Movie Review: The Congress

Movie poster for The Congress. Shows Robin Wright being scanned for her digital avatar.

The news of the Writer Author’s Guild going on strike, followed by the SAG-AFSTRA Strike, and the desire for studios to use so-called A.I. not only in scripts and writing, but, more crucially, to scan the images of background actors without their knowledge and consent, convinced me that I needed to rewatch this 2013 movie that has proven rather prescient.

740. Stina Leicht (a.k.a. Mrs. Irish Cream) — Loki’s Ring

https://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/sand-f-740-stina-leicht/SandF_740_StinaLeicht.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Stitcher | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSBizarre aliens, complicated families, and AI therapy, oh my! Shaun Duke is joined by longtime collaborator and repeat interviewee, Stina Leicht. Why? Because Stina has a new book called Loki’s Ring from Saga […]

732. S&F Clacks #1: Borders, Fixing Books, and AI Art, Oh My!

https://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/sand-f-732-clacks-1/SandF_732_Clacks_1.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Stitcher | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSBorder trouble, editing bad stuff out of books, and AI fiction run amok, oh my! Shaun Duke, Brandon O’Brien, Paul Weimer, and Trish Matson join forces for the 1st ever S&F Clacks, our […]

A Book By Its Cover: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

From Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. to Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse to Matt “Grim-Dark” Groening’s upcoming Futurama X-Treme, the standard script for science fiction featuring artificial intelligence (AI) has been machine rising up against humanity. This theme reached its artistic pinnacle in 1953 with the widely acclaimed masterpiece Robot Monster from noted auteur Phil Tucker, a cinematic […]

My Superpower: Tansy Rayner Roberts

My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Tansy Rayner Roberts.   My […]

The Intersection: AI and Creator-bias

Today’s post isn’t about science fiction exactly, but we’ll file it under “thoughts that inspire science fiction” and vice versa. Ask a professional scientist if observer bias exists, and they’ll say yes. Medical science alone has many examples of what happens when bias is ignored. It affects medical practice in dangerous ways. Until recently, drug testing was almost never […]