“Ai’s Stories” by Hiroshi Yamamoto

(One of) the year’s best SF in Japan.

This book consists of two stories. One is dystopia, in which humans are dominated by robots. Population goes down all over the world, the remaining humans attack the robots’ facilities and rob foods.

The storyteller is a human boy. He are abducted by a female robot, named Ai. He fears about the brainwashing by robot, but Ai’s hope is “just a talk”, fictions. She tells various stories to him…

That stories are originally written by the author, Hiroshi Yamamoto, and published in many magazines. So, there are no relationship among them. Ai’s stories to the storyteller are just a fiction in the world.

In addition to that each stories are nice, the whole novel has some misteries. What is the truth of the history? Why robots dominate humans? Or, Is it true? Why Ai tells various stories?

The greatest story in this book is “the day Shion came”, a story about caring android. Shion is the android’s name. Shion can think, reason, and behave autonomously, and care old people at a nursely home. The story describes robots, and the surrounding people’s reactions. Especially, the change of surrounding humans are written nicely. Robot is not alternative of nurse. Human accidentaly treat Shion as a human, which is a mistake. But Shion is not just a tool of nurse. The relationship between humankind and robots is very sensitive, and Yamamoto can write it.

BTW, I’d like to comment the book title. Original title is “Ai no monogatari” (アイの物語) . The word `monogatari’ means story. `no’ is one of preposition of Japanese, mostly can be translated into `of’. In this title, the stories are told by the robot. Therefore, the title means “stories by Ai”.

However, one of the stories are about the robot Ai herself. That is just “Ai’s story”.

Moreover, Ai, written as 愛, means “love” in Japan. In this case, the word `no’ denotes the theme of the story. In fact, the theme of this book is love from autonomous robots (artificial intelligence) to humankind. This book is stories about love.

And also, Ai will denotes AI=Artificial Intelligence. This book includes stories about robots, AIs.

The book title has many many meanings. Translation drops these meanings.

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