He also shows how technology allows us to transcend our biological limitation in The Universe On My Hands, in which an online game guild tracks one of its member to help him face real life issues, as well as in A Romance in Virtual Space – one of my favourite – where virtual worlds give a young woman the means to overcome her own barriers. Hiroshi Yamamoto describes the undeniable benefit of robots that never grow tired, moody, or clumsy in The Day Shion Came, in which an experimental android is taught to work in a nursing retirement home. Sometimes, machines conversations are simply undecipherable and it only makes them more realistic.īut more importantly, The Stories of Ibis is a clever reflection about the place of technology – especially robotics and artificial intelligence – amongst humankind. Also, machines enrich their vocabulary to meet their need: “Toucanan” designates humans hostile to AI, “gedoshield” defines the prejudices blinding humans, “kroof” is the “surprise at the gap between the basic information and the actual experience”. While her dialogs with humans follows usual punctuation, conversations with her virtual fellows are displayed between angle brackets. When she narrates her role-played battle for humans to read, the text switches to bold. For instance, the protagonist of AI's Story is an intelligent virtual character. Also very natural is the way Hiroshi Yamamoto makes the best of typography to represents the different sources and depths of the narration.
I enjoyed that the book was based on genuine experience and knowledge of the gaming culture. I grew up along the rise of electronic toys, personal computers and consoles, internet, role-playing games and virtual friendships, all of which successively triggered its share of paranoia in the public. The most wonderful thing about The Stories of Ibis is the natural way in which Hiroshi Yamamoto approaches modern technologies. Thus, an overarching plot links the seven unrelated short stories together and makes the transitions smoother to the reader. Since the convalescent is concerned with machine propaganda, she promises that no tale will relate “the true history about man and machine”. After transporting him to her own city, the woman-looking robot introduces herself as Ibis and offers a deal: while his ankle heals, she will tell him fiction stories. The book starts as a storyteller faces an android, hurts himself in the struggle and surrenders. In a near future, the remnant of humankind fights a well-flourished machine civilization for survival. The Stories of Ibis is a stunning collection of sci-fi short stories by Japanese author Hiroshi Yamamoto.
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