Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Pattern-chaser]

This topic is exactly what the title declares. It would be easier if you post one author, or one book, rather than a list of every author/book that you have ever enjoyed, but there are no 'rules' here.

I'll start, with a recommendation that came from our very own Jack Daydream: Eugenia Cheng's book on Logic. An excellent read, I found...

[Lagayascienza]

I have recently gotten heavily into Adrian Tchaikovsky's science fiction and have read most of his novels. I am almost finished his his most reacent (2024) work,"Sevice Model". The blurb reads:

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service.

When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, it murders its owner. The robot discovers it can also do something else it never did before: It can run away.

Fleeing the household it enters a wider world it never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.

That blurb gives an idea of the plot but it hardly does the novel justice. Philosophical issues such as logic, consciousness, agency, autonomy and the purpose or the "meaning of life" are explored. It is very funny and very serious at the same time. The writing is wonderfully engaging - it enables the suspension of disbelief so that the reader becomes enmeshed is the strange apocalyptic world left behind as humanity in its last throes is disappearing from the scene. I like this book so much I almost don't want to get to the end.

Also in its favor is that it is conveniently available on Kindle. I highly recommend this book, as I do other science fiction books by Tchaikovsky such as Alien Clay, Children of Time.