AI Fiction Comparison – Trace Trettenero

After reviewing a few of the fictional articles presented, I settled on comparing the work of Italo Calvino in The Burning of the Abominable House, to the beloved Star Trek: Strange New Worlds series. Both works had vastly different stories but tried to ask the same question about reality, and what makes reality true. In my eyes this is an extremely difficult question with an obscure answer if any.

Both A Space Adventure Hour and The Burning of the Abominable House have an interest in exposing the machinery that turns an experience into a narrative. This causes a crisis because the characters discover they are in a manufactured simulation rather than a real one. The problem in the stories, though not the same, stem from the idea that human agency is more or less powerful than narrative architecture . In doing this they provide an odd version of fiction you don’t see often, that is a meta commentary on the genres they are simulated in, in both pieces.

In the Calvino story he frames interpretation as something bureaucratic. The investigators use pre-existing templates to solve this fire. As they generate more theories about this fire they uncover more about the interpretive system they are using rather than the actual mystery itself. The desolate sense in Calvino’s story comes from the idea that the world is only made up of pre existing situations and scripts. An honestly terrifying thought, but it could also be a comfortable one to some.

In contrast the Star Trek episode dramatizes a parallel idea through technology rather than the bureaucratic methods of Calvino. The holodeck plays into that meta theme I mentioned , where it is a literal narrative device creating pre-conceived narratives. But where Calvino treats this constrictive narrative perspective as suffocating star Trek treats it playfully and I found it fun for all these fictional character tropes to share a genre.

In short I took away that Calvino’s story argued that the systems of explanation flatten the reality and make it stale, while Star Trek tries to tell the watcher that the same artificial frameworks that Calvino hates can deepen experience by understanding how stories can shape your perception. One sees narrative as a trap, the other sees it as a testing ground.

The dialectic that both these stories share about modern consciousness really makes me think and consider the narrative I personally see the world through, and weather I treat it is a prison or an instrument. I like to think I treat narrative or situations similar to them as instruments.

Star Trek: Strange New World

This is an interview of Ethan Peck who plays Spock in this particular Star Trek series. However, I am pretty one sided on my thoughts on the series, I do not think there needs to be 12 iterations of Star Trek and the “Spock” look, looks silly on anyone who isn’t Leonard Nimoy.

The Burning of the Abominable House

Slight side note: While researching Calvino’s work I found out that The Burning of the Abominable House was originally published in the Italian “Playboy” magazine. The story was part of a collaboration with Paul Braffort regarding a potential novel.