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trish204's review
3.0
This is the review for the short story STET by Sarah Gailey.
The author and I didn't have a nice first encounter - she wrote a novelette with a great premise that completely fell flat for me. Unfortunately, something very similar happened here.
This is an article with footnotes as well as links and editor's comments on the side. It depicts an incident involving an autonomous (self-driving) car that made a fateful decision.
Self-driving cars are quite the hot topic right now. Personally, considering all the maniacs behind the wheel, the growing egotism of the drivers, the still increasing numbers of drunken drivers and all the other stuff that can and often does happen to you on the road, I wouldn't mind if the cars drove themselves like in those wonderful scifi stories of old (though a part of me would also mourn the good old days of driving as I like fast cars). However, the technology necessary for that needs to be sophisticated and well-engineered and even then there would be errors. It's unavoidable.
...
Funny, isn't it?! How we demand perfection from a machine despite us humans being so far from that same perfection. If you look at the numbers, even if car accidents decreased by only a fourth, that would already be a win for everyone. But I bet that wouldn't be enough. After the first accident, people would be coming with pitchforks and torches and demands no human could ever fulfill or has ever fulfilled. What a sad joke.
Anyway, in this story, self-driving cars are a reality, the one in this story is a Toyota. And it made a mistake. Or a decision most humans wouldn't have made. So we are talking about a casualty, about the people learning about this from the news as well as those directly, personally, involved. And as these things go, you have the objective view on things and you have the highly emotionally charged look.
But then we get another data point: those wo taught the AI. It is, true to its name, still artificial after all. So what it did was based on matrices programmed into it by humans. Does that make it homicide? Can we really be neutral in a discussion about this issue, especially considering who the victim in this story was?!
I feel torn about the presentation of this story. On one hand, it's pretty unique (not entirely but it's also not done too often). On the other hand, all the constant links and sidenotes pulled me out of the story's flow so I was more annoyed by the emotionally charged comments left and right than emotionally effected.
Still ... I liked it.
You can read it for free here: https://firesidefiction.com/stet
The author and I didn't have a nice first encounter - she wrote a novelette with a great premise that completely fell flat for me. Unfortunately, something very similar happened here.
This is an article with footnotes as well as links and editor's comments on the side. It depicts an incident involving an autonomous (self-driving) car that made a fateful decision.
Self-driving cars are quite the hot topic right now. Personally, considering all the maniacs behind the wheel, the growing egotism of the drivers, the still increasing numbers of drunken drivers and all the other stuff that can and often does happen to you on the road, I wouldn't mind if the cars drove themselves like in those wonderful scifi stories of old (though a part of me would also mourn the good old days of driving as I like fast cars). However, the technology necessary for that needs to be sophisticated and well-engineered and even then there would be errors. It's unavoidable.
...
Funny, isn't it?! How we demand perfection from a machine despite us humans being so far from that same perfection. If you look at the numbers, even if car accidents decreased by only a fourth, that would already be a win for everyone. But I bet that wouldn't be enough. After the first accident, people would be coming with pitchforks and torches and demands no human could ever fulfill or has ever fulfilled. What a sad joke.
Anyway, in this story, self-driving cars are a reality, the one in this story is a Toyota. And it made a mistake. Or a decision most humans wouldn't have made. So we are talking about a casualty, about the people learning about this from the news as well as those directly, personally, involved. And as these things go, you have the objective view on things and you have the highly emotionally charged look.
But then we get another data point: those wo taught the AI. It is, true to its name, still artificial after all. So what it did was based on matrices programmed into it by humans. Does that make it homicide? Can we really be neutral in a discussion about this issue, especially considering who the victim in this story was?!
I feel torn about the presentation of this story. On one hand, it's pretty unique (not entirely but it's also not done too often). On the other hand, all the constant links and sidenotes pulled me out of the story's flow so I was more annoyed by the emotionally charged comments left and right than emotionally effected.
Still ... I liked it.
You can read it for free here: https://firesidefiction.com/stet
lindzey's review
3.0
I read this due to its inclusion in the Hugo voter packet.
I'm still not sure if I liked this story, or just appreciated the way in which it was told. It was a fresh presentation of a well-worn "morality of self driving cars" theme.
The main text is a dry, one-page excerpt from a future textbook on self-driving car technology, followed by several pages of increasingly editorial footnotes. Layered atop that are the "editor"s attempts to make this piece of work less personal, and the "author"'s responses, uniformly concluded with STET.
As you read, it emerges that the "author"s daughter had been killed by a self-driving car that was swerving to avoid a bird, and she had dug deep into the technology to figure out why that decision was made.
I'm still not sure if I liked this story, or just appreciated the way in which it was told. It was a fresh presentation of a well-worn "morality of self driving cars" theme.
The main text is a dry, one-page excerpt from a future textbook on self-driving car technology, followed by several pages of increasingly editorial footnotes. Layered atop that are the "editor"s attempts to make this piece of work less personal, and the "author"'s responses, uniformly concluded with STET.
As you read, it emerges that the "author"s daughter had been killed by a self-driving car that was swerving to avoid a bird, and she had dug deep into the technology to figure out why that decision was made.
cathepsut's review
5.0
Review for STET by Sarah Gailey
Very different. In a good way. A tragic story told in the footnotes and annotations. Clever. Very relevant topic. I do not have the answer as to what is right or wrong or how the decision should be made.
Can be read for free here: https://firesidefiction.com/stet
If you want to read something unusual once in a while, check it out. Read it online to be able to fully experience the formatting.
Part of my HUGO 2019 reading. 4.5 stars.
Very different. In a good way. A tragic story told in the footnotes and annotations. Clever. Very relevant topic. I do not have the answer as to what is right or wrong or how the decision should be made.
Can be read for free here: https://firesidefiction.com/stet
If you want to read something unusual once in a while, check it out. Read it online to be able to fully experience the formatting.
Part of my HUGO 2019 reading. 4.5 stars.
sa_ra's review
4.0
My favourite of the 2019 Hugo Nominees for Best Short Story. https://firesidefiction.com/stet
A speculation on the future of self-directing cars. Gimmicky, but the gimmick is meticulously crafted and works as a storytelling device perfectly for this kind of story. Both well-thought and emotional.
(”Stet” is a copyediting term meaning ”leave as is.”)
A speculation on the future of self-directing cars. Gimmicky, but the gimmick is meticulously crafted and works as a storytelling device perfectly for this kind of story. Both well-thought and emotional.
(”Stet” is a copyediting term meaning ”leave as is.”)
expendablemudge's review
5.0
Formally like Nicholson Baker's [b:The Mezzanine|247000|The Mezzanine|Nicholson Baker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1307064718s/247000.jpg|2340174] for the hyperlink generation, a tiny text telling a titanic story whose layers grow like the lamination in puff pastry. They're as buttery-rich as those layers, too.
Gailey thinks about things we all think about...what happens when something goes utterly irretrievably bad?...and then builds an armature of words to hang feelings on. We the audience stand back and look at the shapes while our minds assess and absorb the meanings. Like the best pastry-eating experiences, the mental exercise of consuming a Gailey story involves enjoyment of the whole while remaining aware of the subtle parts.
This is a genuinely moving story, about a universally relatable subject, that asks hard questions about awful predictions of tragedies to come. It's free online and takes at most 10 minutes to read (you'll want to go back and re-experience some subtleties), and fully deserves its nomination for the 2019 Hugo Award for Short Fiction.
Gailey thinks about things we all think about...what happens when something goes utterly irretrievably bad?...and then builds an armature of words to hang feelings on. We the audience stand back and look at the shapes while our minds assess and absorb the meanings. Like the best pastry-eating experiences, the mental exercise of consuming a Gailey story involves enjoyment of the whole while remaining aware of the subtle parts.
This is a genuinely moving story, about a universally relatable subject, that asks hard questions about awful predictions of tragedies to come. It's free online and takes at most 10 minutes to read (you'll want to go back and re-experience some subtleties), and fully deserves its nomination for the 2019 Hugo Award for Short Fiction.
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