TuringFest 2018

[allele_apocalypse]

AO3: Marie_L

Hello there, brave Turing Fest pinch hitter, thanks for picking me up! Late again with the letter, dammit. I hope it is helpful. No matter what you write, I'm always down for the ROBOTS!!!!!

In general, I like plotty fic and smut equally well, worldbuilding details (make it up if canon does not provide!), “sciency” SF, alien biology & cultures (AI/robots count as aliens in my book), cultural clashes, telepathy & other mental powers (and problems resulting from them), angst, humor, and premises taken seriously or pushed to their full conclusion.

For artificial intelligence specifically, I love the tension between human and not human (even if it's an android that appears human), creator vs. the created, unexpected consequences of programming or creator intentions, and the speculative conjecture of “what counts as life, anyway?” What counts as sentience? Does something that seems more human – in bodily form or in thought processes – count as closer to life to us just because it is familiar? What if the other side defines themselves differently? Most of the canons below involve conflict between human creations and the human need for control in some way. I also love AI going off and forming their own culture in new and unexpected ways. Robot rebellion is a good subcategory of this genre, particularly if the AI is being enslaved or exploited (see: Caprica, Blade Runner, Westworld, probably Almost Human if they'd gotten around to it), but you can also imagine circumstances where the robots simply end up going their own way (e.g. Asimov's series, and the moravecs in Olympos.)

On the shipping front I tend to have OTCs instead of OTPs, and then am fine with hooking up my fave with anybody, of any gender, including original characters. So if you want to take a singly nominated character and hook them up with some other canon character (for example Daneel/Elijah Bailey), go for it.

DNWs: No fluff, excessive violence (canon-typical violence is fine), or human bodily fluids (somehow robot gunk is okay).

 

Almost Human – Dorian, Dorian/John Kennex, Dorian/DRN-494

Ah, Dorian and the tragic fate of the too-emotional DRNs. Since this canon was cut short before it could reconcile its many poorly thought-out contradictions, it opens the door for fic without worrying about pesky canon compliance. Why did the DRNs malfunction… and what's so special about Dorian that he isn't malfunctioning? Why does Dorian – who can obviously think for himself and is not blindly obedient – acquiesce so much to police authority over his body and mind? What's with the human memories and magical Synthetic Soul? This is a canon where AUs are fine, so long as Dorian stays an android, e.g. Robot Hooker AU, or changing the setting to something other than dystopic, or making it more obviously dystopic. Also it would be fun for Turing Fest to do one of those Kennex-is-secretly-a-cyborg stories (perhaps combined with human-soul-downloaded Dorian? Compare and contrast?)

 

Blade Runner – Rachael & Ana Stelline, Freysa

Another visually pretty canon that makes no sense. The apparent free-will-possessing replicants can't rebel, until they do, and then can't again through some corporate merger, and then do again. They are physically indistinguishable from humans (but not clones!), except for some philosophical zombie eye responses, and the most important feature that separates them from humans is...they can't reproduce themselves? This justifies slavery? Childbirth = !LIFE (?!) Anyway, this brings us to Rachael & Ana. All the fix-its in the world, people. I humbly request to explore the concept of an android who doesn't know she's an android giving birth to another android/human/hybrid person-thingie, and feel free to change anything else. Just make it make sense.

Freysa – In a similar vein… make the android rebellions make sense? Can they or can't they, and what tips the new models over to understand they don't have to be slaves? This is one of those characters that appears on the screen and you go “why isn't she the center of this movie instead of pretty boy over here?” Also, I wouldn't object to a story where Freysa = Rachael (somehow).

 

Caprica – Tamara Adama, Zoe Graystone/Lacy Rand, U-87

For whatever reason, I have more of a fondness for Caprica than reboot!BSG. Probably because BSG jumped the shark too many times by the end with their hidden mystical Cylons. It's too bad the writers didn't have the Caprican pre-history worked out from the beginning, because the origins of the Cylon genocidal pathologies in a human religious cult… explains a lot. I’d love any stories exploring the various versions of Zoe and her fanaticism, or with Lacy and her fanaticism, and how those core personality nuggets propagate down the mechanical generations to end where BSG begins. What do the Cylons believe, and how do those beliefs change over time, to their murderous end?

Tamara – The VR elements of the show were not as well integrated into the cult elements as they could have been, but the concept of the eternal life via upload is fascinating. So, what happens to Tamara as time goes on, and the AI is progressively leashed, and then finally rebels? Does she die when the servers die? Does she live on in the Cylons, or communicate with them them before the end?

 

Robot & Foundation series (Asimov) – R. Daneel Olivaw

As far as Daneel is concerned these two series are of a piece, although AO3 separates them. Early and late Daneel to go with early(ish) and late Asimov. After Giskard dies, Daneel establishes a whole secret robot society toiling away for eternity for the good of humanity, as well as they can judge it. In the Foundation prequel books Daneel really gets in direct contact with humans, interfering with galactic government and society in order to bring about Hari Seldon's future history. Again, the theme is early programming (the three laws of robotics in this case, plus Giskard's Zeroth Law) propagating down deep history, far beyond what the original creators could ever have imagined.

I'd love a story anywhere on Daneel's lifespan, that either hints at what will come or what came before, linking Daneel's formative experiences in the Bailey years to the Foundation years. Also anything behind the robot scenes after Giskard's death, either early or late in the timeline, would be fabulous.

 

Lifecycle of Software Objects (Chiang) – Ana Alvarado/Jax, Marco/Polo, Marco/Human Customer, Xenotherian(s)

This novella, online here, asks a couple of interesting questions. One, what happens if artificial intelligence takes as much time – and just as much human interaction – as biological human childhood to achieve? Who would put in the time and what would be the result? Second, what is the transition point between “child” intelligence and “adult” intelligence, when can a being be considered to have adult rights and responsibilities for their own autonomy? There are also some great bits about the obsolescence of technology, and those AIs it could potentially leave behind. Potential stories could include any continuation where the novella leaves off – does Marco really do the online porn thing – or anything from the AI point of view, since we see everything from Ana's human POV. What is it like to live in a virtual Earth, or be confined when humans move on to other games, to jump back between a mechanical body and VR? What about taking on the forms of the more exotic creatures, such as the Xenotherians?

 

Illium/Olympos – Mahnmut, Orphu, Mahnmut/Orphu

Right upfront: These two books are undeniable crack. The central plot involves nanobot-infested posthumans who recreate the fall of Troy on Olympus Mons on Mars, with themselves as Gods with full powers. Also, back on Earth in the year 3000 or so, the few original script humans have been curiously neutered, and lead out their artless hedonistic lives – Odysseus injects a bit of hunter manliness at a certain point – for exactly 100 years, until they are beamed to the heavenly space station in the sky and are eaten by Calaban. Yeah. That's the plot.

BUT! There are two great robots. Meanwhile to all of the above, autonomous self-replicating bots known as “moravecs” have been seeded around the outer planets of the solar system, and have been left alone to their own devices for centuries. And when the Mars weirdness begins, the moravecs dispatch two of their own to investigate: Orphu, a giant black hard-shelled deep space robot, and Mahnmut, more of a small ship designed for zipping through the oceans of Io. The two argue about Proust while all the posthuman batshittery is going down. They basically represent the repository of all that is worthwhile in human culture, after human themselves have abandoned it. I am a complete sucker for anything involving autonomous robot societies, especially those that are not androids – not intended to mimic humans at all, but be their own thing, for their own purposes. Any story at involving these two would leave me thrilled.

 

Westworld – Bernard Lowe, Bernard Lowe/Robert Ford, Maeve Millay

On-going canon, fist pump! (Obviously, this is written after season 1 only, and I'll be watching season 2 as it airs, so any stories in this canon can incorporate the new stuff or ignore it and go completely with s1. I'll leave that up to the writer and your tolerance for canon uncertainty. Neither spoilers nor jossing will bother me.) This series has better writing than most of the others listed here, which actually makes it trickier to do fic, IMO. There's a temptation to strongly adhere to canon when the original is done well, so I'll say it now – I haven't watched this show five times to get the entire timeline straight, and I don't expect any exchange writer to, either. What I like about it is more the exploration of memory vs. emerging self-awareness. When your memories can be altered at will, how can you distinguish reality from not, and true reality from the fantasy you are supposed to project? And if you do break through, how do you maintain a sense of self apart form the artificially induced memories?

Bernard is yet another robot-doesn't-know-he's-a-robot (huh, a theme). The emotional shock of this, the exploration of what happens next to a person who must absorb what kind of person” he or she is, never gets old. Its implied that Bernard, like Dolores, has awoken many times and erased back to naivety. Added, of course, to the fact that he's some kind of copy of Ford's old android-inventing partner, and programs new robots himself, to complete the self-replication loop. Maeve represents the android who has truly broken free, and manages to escape to the outside world (worlds?) and forge her own identity. But even she is chained to the artificial memories implanted in her. What counts as real and what counts as fake? Can free will exist if you have no control over your own mind and body?