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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

Professor Ross King, mad scientist who sealed the fate of humanity this afternoon, and the unwitting lab assistant he will soon feed to his creation to sate its hunger for what humans call “feelings.”

Well, Battlestar Galactica is over. And if the show has taught us anything, it’s that humanity, while capable of great and heroic feats even against unspeakable odds, needs to tone it down a little on the hubris front. To build technology cleverer than oneself is certain doom; we have four seasons of proof. It’s nice to find a cautionary tale that really influences people, you know?

…oh, we’re going to actually go ahead and create a bunch of robots that can “reason, formulate theories and discover scientific knowledge on their own”?

I guess while Professor Ross King was sequestered in some bunker someplace building this little guy, no one thought to pass on the memo that usually in fiction, when mankind creates a robot cleverer than itself, it’s not the best idea in the world. Did anyone ever mention that to him, do we think? No?

Sure, okay. That’s fine. I didn’t want to wait around for the Great Robot Coup anyway. Now I can just schedule my “celebrate our new overlord” potluck for next Thursday, and then don’t even have to worry about getting overbooked for the weekend! Win-win. SCIENCE.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Genevieve Valentine

Author

Genevieve Valentine’s first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, won the 2012 Crawford Award and was nominated for the Nebula. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Lightspeed, Apex, and others, and the anthologies Federations, The Living Dead 2, Running with the Pack, After, and more.

Her nonfiction has appeared at NPR.org, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Weird Tales, Tor.com, and she is a co-author of Geek Wisdom (out from Quirk Books). She is an occasional columnist at Fantasy magazine, and sporadically updates her Twitter. Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her blog. More information can be found at www.genevievevalentine.com.

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