Justin C. Key is a practicing psychiatrist and a speculative fiction writer. He is the author of the debut novel The Hospital at the End of the World and the story collection The World Wasn’t Ready for You. His stories have appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Lightspeed, and on Tor.com. He received a BA in biology from Stanford University and completed his residency in psychiatry at UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.
At Lit Hub Key tagged nine favorite depictions of AI in fiction, including:
Murderbot (Martha Wells, All Systems Red)Read about another entry on the list.
What happens when a machine designed to protect humans by any-means-necessary hacks itself to independence? Many tales and movies explore thisnightmare scenario (SkyNet, anyone?), but the self-named ‘Murderbot’ would rather binge TV shows than conquer humanity. I love speculative fiction because of its ability to give insights about our world from the outside looking in. Murderbot is a prime example of that, making what’s supposed to be alien into something endearing and relatable.
All Systems Red also appears among Debbie Urbanski's nine books that center asexuality, Lorna Wallace's ten best novels about Artificial Intelligence, Deana Whitney's five amusing AI characters who should all definitely hang out, Andrew Skinner's five top stories about the lives of artificial objects, Annalee Newitz's list of seven books about remaking the world, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Rivqa Rafael's five top books that give voice to artificial intelligence, T.W. O'Brien's five recent books that explore the secret lives of robots, Sam Reader's top six science fiction novels for fans of Westworld, and Nicole Hill's six robots too smart for their own good.
--Marshal Zeringue
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