Hi, I'm David Bart Kurtly, author of the book Save Me Please and other stories, and welcome to

episode 605 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. Today on the show will be discussing the last six

stories from the book The Best of Greg Egan. And those stories are Crystal Knights, Zero for Conduct,

Uncanny Valley, Bit Players, Three Attica, and Instantiation.

And this will include spoilers for all of those stories, so just be aware of that.

And this is a follow-up to our previous discussions of the best of Greg Egan back in episodes

592 and 604, so definitely check those out if you miss them. And I'm joined today by my good friend Anthony Ha,

making his 33rd appearance on the show. His short fiction appears in Lady Churchill's

Rosebud Ristlet and in the chat book Love Songs for Monsters. And his story, a brief history of

the afterlife, recently appeared in the March-April issue of Asimov's magazine.

He currently works as weekend editor at TechCrunch and is a co-host of the podcast original content.

And now here's her interview with Anthony Ha.

All right, so we're here with Anthony Ha.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me back.

Okay, and so the first story in this batch is called Crystal Knights. So in this story, there's like a rich tech bro named Daniel,

and he's got some super new computer processor, which is described as, quote, a single three-dimensional photonic crystal.

And it means he's going to be able to make massive AI advancements using this new technology.

And so in the opening scene, he's called in Julie, who's like a top AI researcher and is showing off his new

photonic crystal thing and trying to get her to come work for him.

But in the course of the conversation, he mentions that he's planning to develop his

AIs using evolutionary processes.

...