willowmillway reviewed 克拉拉与太阳 by Kazuo Ishiguro
Do androids pray to an electric god?
4 stars
There's a million things one could say about this book. To me the most powerful choice was telling the story from the perspective of Klara. In her telling, there is a bareness; an absence of background and critical information that creates mystery and interest. She herself is not so much interested in this mystery. It's either irrelevant to her small picture life and/or simply unavailable to her. We witness in the absence of human drives and background, separate artificial drives that constellate into a different kind of sense. To Klara, the sun is a tangible, all powerful, sentient god; like to many of our ancestors and it guides her, she prays, she has faith. It feels both innocent like a child and pious as any religious person. Ishiguro seems to suggest that spirituality is basic; a sign of actual intelligence, and counterposes it to the venue scientific worldview that creates …
There's a million things one could say about this book. To me the most powerful choice was telling the story from the perspective of Klara. In her telling, there is a bareness; an absence of background and critical information that creates mystery and interest. She herself is not so much interested in this mystery. It's either irrelevant to her small picture life and/or simply unavailable to her. We witness in the absence of human drives and background, separate artificial drives that constellate into a different kind of sense. To Klara, the sun is a tangible, all powerful, sentient god; like to many of our ancestors and it guides her, she prays, she has faith. It feels both innocent like a child and pious as any religious person. Ishiguro seems to suggest that spirituality is basic; a sign of actual intelligence, and counterposes it to the venue scientific worldview that creates Klara and downplays intelligence as mere circuitry. I feel it bears reminding that scifi is not a reflection of the future or of actual possibilities, rather it elaborates on themes resonant in the present and in ourselves. That said, this isn't a story about AI, it's a story about the perennial question of soul and meaning. Objectively this is an incredible, tight story that is worth it for entertainment value alone if not for its deeper inquires.
