The Gentle Romance Book Review
Richard Ngo gives us the vibes of the future.
Over the next few years -- decades, at the most -- the world is going to transition into a post-human era. What will this be like? That is the core question that Richard Ngo, an AI researcher, is exploring through this hard sci-fi short story collection.
The Gentle Romance is not a book of literal predictions. Instead, it’s a kind of smattering of different possibilities, mostly realistic, some allegorical. The collection is pulled together from Ngo’s already published online works, with a couple of new stories mixed in and some improved editing.
When I first encountered his work, I was surprised and delighted at how closely it mirrored the expectations that I had struggled to put into words. Of course we will be able to fork and merge our minds -- and of course if we can do that once, we will do it millions of times over. Of course most experience will be in simulation rather than base reality. Of course we will spread out in all directions at the speed of light.
I can say those things as obvious truisms, but Richard Ngo puts them into narratives that feel much more real, or at least differently real. If you are outside of AI, you should read The Gentle Romance to understand what kind of world people inside the space think is coming.
The book plays with many different perspectives on this - human, post-human, and both empowered and disempowered AIs. The titular story is a pretty straightforward summary of the next few decades of one man’s life, as he integrates more and more with technology through to the natural conclusion (a hivemind).
There are a few stories I really enjoyed, where realistic engineering is shown being developed and deployed by advanced AIs -- such as Tinker, about a near-future AI developing computer chips based on proteins and carbon nanotubes, or Succession, from the perspective of a von Neumann probe colonising a distant galaxy. Both of these are especially fun because the engineering is realistic and accurate -- there are numbers, they add up correctly. The motivations and results are exactly what you would expect in the real world.
Other stories show the world from the perspective of minds without much control over their world, sometimes hanging onto their last vestiges of power, sometimes being born into situations they are at the mercy of, and sometimes voluntarily. The breadth here is great -- there are many ways things could go wrong as we develop minds smarter than our own, and many possible victims if we get things wrong.
That said, not every story in this collection resonated with me, and the opening one, ‘From The Archives’ was one of these -- it dragged on, was confusing, and spent time setting up and describing a world which very quickly ended. The horror story ‘Trojan Sky’ was similarly alien and slow.
Ngo’s writing is probably most similar to Arthur C Clarke in that it’s (mostly) concerned with realistic possibilities for the near future without much humour. It’s less wordy than Yudkowsky, and much dryer than Scott Alexander. He doesn’t quite have the same skill for pacing as Andy Weir, but has similar technical depth where it’s warranted.
The quality is comfortably among ‘good scifi’, but where it really shines, like with Arthur C Clarke, is in that sense of usefulness -- reading The Gentle Romance feels like it shapes your expectations of the next few decades in a way that helps prepare for what’s coming.
4/5, would recommend.
Note: I received a free, early copy of the book for this review.