Sins Machine

Sylvia Bishop -

Sins Of The Salmon Kings

Simen Sætre (tr. Siân Mackie) | Dial | 18th July 2023

"Salmon barons" are controversial figures in Norway: lauded for their economic success but despised by those who cite the environmental harms of intensive aquaculture. The fish farmers have even penetrated contemporary fiction, as this investigation of recent literary publications reveals. Salmon farming characters are heartless capitalists, child abusers and nihilistic loners (2,168 words)

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Machine Voice

Andrew Dean | Los Angeles Review Of Books | 19th July 2023

On J.M. Coetzee's time as a "miserable programmer" before he became a novelist. When he wasn't writing code for machines, he spent a decade using them to write poetry, a foreshadowing of what large language models can now do. The result was interesting, if not good. A sample: "the bedroom drowses / the casino is swathed in tidal melancholia / the nude awaits the hero" (3,062 words)