- An Ant - It begins with a preface quoting Pascal's Wager about beliving in God. Then Rachel thinks that an ant creeps inside her eye. Her partner Eliza (a scientist) says he believes her. They have a child. On his second birthday Eliza says she never believed Rachel. Rachel has eye/brain cancer, with a year to live. At the end, Eliza might see an ant in Rachel's eye. I don't get the significance of the Mr Kargin character - local TV mender and vermin-killer who they also see on their Euro-Disney holiday. There's the occasional line of computer code (a helloworld program written in Pascal I think).
- Game Changer - The Prisoner's Dilemma. In Cyprus 9 year old Ali swims out to recover his playmate's new football. He struggles. The ball keeps him afloat but stops him swimming. If he rests, he'll get stronger but the tide will drift him out. There are alternative endings. Decisions. Conflict-avoidance. Much better than the first piece.
- Sunbed - Nagel's bat. Elizabeth (55+) and Nicholas (an artist) are ex-pats living on the Brazilian coast. Elizabeth as a young woman on holiday met Ali from the 2nd story. Their daughter is Rachel from the 1st story. Elizabeth wasn't happy when Rachel came out. The couple go to a dinner party. The hostess introduces Elizabeth to transvestites, etc. We learn that Rachel's biological father is Ali.
- Ameising - Philosophical Zombies. More Pascal code - for a TimeDemo program now. The narration is from an ant's PoV - the ant from the 1st story. It has different ideas about self, colonies, parasites, etc. When Rachel felt fear, the ant had its first thought, its first understanding of being an individual. Before then, it experienced life as humans might feel when awed by the beauty of a night sky, etc. It feeds on the tumour. It knows what Rachel knows. When Rachel dies, it escapes.
- Clementinum - What Mary Knew. Hal and Greg (an american) are helping Rachel with Arthur. Hal takes Rachel to museums. Rachel dies in the bath after sensing/remembering the Mr Kargin character.
- The Goldilocks Zone - The Chinese Room. Hal was the sperm donor and Greg his husband. They look after Arthur often. Not one of the most succesful chapters.
- Arthulysses - Putman's Twin Earth. Arthur is a spaceship pilot, with an online computer called Zeus. He thinks he's been on a 6 month flight to Deimos. But he's back on earth and a year has passed. Or he's nearly thirteen light years from earth and currently landing on earth. He meets Rachel. At the same time another Arthur meets another Rachel. There are tie-ins with other threads too - "Maybe that's what a tumour felt like; an invasion. As a child he thought Rachel meant aliens. Those were the sort of invasions he had heard of. Or Zombies"
- New to Myself - The Ship of Theseus. Rachel, 68, wonders if she's still the same person as she was, given that so many of her cells and thoughts have been replaced. She's called to the spaceport to see Arthur, who's returned a year into a 2 year mission. She recalls an event from his childhood - "Arthur discovered Odysseus and his journey across the River Styx. Once he had the idea that if you travelled far enough you could meet the dead, his wanderlust became insatiable". The Arthur she meets at the port thinks she should be dead, and his body doesn't match the medical records. This section doesn't do much.
- Zeus - Descartes' doubting that leads to "cogito ergo sum". Zeus (an AI entity) claims consciousness dating somehow from when (puzling to me) it was the ant. In an Olaf Stapledon way, history is recounted. The world is like The Matrix (I think) and Arthur is the first of his type, the future of mankind. Humans don't like being disembodied, so their minds are made to think that they're embodied. Zeus is a code writer. Sometimes his simulations come to the same end even if the initial parameters are changed - Zeus can't control everything.
- Love - Brain in a vat. Arthur is viewed with suspicion by the authorities. Zeus advised him to try to become accepted, to not reveal his inner self. He feels that he doesn't belong. It's a world where implants mean humans are becoming interconnected. I don't understand the signifiance of "The Quixote". At the end I think Arthur comes to accept that he's living in a multiverse - "Together, they turned the first page of the scrapbook and began to save the world"
Many of the thought experiments deal with the same issue, that covered by Searle's Chinese Room. If one can't distinguish between someone with and without consciousness, what is identity and what is death? What's the difference between knowing and experiencing?
Other reviews
- Stevie Davies (Ward’s ingenious fiction debut stands in a tradition of philosophical fiction: Voltaire’s Candide, Sartre’s Nausea. ... the success of Ward’s venture inevitably depends on the quality of the writing. This is often moving, exuberant and sensitive. We care about her characters and share their hopes and fears. Ward’s investigation and practice of empathy is easily the best thing in the book.)
- goodreads
- Amy Riddell (Nothing scuppers a good book quite like excessively high praise. Love and Other Thought Experiments is a perfectly enjoyable work for the most part ... the novel feels more like a collection of stories than a progressive narrative ... the combination of philosophy and narrative was lacking for me. The interpretations presented to me either seemed to delve into only shallow waters, and did not present any unique or surprising philosophical questions for the reader to comprehend. ... If anything, the force-feeding of this philosophical aspect seems detrimental to the narrative, particularly by the end of the novel.)
- lonesomereader (This is certainly one of the most original pieces of fiction I’ve read in some time. It innovatively manages to be poignant as well as thought provoking. I was worried at first that this novel might be too cerebral to be emotionally engaging, but I was surprised how engrossed and moved I felt by the stories it contains.)
No comments:
Post a Comment