stake in : AMC , Netflix , TV| Tagged : ken liu , Pantheon
Pantheon , the animated TV series that accommodate taradiddle by Hugo award - winning Science Fiction authorKen Liu , is one of the most ambitious Science Fiction series on television . It depict the Singularity from the item of view of a grieving vernal girl and her family as they discover her previous father has been illegally uploaded into a digital cognizance as part of a tech corporation ’s design for the next step in human organic evolution . Pantheonis a complex and ambitious Science Fiction series , covering subject like the uploading of human consciousness , The Singularity , Quantum entanglement , and the moral , ethical , philosophic , and existential interrogative that amount with it , along with a commentary on capitalist victimisation .
Congratulations on the complete story of " Pantheon " finally becoming uncommitted . Can you take us back to how you came up with the original stories that terminate up in " The Hidden Girl and Other Stories " ? Did you just start with one before you felt inspired to explore the thought further ?
Thank you ! It ’s such a pleasure to talk aboutPantheon . The show is base on seven story I wrote : " The Gods Will Not Be Chained , " " The Gods Will Not Be Slain , " " The Gods Have Not Died in Vain , " " Carthaginian Rose , " " Staying Behind , " " Altogether Elsewhere , Brobdingnagian Herds of Reindeer , " and " Seven Birthdays . " together with , I name to them as the " uniqueness " stories . Six of them can be find in my collection , The Hidden Girl and Other Stories .
The three " divinity … " history were in the first place written for theApocalypse Triptychanthologies edited byJohn Joseph AdamsandHugh Howey . From these , you get the basic plot of ground line of Maddie and her dad and the uploaded " gods . " The other stories are set in the same universe and explore the world before , after , and during the Book of Revelation of UIs taking over the earthly concern .
However , I did n’t save the three Apocalypse Triptych news report first . I ’ve been exploring the concept of cognizance uploading in fiction for over two decades ( the very first story in this universe , " Carthaginian Rose , " was my first published story , all the way of life back in 2002 ) .
Why have I been compose about this issue so much ? The idea of uploading creative thinker is sure-enough and quite popular among some groups in Silicon Valley ( for whom the success of uploading always seems to be just about a decennium or so away ) . On the one hand , from a materialist perspective , it seems easy to accept the theme that human cognisance can run on different hardware , including elevate hardware that could unlock our full potential difference . On the other paw , it also seems that if you " upload " in the way described in my stories , the uploaded variation would not be a " law of continuation " ofyou , at least not from the perspective of the you that dies in the process . The premiss , uniting boundless promise with experiential repulsion , is irresistible to the imagination . story that research this radical , such as Pantheon and the video game SOMA , tend to generate a lot of debate among rooter precisely because of this paradox .
From “The Apocalypse Triptych” to “Pantheon”
You ’ve written at least a hundred narration . How did your Singularity narrative terminate up getting picked to be adapted into " Pantheon " ?
I had plan to move around the Singularity stories into a novel and in reality started drafting it several times , but I could never quite figure out the proper direction to state the story I need to secern . My medium agent , Angela Cheng Caplan , then helped me package the tarradiddle together , cerebrate that a ocular medium might be the right paroxysm to develop these stories further . Carrie Gilloglyat AMC then championed the project and connected the package withCraig Silverstein , the creator and showrunner for " Pantheon , " and the respite was chronicle .
How involved were you in craft the key theme and elements of write up into a individual story for Pantheon ?
To be clear , the show is the creation of Craig Silverstein and the piece of writing team . I was not a part of the writer ' way and did n’t write any of the scripts . Beyond provide the team with the news report and my incomplete novel muster , I was fortunate to take part in the creation of the show in various way . Craig share his initial potation narrative outline with me and enquire for my stimulant , and then , afterward , after the writer ' room was forgather , I get to fly to LA and link the author during that initial period when we broke down the season and adumbrate the episode . I found the experience extraordinarily rewarding as it learn me a muckle about how a TV show is made . It really was a suit where the union was far great than the private participant . Later , Craig and the author would occasionally have me participate remotely as well . I was very happy to see some of my contributions during these former sessions make their fashion into the show as well ( for deterrent example , the literary hack to break into the information center in Svalbard . )
“Pantheon”: Crafting a TV Series
A recurring melodic theme in your workplace is the way systems and those in power brutalize people in dystopian and revelatory scope , include the historical past and your Silkpunk stories . Your Science Fiction stories sport technocratic oligarchs using raw engineering to force change on society that manipulates and persecute hoi polloi . That was an emerging military issue years ago and become even more current now than when the first season of Pantheon premiered in 2022 . Did you have any discussions with the author ' room about that at the time ?
That was certainly one of the many topics that come up during our treatment . That writers ' room was extraordinary , and every person had deep insights into technology , art , humanity , and how the desire for power undergirds humans ’s basest as well as stately inherent aptitude .
The combination of our insatiate desire for the novel and how cheaply and quickly digital technology can be deploy consecrate contemporaneous technologists unprecedented power over all of us . On its own , this is neither good nor bad — the index , like all office , can be used for good or ill — but it is averydifferent variety of power active than in the past .
You could fence that even before anyone has upload , gods already walk among us .
Was it an accident that Steven Holstrom looked like Steve Jobs ?
Well , I did employ that quote about putting a dent in the universe above …
To be frank , I did n’t explicitly model any of the tech titans in my stories on Jobs or anyone else from real living . It ’s not about wanting to nullify referencing real people ; rather , it ’s because I do n’t think there ’s anything peculiar about our powerful technical school founder . They are human , no more and no less . To model my characters explicitly on them would mean that the founders we have are special , somehow different from the rest of us mere mortals , endowed with alone quality that ready them apart , lineament that my characters must re-create . I do n’t believe that , and so my fancied tech titans are also mere human being , no more and no less .
As for whether Craig and the writers want to reference Jobs with Holstrom , I really do n’t love .
How much discussion did you have with the serial writers about the Singularity , the uploading of cognizance , Quantum web , and time travel ? Was that end the first option for the series ?
We talk over the technological aspects of the universe and their interesting speculative ramifications extensively ( and those were some very fun discussions ) .
As for the way the seasons played out , I always loved the fact that Craig plan the show to be very grounded in the first season but then to take off into realm that could n’t be easily represented via traditional live - activity motion-picture photography : the wild speculative ( virtual ) reality discussed in " Altogether Elsewhere , Vast Herds of Reindeer " and " Seven Birthdays . " That was one of the reason why Craig and I were both mad about invigoration as the metier for Pantheon . You just ca n’t visualize the thing I think for those far - off futures without animation .
I believe Craig did n’t settle on the accurate closing for the show until later in the development cognitive process , but it was always going somewhere grand and far ( very far ) in the future .
His Next Book
Now that your Dandelion Dynasty Silkpunk series is completed , would you care to talk about your approaching book , " All That We See or Seem , " which starts the Julia Z serial ? It looks like a cybercrime hack series .
Oh , I do it talking about this young serial of approximate - next techno - thrillers feature a drudge who could always think her fashion out of trouble . Here ’s how I describeAll That We See or Seem : Julia Z , a untried fair sex who gained notoriety at 14 as the " orphan drudge , " is try on to live a life of obscurity in a Boston suburb . But when a lawyer whose famed artist married woman has been kidnapped by grievous criminals barges into her life , Julia is forced to use her unique skillset to cross her down . The result is a agonising journey across the land and late into the trace of her psyche .
Julia Z has the unique skills command to rule the seams in a globe dominated by AI and the empathy necessary to work up mickle on a ocean of forlornness . I wanted to use this volume to search my thought on the future tense of human artists in the eld of AI , on machine - learning as a new medium for art , on the seemingly irreversible societal trend of commoditizing and professionalize aroused childbed — and above all , on how we can remain human in a time of cataclysmic transformation .
Pantheonis now stream onNetflixin the US . The original source for the serial , The Hidden Girl and Other Storiesis nowavailable .
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