Iron Widow
The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain. When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead. To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
4people
2023–2024years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Have you considered sending him some of Nnedi Okorafors Binti series? You might also think Iron Widow by xiran jay zhao (giant mechs vs aliens), anything by marie lu, aurora rising by amie kaufman & jay kristoff, invictus by ryan graudin
- Sure, it's a fun toy to play with, I don't deny it.
Like a kaleidoscope, it can be fun to recognize familiar patterns and beautiful colors, but it's nothing more than that: a toy.
What I look for in art is intent and human passion; for me, the excitement of suddenly getting a nice number out of a PRNG or a cool story out of GPT is a very different from experiencing a story passionately crafted by a human.
When I read an amazing story like the Iron Widow, I feel respect towards the skills of the author, excitement for her future plans for the sequel; I follow the author on twitter and maybe interact a bit, because I appreciate what that human made me feel.
I can't do the same for a GPT story, because even if it was generated from multiple human stories, there is no actual human intent behind it; no one to thank, and no one to blame in case of messups: it feels like an empty shell.
- By inferring process I do not mean guessing what exactly was the person thinking while making that piece of art, but inferring what concepts and feelings they are trying to transmit with it; good art and good stories are good precisely when their creator is good at communicating feelings and concepts.
For example, looking at some drawn art, I can pinpoint exactly what emotions the artist was trying to transmit, not necessarily by the expression of the characters but even just by how the piece itself is drawn: that's the whole point of human artistic intent.
Another reason why human intent is important for me, from my comments below: when I read an amazing story like the Iron Widow, I feel respect towards the skills of the author, excitement for her future plans for the sequel; I follow the author on twitter and maybe interact a bit, because I appreciate what that human made me feel.
This is all part of the experience for me: I can't do the same for a GPT story, because even if it was generated from multiple human stories, there is no actual human intent behind it; no one to thank, and no one to blame in case of messups: it feels like an empty shell.
It's this true emptiness that quickly made me stop playing around with GPT when I first discovered it: anything made with it feels like an empty shell to me.
Regarding legislation, I see I have struck some chords here ;). Nothing personal, but I really think the people supporting AI models are really naive in thinking any democratic government will be willing to let entire creative industries suffocate (not to mention the potential for degradation of society as a whole) just because AI models are very cool technology and human creativity is supposedly irrelevant: just look at anti-delocalization trends in politics and legislation anywhere in the world, and draw some conclusions by yourself.
Not all people are blinded by the awesomeness of a new technology, and even those who created it will realize that they too will be eventually replaced by it.
- > Zhao’s novel “Iron Widow” was flagged as being a “reimagining of the rise of the Chinese Empress Wu Zetian.”
This is funny, Wu Zetian lives long before the PR China even existed, why should they even what image it paints.
- > But I just think it's getting ridiculous that we're expecting new and upcoming writers to be able to do all of these things in order to fit into possible niche genres that generate little to no profit.
Who, pray tell, is "expecting" writers to do this? We're living in the digital content-driven death of monoculture, there's a Cambrian explosion of subgenres and niches out there in the literary world. Writers can write what they want to. There's room for both niche sci-fi such as these works, and a title with more mass appeal, such as Mexican Gothic. Book websites such as this are just as happy to populate SEO listicles full of affiliate links to advertise these works. Not to mention, it would appear that the YA market is bigger than ever, and there's much overlap with ethnic writers. And then there's the infinite demand (now with higher interest rates, perhaps less so) from streaming services for new works to adapt. There's been multiple times I've looked up something from a list of, say, AAPI sci-fi/fantasy novels that I've never heard of, only to find out adaptations are being worked on for them. (examples include Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao, The Poppy War by R.F. Huang, and Jade City by Fonda Lee).
Who are you to suggest that the authors behind these works are doing it out of some misprioritization of what the market is looking for? As far as the literary world is concerned, it would seem like it's looking for everything.
