To the Stars V-1

  Note the chronology of the first volume of stories did not change. These were set before the introduction of General AI in either chronology. And the chronology of the third volume was set after the new dating.

  So if General AI is introduced earlier in the chronology of the stories (two to three hundred years earlier) the time-line of all the stories in the second volume moves up because of the impact General AI will have on most sciences and technologies. (We are already seeing this now when even in its narrow form AI has affected everything from drug development to policing tactics.)

  I will repeat here for those that have not read the first volume my caveats for the chronology and technology of these stories:

  There is always a question as to how much background material to include in a story. As in the first volume I took the following technologies (and others) to exist in the different stories and provided little or no explanation for them:

  Self-driving cars.

  Personal electronic assistants using advanced AI.

  Foldable display screens.

  Fusion power and fusion powered spacecraft.

  Advanced medical therapies such as gene therapy.

  Ubiquitous robotics.

  Even when I gave an explanation for some technical development such as Emulated Brains it was brief. My goal was to keep the plot and character development moving.

  I might add that Artificial Narrow Intelligence was used exclusively for the personal assistants even though more powerful AI was developed. Why was this? Because Ems being an imprint of a human brain might be awkward for someone to own. And Artificial General Intelligence would still need too many resources to be portable. I may be wrong, but it's these kind of decisions one has to make when making a future timeline.

  As will be apparent if one compares the stories to the chronology, not all chronological events appear or were used in the stories, which might make reading the chronology interesting in itself. Not all the background for some of the events is included, it may also be necessary to do an internet search to fully understand some of the terminology used.

  And as I said in the first volume any chronology of the future is not a prediction but a guess and really just an outline (or excuse) for writing a series of stories.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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