Recently, Japanese science fiction writer Shinichi Hoshina has two works, "Artificial Beauty" and "Hello - Come Out" published in China. I first chose to read Artificial Beauty, a collection of 39 short stories, which I created earlier. In this work, some stories are more distinctive in science fiction and full of prospects for science and technology; some stories are achieved through drugs and other incredible effects, which in my opinion are more magical; some stories are currently realized by science and technology, and they are more realistic and valuable. Through short texts, Hoshi Shinichi tells one magical story after another that is interesting, imaginative, and even contains a little philosophy. I think this book is very suitable for readers with relatively high work pressures, as a reading choice for leisure time such as lunch breaks. Reading one or two short stories in this book every day doesn't take long and you can relax while reading.
【Japan】Shinichi Hoshi by Artificial Beauty
Many readers may be as unfamiliar with the name Xingxinyi as I do. But when I saw that "Shinichi Kudo in Detective Conan was named after him," I instantly became interested in him. After reading the introduction to his life and the promotional articles written by the promoter of science fiction literature in "Artificial Beauty", especially seeing him say: "In order to create a good work, even if you dedicate your soul to it", and his emphasis on creativity with "the wings of the intention, the wind and clouds in the pen", these have made me more full of expectations for his works.
Japanese science fiction writer Shinichi Hoshi
Artificial Beauty is both the title of the collection and the title of the first story in the entire book. This story gave me a pretty good first impression of Shinichi Hoshi's work. The artificial beauty in the story is a beautiful robot created by a bar owner out of personal interests that can only talk and drink. The bar owner recycles the wine she drank, which is reasonable from an economic point of view, but there is a clear safety hazard, which leads to the tragic end of the story. The whole story is short, and the final plot direction is quite surprising.
Illustrations in the book "Artificial Beauty"
Because I am very interested in artificial intelligence, I have read several books in related fields, so when I saw the description of artificial beauty in this story, the first thing that came to my mind was the beautiful robot "ERICA" developed by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University. As far as I know, humanoid bionic robots are more elaborate and more expensive than mechanical robots, but they are also more likely to make people feel close. The beauty robot in "Artificial Beauty" can not only talk, but also drink.
Hiroshi Ishiguro and his development of "ERICA"
Previously, I have seen comments that the scientific and technological elements in xingxinyi's science fiction are insufficient. However, after watching "Artificial Beauty", in terms of the age of creation of this story, I feel that it is already science fiction enough. If you think about it, the robot that can speak is difficult to build, after all, intelligent voice has matured in recent years by relying on big data. It is not difficult to simulate the action of drinking only drinking, but I doubt whether there is a robot that can actually drink liquids. Not to mention that in order to achieve the realization of drinking different wines, you can also flow out of different plastic pipes, which is probably more complicated to design. Therefore, I think the science fiction in this story was still fantasy at the time of creation, and now it may be closer to full realization.
"Alien Visitor" is a very ironic story, which can be summed up in a simple Internet buzzword: The clown is actually myself. An alien comes to Earth, and people in charge of different fields come up with all kinds of ways to please him, but they can never impress him. It turned out that he had just come to Earth to do a live broadcast and let their people see the novel ideas and customs of the Earthlings.
The Possessed Project is a somewhat magical story, and after seeing a series of effects of being possessed by various animals, "I" offered to see the process of being possessed by animals. Although the director of the institute fulfilled "my" request, at the end of the story, "I" probably drank a cup of urine handed by the director who had been possessed by the fox.
Secret Fun is a somewhat ridiculous story about routines and anti-routines. It is mainly about a man who drugs his wife every day and then goes to the bar to drink while his wife is asleep. Usually during the day men deliberately stay away from the bar where they drank that night, and once they found that there was no bar in that location. When he returned home, the man learned that his wife had prepared a pillow for him to put his head on, which would make him dream of going to the bar to drink.
"Meticulous Life" feels like it's ridiculing smart homes. People have been dead for 10 hours, and the various devices of the smart home have bathed him, cooked, and sent him to work. However, this story has a very real feeling, because now individual smart devices do make some similar, relatively low-level mistakes.
Life Support Province is like a survival game in which all people who enjoy a happy life need to follow the policy and be ready to accept the arrival of death at any time, including those responsible for executing the life of others and the people in life support province who cannot escape the sudden arrival of death orders.
"Lucky Bells" is a desperate story, a man has been looking forward to winning the lottery, insisted on 10 years but never got his wish. In the end, when he bought the second lucky bell and wanted to see if he could not win the lottery because the first lucky bell was bad, he learned that the first lucky bell was the winning product that brought him luck. This story has a very realistic moral, revealing that the luck or beauty we are looking for may be all around us, and we will find it from another angle.
"The Man Who Was In Love" is also a somewhat magical and absurd story. The middle-aged scientist found himself wasting his youth and suddenly wanted to fall in love, so he decided to formulate a dementor. Although the dementor was successfully formulated, several trials were accidentally spilled on other substances or people other than the target woman, and because the effect of the drug would last for half a year, it caused scientists a bunch of ridiculous trouble. The story also mentions, "Dementor is actually a violation of the laws of nature, so it is inevitable to be punished." Even at the end of the story, it is difficult for scientists to throw away this drug, and it is finally used by a woman on scientists. Since the successful preparation of Dementor, scientists have clearly lifted a stone to drop their feet, and the expected love with beautiful women has not been realized, and they have added endless troubles to their ordinary lives.
The core product in "Identification Machine" is an identity identification device that now seems to be ready to be manufactured. Humans in the story rely too much on this device, resulting in relatives, friends, colleagues, etc. losing basic trust with each other.
"Ideal Salesmanship" is a story similar to "the birds are exhausted, the good bow is hidden; the cunning rabbit dies, and the lackey cooks". The owner of the food company encountered the problem of slow sales of products, so he called the director of the enterprise development department. And the minister can always come up with the idea of solving the problem of unsalable existing products by manufacturing new products or other means. When the minister thought that he had created a perfect closed industrial chain for the enterprise, he made the boss feel that he had no use value.
"Fate" tells the sad fate of a robot, not only praising the mission of the robot, loyal side, but also criticizing its rigid, impromptu, procedural side.
The robot bionic technology in "Different" has become very realistic, and it can reach the point of being fake and real. But when her husband, who has been missing for many years, comes home, the woman still feels that her husband is different from before. The woman told the doctor about her doubts, and it turned out that she wanted the doctor to help see her husband. As a result, the doctor easily concluded that the other party was a robot, because the doctor himself was. This story reveals the inside story of the insurance industry, but also reflects the cunning of the business society.
The story of "The Living Room" shows the ideal state of smart home personalized push according to user preferences. Among them, some of the science fiction parts should be achievable by now, but the effect is probably not so good. In addition, the story also exposes the ugly side of human nature that is more easily corrupted.
"Adapted to Man" is about a robot that is recycled and adjusted, and the owner finds that it has become dull. After contacting the manufacturer, I learned that it was the manufacturer who adjusted the robot of the user who issued the instructions more rashly according to the owner's previous use, and the robot would only execute after receiving the same command three times. The story truly reflects a situation where some people in real life make decisions easily, but quickly change their minds. It ruthlessly reveals the personality characteristics of such people who are irresponsible and often love to shirk responsibility.
The value detector in "Value Detector" was originally a magical device that can detect the value of everything, but when its display end is held in the owner's hand for testing, it will show that the owner is a very valuable person; once the display end is out of the hand, he is just a mortal. Such test results feel very mysterious, as if to indicate that all the value is in their own hands.
The wireless flavor enhancer in "Wireless Flavor Enhancer" is a miniature device in a tooth that reproduces the taste of food or drink and makes people's mouth enjoy. The person using it is clearly living in a fantasy of taste, and once the device goes wrong, one has to face a tasteless reality.
The story of "The First Section Chief" is about helping entrepreneurs to invest more firmly in entrepreneurial work through a cumbersome approval process.
"The Age of Long-Distance Commuting" is a relatively sci-fi story, telling the story that people prefer to commute long distances due to the convenience of commuting to and from work. The people in the story can sleep in the box when they go to work and are automatically sent to the office; on the way to work, they can choose various pastimes to pass the time according to their mood or preferences.
"Advertising Age" is about a merchant who advertises by renting the reflex nerves of some people, who will say a preset advertising word due to conditioned reflexes and get paid for it.
The story of "Annoying Boss" is very sci-fi! The specific content is that "I" feel that the boss has no sympathy and tolerance, and twice confirmed that he killed the boss, but after the two murders, the boss returned to work normally the next day. Two consecutive attempted killings convinced "me" that my superiors had superhuman powers and did not dare to confront him again. With the continuous promotion of "I", I finally learned the secret of the boss's immortality, and "I" has gradually become a person like him. The story echoes the phrase "Later, I became the kind of person I hated the most."
"Big Head Robot" tells the story of a forgetful, suspicious, distrustful business operator who strives for perfection, who built a secretarial robot for himself. In order to prevent the robot from being used by others and thus revealing his secrets, he constantly improved the robot and added equipment to the head of the robot to provide a more complete service. In the end, thanks to his tireless efforts, the secretary robot seemed to be impeccable. While he celebrates his success, he is overwhelmed by the robot's big head smashing the fingers used for fingerprinting, preventing him from recalling all the secrets stored in the robot, including his property. This story seems to imply: don't do things too badly, you will slowly move towards success; otherwise, if you don't leave a back road for others, you often block your own back road.
"The Fashionable Man" is about a man who loves to catch up with the fashion, and wants to try to experience anything new, but unexpectedly becomes a victim of immature technology and pays a painful price for early adopters.
"The Magic of Love" tells the love story of a couple who love each other deeply, whitehead to old age, and unswerving to death. But when the old lady dies first, the lonely old man cannot accept the reality, which worries the children and the lawyer. So the lawyer found a robot company and customized a robot based on the voice, image, personality introduction and other information left by the old lady before she died. This robot accompanied the old man through the last happy life. But after the old man also died, the robot was not normal again. The robot company built a robot to accompany the previous robot from the old man's data and sent them into space. Originally a beautiful love, it was finally used as a promotional material by the robot company, so it was full of copper smell. The ending of this story fully reveals the harsh reality of the priority of commercial interests in the current society.
The story of "Progress" is also very sci-fi, which turns the original competition for personal ability in the workplace into a competition for the improvement of robots. Not only do men read books related to improving robots all day long, but even the books read by wives and children are preconditioned to building good robots.
The neighbor's wife in the story of "Neighbor" was always abused by her husband, so people always felt that she was full of sadness. Suddenly one day she became relaxed and happy, and it turned out that her husband's whole personality had changed greatly after the car accident. When "I" came to visit because I was curious about the transformation of the neighbor's husband, I learned that it was the wife who was abused by her husband, killed her husband, and customized a robot in the image of her husband. "I" was in danger of being wiped out because I discovered her secret, and at the critical moment " I had to admit that my wife was also a robot customized by the same company.
"Human Touch" is about an elderly rich man who visits a young scholar and evaluates robots as too rigid. In this regard, scholars said that his newly developed robot has improved in this regard and increased the human touch. The rich man begged the scholar to agree to bring home a new robot to try. Unexpectedly, after trying it, the rich man felt that although the new robot was more humane, he became fond of finding excuses to be lazy.
"Yes" tells the story of human beings who rely too much on mainframe computers. The protagonist of the story not only uses an earring-type ultra-small receiver in his daily life and work to obey the instructions given by the mainframe computer, but also performs the instructions of the mainframe computer on important events such as marriage and childbirth. The most exaggerated thing is that from the critical illness to the lawyer to make a will to the final death, it was also done according to the instructions of the mainframe computer. The protagonist has been like a slave without autonomy, answering "yes" after hearing the instructions, and then acting.
"Emotional Resonance Tv" looks at the name and feels that it should be very high-tech, but in fact, it is mainly the emotional resonance effect generated by the potion, which inevitably makes people feel more magical. The most ironic thing in this story is that because the broadcast failure caused the audience to laugh when it was time to cry, and the audience to be sad when it was time to laugh. Such a confused emotional resonance is really unnecessary.
The so-called free telephone set in "Free Telephone" is actually a free call service and plays voice advertisements during the call. But one of the scariest things is that the whole call is being monitored, so that the ads played are related to the content of the previous calls. And if you just broadcast an advertisement before the call, according to the time of listening to the advertisement to determine the length of the free call, which is also acceptable, the timer during the call to continue to insert the advertisement is too annoying!
The protagonist of "Mr. R's Dying" is in debt due to career failure and prepares to commit suicide, only to have a robot from the future run to see the hilarity. The protagonist begs the robot to take him to the future, he thought that he could get a new life after the future, no longer have to face the debt problem, but he did not expect that the future robot world had nothing to eat, only oil and batteries. He only sees the future in his favor, and does not consider whether the future environment is unfavorable to him.
The Problem Device is about a middle-aged man who invents a special computer that can make the right verdict in a very short period of time and automatically generate the verdict. Such computers can improve the efficiency of litigation and reduce the corresponding taxes. But it threatens the employment of prosecutors, judges, lawyers and other legal workers, who can watch themselves lose their jobs because of a computer? In the end, the judge ruled that the man was mentally ill, put him in a psychiatric hospital, and confiscated the problem device he had developed. This story is very realistic, the launch of some new products or inventions, that is, will damage the actual interests of some people, so it has been opposed by some people, so that these new things have delayed the time to market, and even stillbirth.
"The Strange Uninvited Guest" is a rare story in the whole book where the protagonist has a name, and the story is also very suspenseful. In my opinion, if it is a long story, the author casually gives the protagonist a name or directly calls him by a code name, which inevitably feels too perfunctory. But short stories really don't have to put too much thought into personal names, even if they have a very meaningful name, I am afraid it is difficult to have too much room for development and play in the short storyline.
The protagonist of this story, Mr. Zida, is a successful entrepreneur who suddenly receives a robot while on vacation at the villa. And this robot is not ordered by himself, it does not have any manufacturer clues, and it does not know why it came to Mr. Zida's house. But after a few days together, although the robot does nothing, just follows Mr. Zida all day, it can feel that it has no malice and is agile. One day, while out for a walk, Mr. Zida was shot, and in a dangerous moment, the robot saved his life by blocking the bullet for him and grabbed the gunman. It turned out that the police had received the news that someone had targeted Mr. Zida, so the police sent this robot to protect him.
"God" is about the operator of a large company asking a doctor to help create a god. The operator claimed that in order to make faith in the world, he wanted to create a god. He pays the Doctor as much as he wants, and if necessary, he can use his funds and materials at will. Hearing such favorable conditions, the doctor was in good spirits and decided to do a big job. I feel that the Ph.D. is using a modern artificial intelligence deep learning method to enter the impressions of God on God by various people from all walks of life around the world, as well as various data about God, into a newly released large computer. Later, the device even glowed a faint golden glow, convincing the operator and the doctor that their god-making plan was a success. But in the end, the device disappeared, which annoyed the operator and said some blasphemous words, which made him fall into the lightning and thunder.
The story of "Winter Butterfly" is about the smart home era, the impact of power outages on couples who have long relied on smart devices. What is particularly ironic is that there is a pet monkey in the story called Meng, who is frozen and waiting for death because the owners have not eaten or drunk, but it is drilling wood for fire, and knows the way to survive better than humans.
The protagonist of the story of "Capricious Robot" runs to the island villa alone to live for a month, and buys a high-level robot before leaving. The robot can do all kinds of chores, even tune the piano, and always tell interesting stories. But the good times did not last long, and the robot later often smoked, sometimes went on strike, and sometimes became violent. After the vacation, the protagonist finds the robot maker, expresses his dissatisfaction with the robot, and demands a refund. However, he is told that the capricious behavior of the robot is to prompt the protagonist to move and use his brain.
In the story of "The ChillErs in the Night", the Chilstars originally went to The Earth to inquire about the weaknesses of the Earthlings, but encountered a beautiful robot who was responsible for welcoming the amusement park at the entrance of the amusement park and could fake the real thing. Due to attacking the robot with various weapons such as light and gas, it always smiles, making the Chil people mistakenly think that the Earthlings are a peace-loving race, so that they can evacuate without a place.
The general manager in "The New General Manager" is a robot. When he was a child, the sales section chief still longed to use robots to work leisurely and happily, but the reality was that he was a human who worked according to the orders of the robot general manager, which made him miss his predecessor human general manager. In reality, there are also some people who are worried that the development of artificial intelligence will make robots enslave humans sooner or later.
The effect of the latest telephone set described in "The Latest Telephone" is that it can present the actual state of the caller on the other end of the phone in three dimensions, and even realize the game between two people. This makes me feel more like it's being achieved with MR (mixed Reality) technology. This technology has become a reality at present, but in the era when the story was written, it should only be regarded as science fiction.
Microsoft HoloLens MR header
"A Confident Life" is about an indecisive man who buys a question machine, and whenever he is faced with a choice, he will ask for help from the answering machine no matter how big or small. With the help of this machine, men embark on the road to success and happiness. But he was always curious about what the inside of the machine was like, and eventually he opened the machine and found the truth that he had been deceived. It turned out that there was only a coin-tossing device in the machine to help him make decisions, which of course made him feel fooled. But from another point of view, it is precisely because of such a machine that helps him make decisions that he is no longer troubled by the choice problem, and helps him move forward confidently towards the selected goal.
Among the 39 short stories in the book "Artificial Beauty", I think the most science fiction and realistic are "Artificial Beauty" and "The Latest Telephone", and I feel that as long as there are professionals who study a little, they can make the science fiction products in the story. The most humane story is "The Magic of Love", but it is a pity that the beautiful love at the end of the story is used in commercial hype, but this point makes people feel that the whole story is more in line with the values of modern people, narrowing the distance between dream love and reality. The most suspenseful story is of course "The Strange Uninvited Guest", a robot from an unknown source, who is not yet working, and who is like a fart, which makes people wonder what it is going to do.
Overall, each story in Artificial Beauty is creative and distinctive. Perhaps in the eyes of some people, not all stories have a profound meaning, but they all reflect various problems and contradictions in society to a greater or lesser extent, and even explore more possibilities of human nature and desire. Most importantly, the story of Shinichi Hoshi makes me feel very relaxed to read and brings me a comfortable reading experience. And the short story is not burdened with length, and there is no need to worry about forgetting the previous plot after reading like a long story. I'd love to recommend this Artificial Beauty to readers who are interested in science fiction but don't have much time to read a tome. At the same time, I am also looking forward to seeing another work of Xing Xinyi, "Hello - Come Out". (Author: Li Shuyuan)