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Informationen zum Autor Wole Talabi Klappentext "A jaw-dropping collection....Beautiful, vibrant, and electrifying, this has the makings of a modern classic." — Publishers Weekly (starred review), and a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Spring 2024 Roundup pick "For fans of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian works and P. Djèlí Clark’s speculative fiction, Convergence Problems provides an Afrocentric sf narrative that is sure to captivate." — Raychel Bennet, Booklist (starred review) "Written with an emotional economy few storytellers can master....A fascinating and riveting exploration of what the future may hold—for better or worse." —Kirkus From the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Nommo award nominated author of Shigidi and The Brass Head Of Obalufon comes a stunning new collection of stories that investigate the rapidly changing role of technology and belief in our lives as we search for meaning, for knowledge, for justice; constantly converging on our future selves. In “An Arc of Electric Skin,” a roadside mechanic seeking justice volunteers to undergo a procedure that will increase the electrical conductivity of his skin by orders of magnitude. In “Blowout,” a woman races against time and a previously undocumented geological phenomenon to save her brother on the surface of Mars. In “Ganger,” a young woman trapped in a city run by machines must transfer her consciousness into an artificial body and find a way to give her life purpose. In “Debut,” Nairobi-based technical support engineer tries to understand what is happening when an AI art system begins malfunctioning in ways that could change the world. The sixteen stories of Convergence Problems, which include work published for the first time in this collection, rare stories, and recently acclaimed work, showcase Talabi at his creative best: playful and profound, exciting and experimental, always interesting. Leseprobe “Debut” from Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi The first piece of art that Blombos 7090 and 4020 made together was destroyed by a system reboot. It didn’t find its audience. At 16:17 West African Time, the biodiesel generator at Terra Kulture Arts Studio Arena stopped and restarted seven times. In doing so, it interrupted—halfway through a production of The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives—the frenzied dance of the performance robots and the fast-paced, rhythmic beating of automated dundun drum. Without any instruction, printers in the management offices produced single sheets of paper with line patterns connecting an apparently arbitrary array of points. An additional 0.02 naira was added to all customer bills in the food lounge and the controller logic of the central air conditioning reduced its target temperature by the same number of degrees. A blank space was added in front of the first letter of the names of all the books in the database of the Terra bookstore and art gallery, and the infrared pulses used to control access to the main entrance became erratic causing the gate to bang against the concrete wall like its own strange and constant drumming. The Studio’s networked systems were glitching. Badly. “Ah ahn! What’s all this rubbish now?” Tosin Famuyiwa cried out from the backstage control room of the theater as she observed the seventh interruption to the show she had helped organize. She let out an exasperated sigh and stood up, smoothed her long Ankara skirt, which matched the head-tie she wore, and tucked the back of her black tank top back in. Her calm belied the anger in her chest. She stepped out of the control room and tapped a carefully manicured finger calmly across the mobile lightscreen in her palm and dialed customer support. All of Terra Kulture’s systems were managed by the Blombos artificial intelligence program provided for free to every modern art center in the world as par...
