Klara and the Sun

Kazuo Ishiguro

Those who are considered great writers don’t usually dedicate part of their efforts to science fiction. This genre has traditionally been considered second-rate, despite the fact that some prestigious authors have occasionally engaged on it. In this context, the most cited work is Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (1932), a book I have talked about in previous posts in this blog.

But there has been a recent foray into this genre, by no less than a Nobel Prize winner for Literature. Kazuo Ishiguro, who writes in English and received the award in 2017, is well known for works such as The Remains of the Day, or An Artist of the Floating World, plus his science-fiction novel, Never Let Me Go, a dystopia along the same lines as Corinna Turner's I am Margaret, which I mentioned in my post on dystopias in this blog. Now, in 2021, he has published a science fiction novel that touches on the theme of strong artificial intelligence.

In the future world that this work describes, there are two important scientific advances: robots with a high intelligence, dedicated mainly to the care of children; and widespread genetic manipulation of children, to improve them. Like any scientific discovery, these advances give rise to new problems, such as the awakening of a new class consciousness that gives rise to discrimination against children who, by decision of their parents, have not been subjected to improvement. In general, that future world is depressing, even though its description is subtle. There are some hints of social violence, but the book never gives details.

One of the characters asserts that the aforementioned advances show that there is nothing in man but just matter, and that it would be possible to download our minds into a machine. But other characters (and, I think, the author, too) do not agree with this, although I don’t accept the arguments offered by Klara, the protagonist automaton, who also plays the role of narrator. But it’s easy to see that the procedure proposed to unload the mind is unfeasible and would not produce the desired results in any case.

Along Klara's narration, we learn, little by little, the way of thinking of the intelligent automata of the novel, although not all of them are similar, for we are told explicitly that Klara is different, the best of all of them. She observes what happens around her more shrewdly than other robots, and draws conclusions, which may or may not be correct. She comes to play an essential role in the care for a sick girl, whose cure she believes she can attain by offering a sacrifice, and when her effort ends in failure, she tries again. And she does this, in spite of the fact that some of the people related to the girl hope to use Klara in a completely different way, against the possible death of the girl.

This book reminds me of one of my novels, Operation Quatuor, which deals with similar issues. My approach, however, is different, more according to my ideas. On one thing, however, I agree with Kazuo Ishiguro: if strong artificial intelligence were really possible (although I think it will never be) nothing would prevent those robots from having religious beliefs.

The same post in Spanish

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Manuel Alfonseca