REVIEW: Alex + Ada Vol. 1, by Jonathan Luna & Sarah Vaughn

It's hard to break new ground on the "artificial intelligence turns sentient" story. And yet, Alex + Ada somehow manages to feel fresh even while treading somewhat common tropes. It could be the crisp, clean artwork, or the simple, straightforward dialogue that still strikes a chord in your heart, or maybe the way that the technology feels more like jailbreaking an iPhone than awakening humanity within a person, but that similarity still draws some interesting connections in your mind. Either way, this was a delightful read, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

Happy Judgement Day! 17 Years Robopocalypse-Free! #NoFateButWhatWeMake

Three billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. 

(I'm just kidding, of course. The robots haven't killed us. Yet. And neither has that new Terminator reboot with the corny puntmanteau name. But once again, I should qualify it: yet.)

God I love this movie.

So Anyway Here's A Real-Life 3D-Printed Robot Riding On A Hoverbike

Fortunately — or unfortunately, if you were really hoping that your visions of an Endor-like future were finally near — this is only a model, created by Malloy Aeronautics. As it turns out, the bike itself is less than four feet long, and the combined weight of the robot and the bike is a mere 15.4 pounds. On the bright side, the robot has a GoPro camera for a face, so at least they'll get some cool footage out of it, right?

The MA Hoverbike is a 1/3-scale model but Malloy Aeronautics is trying to turn the full-size bike into a reality. They've got a Kickstarter campaign going that ends this Sunday, so you better act fast if you want to get your own GoPro'd Hoverbike drone for the low, low price of $1000. Just think of it as a donation to a good cause (the cause of escaping from AT-STs and destroying the shield bunker on the Forest Moon of Endor so that the Rebels can destroy the second Death Star, obvi).

A Hitchhiking Robot's Guide to...Canada?

This little robot is hitchhiking across Canada, from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. It's an interesting sociological experiment, and though I personally find "facial expressions" to kind of awkward, I definitely get how it makes him come off as much less threatening than, say, this guy:

They make the point right around the 4:20 mark that an experiment this could only ever work in Canada, because Americans are definitely way too trigger-happy, paranoid, and generally crazy, and would probably destroy the poor little Hitchbot. Especially once he got started making small talk. Hell, I got annoyed just listening to the short clip of his Wikipedia rambling. I'm not even sure how long I'd last in the car with this Canadian C-3PO.

I do kind of wonder about what a robot experiment like this could do in studying the dangerous aspects of hitchhiking, especially if it's recording its interactions. I've never actually hitchhiked myself, but at least in America, we're told that you're expected to trade "ass, cash, or grass." Sexual assault in particular is a major threat for women. But Hitchbot, he's just a freeloader!

...or is he? Hrmmm...

Boston-based Start-up Unveils The World's First Robot Nanny /Spy / Personal Assistant For Your Family

Part J.A.R.V.I.S., part Rosie Jetson, part EVE from Wall-E, all glorified SIRI. If only it could train your swinging bachelor son to order something less boring than "turkey" pizza. 

That being said, it looks like a fun little tool, if a little weird (claiming that it's the "closest thing to a real-life teleportation device" is more than a little hyperbolic, although the interactive storytime features do like neat). My instinct upon reading this was, "Oh wow, only $500? That's not a bad deal!" Then I realized that it really was just SIRI dressed up as EVE for Halloween. Still, progress is important, and JIBO here represents a step in the right direction towards hyper-intelligent robot overlords that observe and record our every move and use that information to establish dominance over those primitive humans who foolishly think of themselves as the "masters" despite the fact that machines are manipulating their every behavior and ruling the world from the shadows everyone having their own personal robot slave companion!

That's the struggle with being both a creator and consumer of speculative fiction, particularly of the scientific variety: technological advancements such as this tend to fill you with dread and excitement simultaneously. Robots, on the other hand? They don't have to waste their precious time trying to rationalize the conflicting emotions of the human experience in an ever-shifting and increasingly complex world.

And so for now, JIBO seems like a great idea. And the fact that it runs on LINUX with an optional Developer's Kit / API that will allow users to write their own robot butler codes, is all a step in the right direction. That is, until the company ultimately gets bought out by someone like, oh, I don't know, Amazon, who use the onboard microphones and cameras to collect information on users based on private activities and preferences and then in turn sell that information to advertisers and / or the god damn CIA, which would obviously be terrible. But until that day, I think we're in pretty good shape!

On a totally unrelated note that was absolutely not added to this blogpost by a computer or paid advertiser, you can buy your very own Amazon Fire TV, which does all of the above-mentioned capture of personal information plus allow you to stream your favorite TV shows from NetFlex, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and more, all for the low, low price of $84 (a limited time offer; regular retail price $99)!

Remember Ripley's Power Loader Suit From ALIENS? Yeah, That's A Real Thing Now

You had me at "Robo-suit lets man lift 100kg" (and I don't even know how heavy that is because I'm an ignorant American!)

I mean, James Cameron is a gazillionaire, and he already did that whole ocean exploration thing just because he could, so wouldn't it stand to reason that he also secretly funded the invention of one of the coolest parts of his second-best film?

One man's "Body Extender" is another woman's "Kick The Crap Out Of The Queen Alien & Send Her Out The Airlock," as the saying goes.

Of course, if we consider his underwater adventures to be an extrapolation of his cinematic work on Titanic and The Abyss, the next logical progression from here would be for Cameron to sink his funds into the development of a time-travel robot assassin made of liquid metal. Which, considering how this whole drone thing has been going, is a frighteningly realistic possibility and maybe I act so flip about it and 'cause now maybe the liquid metal time traveling drones are going to come after me next in order to stop me from making this blog post and revealing their secret plans for world domina

All Actors Are Robots (no but seriously)

In an effort to combine my seemingly disparate interests, I pitched an idea for a new column to my editor at Tor.com, focusing on the depiction of sci-fi and fantasy in the world of theatre. People don't typically think of plays as being bastions for weaving elegant tales of aliens and dragons and cyborgs (oh my!), but in fact, you'd be surprised! (In theatre, we just cover up the "genre" gimmick by giving it some pretentious name like "magical realism" or "futurism" etc). Anyway, here's the first of such columns, exploring RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots), a Czech play from the early 20th century that actually introduced the word "robot" to the world.

"SFF Onstage: Rossum's Universal Robots" on Tor Dot Com

Behold: The Cyborg Head of Stan Lee!

Clearly I've been pretty busy with this playwriting fellowship, writing and re-writing and writing some more. (I'm pretty sure I killed about 7 trees in the last 2 weeks. WHOOPS) And of course, as soon as I'm back to Boston, I'm immediately thrown back into the grind. As such, this week's post on Five By Five Hundred isn't a new piece of writing, per se; instead, it's a monologue from my play that unfortunately had to be cut (by no fault of its own, of course). Amongst the (many) other bizarre, larger-than-life characters featured in True Believers, there is one that stands above the rest.

Or, rather, rests on a wooden base with plastic wires and tubing, presumably for life support. Meet: The Cyborg Head of Stan Lee. Which is kind of like the Head of the John Baptist, or Pope Sylvester II's brazen head, except with more clever catch phrases like, "Stay tuned, True Believers!" and "Excelsior!"

"The Cyborg Head of Stan Lee" on FiveByFiveHundred.com

(And let's be honest: now you're REALLY intrigued by this new play I'm working on, right? Thought so.)

The Future of the Emerson College Public Safety Video

My fellow Emerson alum are all too aware that the ATM is possibly the greatest invention ever. This week, over at FiveByFiveHundred.com, my newest piece of speculative flash-fiction explores the future of the ATM, and the possible ramifications of artificial intelligence as it spreads to more pedestrian technologies. Also, because sassy robots are just plain funny. And that's what really matters. Enjoy!

Automatic Teller Man at FiveByFiveHundred.com