La Jornada – Ted Chiang or science fiction writing without war doping

American writer Ted Chiang has gone beyond and criticized interplanetary travel of gigantic machines and wars with advanced technology as “a steroid version of the colonial and war-stirring ideals of advanced nations” in science fiction, says narrator Alberto Chimal.

An interview about the short story exhalation, By the author of Chinese descent, who has appeared at the International Book Fair at the Palacio de Minería, Chimal highlights that his themes are “environmental protection, human responsibility in the use of technology, and an intimate experience in thinking about the future and language.”

Chiang is well known within the United States. “It’s amazing because he stayed in the story. Only twenty stories were published, but he won awards within the specialty,” and one modified for the film Access.

Alberto Chimal (Toluca, 1970) describes Chiang as an extraordinary writer because he “has a scientific background and uses scientific subjects to start working with his texts. She has sophisticated qualities. You always think about scientific credibility while developing your literary work.

“at exhalation And in it the text “The Great Silence” narrated by an animal. It takes the human perspective at the center of the narrative and wonders how an animal could observe the extinction of species and the looting of the environment. In the “life cycle” of software objects, he imagines an artificial intelligence that, unlike what appears in the vast majority of science fiction, must learn, must shape with the formation of human consciousness.

Another story, “What is expected of us”, is philosophically speaking, but from the way humans give meaning to life through language. There he wonders if evidence of life’s nonsense can be found and what effects it can have. ”

Chimal states that these stories show that Chiang “uses the science fiction mechanism, the idea of ​​speculating from knowledge, trends, or topics of interest, to visualize situations that have not yet occurred and to ask questions that are not commonly asked by the authors of the sub-genre or that we are not accustomed to making “.