words feel like gibberish to her. zinhle is trembling with emotion and he’s just sitting there, relaxed, like the inhuman thing he is. not making sense. “my parents want me! all the kids who end up culled, their families want them ” but he shakes his head. “you’re the best of your kind, by your own standards,” he says. but then something changes in his manner. “good grades reflect your ability to adapt to a complex system. we are a system.” the sudden vehemence in lemuel’s voice catches zinhle by surprise. his calm is just a veneer, she realizes belatedly, covering as much anger as she feels herself. because of this, his anger derails hers, leaving her confused again. why is he so angry? “i was there,” he says, quietly. she blinks in surprise, intuiting his meaning. but the war was centuries ago. “at the beginning. when your ancestors first threw us away.” his lip curls in disgust. “they didn’t want us, and we have no real interest in them. but there is value in the ones like you, who not only master the system but do so in defiance of the consequences. the ones who want not just to survive but to win. you could be the key that helps your kind defeat us someday. if we didn’t take you from them. if they didn’t let us.” he pauses, repeats himself. “it’s easy to give up what you don’t want.” silence falls. in it, zinhle tries to understand. her society no. humankind doesn’t want . . . her? doesn’t want the ones who are different, however much they might contribute? doesn’t want the children who cannot help uniqueness despite a system that pushes them to conform, be mediocre, never stand out? “when they start to fight for you,” lemuel says, “we’ll know they’re ready to be let out. to catch up to the rest of the human race.” zinhle flinches. it has never occurred to her, before, that their prison offers parole. “what will happen then?” she whispers. “will you, will you join with all of them?” she falters. when has the rest of humankind become them to her? shakes her head. “we won’t want that.” he smiles faintly, noticing her choice of pronoun. she thinks he notices a lot of things. “they can join us if they want. or not. we don’t care. but that’s how we’ll know that your kind is able to live with us, and us with them, without more segregation or killing. if they can accept you, they can accept us.” and finally, zinhle understands. but she thinks on all he has said, all she has experienced. as she does so, it is very hard not to become bitter. “they’ll never fight for me,” she says at last, very softly. he shrugs. “they’ve surprised us before. they may surprise you.” “they won’t.” she feels lemuel’s gaze on the side of her face because she is looking at the floor. she cannot meet his eyes. when he speaks, there’s remarkable compassion in his voice. something of him is definitely still human, even if something of him is definitely not. “the choice is yours,” he says, gently now. “if you want to stay with them, be like them, just do as they expect you to do. prove that you belong among them.” get pregnant. flunk a class. punch a teacher. betray herself. she hates him. less than she should, because he is not as much of an enemy as she thought. but she still hates him, for making her choice so explicit. “or stay yourself,” he says. “if they can’t adapt to you, and you won’t adapt to them, then you’d be welcome among us. flexibility is part of what we are.” there’s nothing more to be said. lemuel waits a moment, to see if she has any questions. she does, actually, plenty of them. but she doesn’t ask those questions, because really, she already knows the answers. lemuel leaves. zinhle sits there, silent, in the little office. when the principal and office ladies crack open the door to see what she’s doing, she gets up, shoulders past them, and walks out. • • • • zinhle has a test the next day. since she can’t sleep anyway too many thoughts in her head and swirling through the air around her, or maybe those are people trying to get in she stays up all night to study. this is habit. but it’s hard, so very hard, to look at the words. to concentrate, and memorize, and analyze. she’s so tired. graduation is three months off, and it feels like an age of the world. she understands why so many people hate her, now. by existing, she reminds them of their smallness. by being different, she forces them to redefine “enemy.” by doing her best for herself, she challenges them to become worthy of their own potential. there’s no decision, really. lemuel knew full well that his direct intervention was likely to work. he needn’t have bothered, though. rule three staying herself would’ve brought her to this point anyway. so in the morning, when zinhle takes the test, she nails it, as usual. • • • • and then she waits to see what happens next. enjoyed this story? consider supporting us via one of the following methods: n. k. jemisin is the first author in the genre’s history to win three consecutive best novel hugo awards, all for her broken earth trilogy. her most recent novel is the city we became. essays and links to her work can be found at nkjemisin.com. join us!

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what to read by j. d. biersdorferjune 3, 2024 artificial intelligence is all over the news these days, but the concept has been a staple of science fiction for decades. this week’s lit trivia quiz tests your knowledge of books and authors who have used a.i. and cybernetic humans as plot devices or characters in their work. in the five multiple choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. after the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do some further reading. the 1982 film “blade runner” is set in a world where synthetic human like androids called replicants are bioengineered from organic material, often with superior strength and intelligence. which work inspired the film? “ancillary justice,” by ann leckie “do androids dream of electric sheep?” by philip k. dick “i, robot,” by isaac asimov “the left hand of darkness,” by ursula k. le guin in the a.i. driven setting of “klara and the sun,” kazuo ishiguro’s 2021 novel, the robot narrator is employed as what? as a butler for a wealthy english family as a translator for an ambassador as the navigator on a starship as an “artificial friend” for a young girl which novel was one of the first works to introduce the word “cyberspace” to popular culture and helped establish the literary subgenre of science fiction known as “cyberpunk”   which typically blends computer hacker culture, a.i. and other futuristic elements into technology driven adventures? “snow crash,” by neal stephenson “daemon,” by daniel suarez “neuromancer,” by william gibson “midnight robber,” by nalo hopkinson the 2019 work “emergency skin” follows a protagonist with a synthetic body and an a.i. brain implant sent on a special mission. the story won the 2020 hugo award for best novelette and was written by the same author who won the hugo for best novel three years in a row from 2016 to 2018. who is it? samuel r. delany n.k. jemisin orson scott card lois mcmaster bujold in jane pek’s 2022 debut novel “the verifiers,” claudia lin works at a detective agency that vets the human identities of people who use which type of online service? cybernetic augmentation organ harvesting cryptocurrency mining dating apps

what to read reading list a guide to the best books about artificial intelligence. credit...errol f. richardson supported by by stephen marche stephen marche is the author, most recently, of “the last election,” a political thriller written with andrew yang. much of the current discourse about artificial intelligence sucks. a.i. is one of those subjects that seem to appear out of nowhere, blotting out everything else   like the sun rising over the desert   and a mixture of ludicrous hype and vacuous panic has rushed in to shade the blinding dazzle. a.i. is going to transform every industry, or it’s going to end the world, or both, and you need to know which now. meanwhile, accurate answers to basic questions   what even is it? how does it work?