Future Hoshi Prize Winner Could Be a Computer (or an Alien)

Photograph: Blutgruppe/Corbis courtesy The Guardian

 

Organizers of a Japanese award for science fiction, the Hoshi prize, say they will open up the award to a broader spectrum of competitors next year. The Guardian reports that the prize, which honors one of Japan's major science fiction writers, Shinichi Hoshi, will accept stories created by artificial intelligence, as well as from "other non-humans, such as space aliens and animals," provided they are written in Japanese.

 

Science fiction novelist Adam Roberts, when he first heard the news, thought it was "bonkers," but then decided that novels created by AI weren't that far-fetched given that many are written according to a very specific pattern. 

 

Roberts queries: "Do we need a human being to write Dan Brown novels? Might a computer even do a better job than a human there?”

The Guardian didn't comment on how animals and aliens would make their submissions. 

 

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