In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Harrison Ford’s character explains to a class of students how the search for ‘facts’ is not the same thing as the search for ‘truth’. In the sense of studying archeology versus philosophy that’s certainly the case, but real-life documentation of history is also subjective so it’s often difficult to tell where fact ends and fiction begins. The Stories of Ibis is, among other wonderful things, a clever reminder that facts can be falsified or lost…which ironically makes the significance of fiction all the more significant.
This isn’t a family-friendly blockbuster adventure movie of course: as a piece of thought-provoking futuristic SF though, Ibis is one of the best books I’ve read in months. Part of its premise hinges on the nameless protagonist, a wandering storyteller and amateur historian, and his problematic search for the facts – or the truth? – behind historical events that chart humanity’s downfall at the hands of robots and A.I.. Enter Ibis, a beautiful android who wants to do nothing more than tell him stories.
The background is a commonly-used one but Yamamoto turns this to his advantage by using classic sci-fi literature and movies as a launchpad for his own ideas and in turn the worldview of the novel. I, Robot, the Matrix trilogy, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Jules Verne’s De la Terre à la Lune…the list of references and names dropped is impressive. This is all in aid of hammering home the status quo of humanity as being on the brink of a robotic apocalypse in the style of the well-known pieces of science fiction. The reality of Ibis’, and the Storyteller’s, world is however far more fascinating than either the old stories or the clichéd version of history the Storyteller is familiar with.
Much of the novel is comprised of several of Yamamoto’s earlier short stories (although the last two are previously unpublished and long enough to be stand-alone novellas), presented as tales Ibis tells to the Storyteller. She wants to reveal the reality of history to him but he refuses to hear anything but fictional stories because of his suspicions regarding her motives and those of other machines; as a result Ibis attempts to make him reconsider his opinions and break down his prejudices through her telling of these fictitious tales instead.
I’ve encountered stories-within-stories before, but it’s a clever idea to work existing pieces into a new one and present them as knowingly fictitious to enrich the new plot and throw in some philosophy about the power of fiction along the way. Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is another interesting example of how a writer takes documentation of supposedly real events to illustrate how stories can be even more meaningful and significant than the history that inspires them, but I digress.
Getting back to the distinction between facts and truth: Ibis knows the Storyteller will not accept the facts at face value for fear of being told misleading robot propaganda, so she offers to present the truths behind them as fictional stories and allow him to make up his own mind. This is one of several levels of meaning that Yamamoto’s prose works on, which is what left me so impressed; another level is the analogy of the relative merits of reality and fiction in general.
Fictional stories may not present cold, hard facts but they still convey meaningful truths that are equally valuable and worth remembering: several of the stories Ibis selects for her reluctant one-man audience deal with experiences of virtual reality environments, A.I., escaping from reality and other non-natural life forms and concioussnesses. For example, are online friendships as valid as real life ones? Is a happy virtual world preferable to an unhappy reality? Can a robotic companion feel compassion?
In my view at least, facts are the realm of the head and fiction is the realm of the heart. So then, why is a heartless machine concerned with telling stories to a human who has been brought up to despise her? Ibis shows an uncanny understanding of humans by selecting someone whose interests allow him to grasp the importance of storytelling, and also a shrewd understanding of how to earn the trust of that person, someone who has been brought up to be suspicious of her kind.
I strongly recommend you read each of the stories and accompanying intermission segments (the intermissions are usually comprised of Ibis and the Storyteller discussing what she has just recounted to him) and try to identify key concepts and themes before moving onto the next, because Yamamoto has selected them carefully for their relevance in the bigger picture. The first four were originally intended to be conventional stand-alone short stories, and they can be appreciated as such outside the context of this novel – I’m writing short Tumblr articles on them to that effect – but the way they enhance and guide the course of the novel is also fiendishly clever.
It has a wonderful twist towards the end so, as with what connects the component stories, I’m not going to spoil it for you. Mainly because you need to read it if you’re another one of those people who appreciate SF and dig writing that works on several levels at once. Telling a story about how androids were invented and how this relates to humanity’s declines has been done so many times, so it’s refreshing to read one that’s instead a critique our views on the subject and one that extrapolates those rather than just another author’s own vision of the future.
There are one or two dark moments but the overall tone is often optimistic, so it examines both the positive and negative effects of advances in A.I. and how those advances may affect us. Finishing this so soon after the feature-length incarnation of Eve no Jikan was a happy accident really, because both pieces touch on the everyday details associated with robots and related issues. It’s the kind of movie that Ibis would enjoy too I think.
The way it’s put together as a novel is unusual and clever but the content is ultimately what really makes a novel great. In this case the individual stories are of a generally high standard: one or two are a little derivative but Yamamoto has a knack for drawing out the emotional element to make them moving and memorable as romance or drama, as opposed to being original as speculative fiction. Another welcome feature that Eve no Jikan shares, incidentally.
The display of Yamamoto’s extensive knowledge of the genre makes this a celebration of SF in the written medium but it’s fundamentally an instrospective and often sentimental take on humanity surviving in a seemingly inhuman world. Not only that, it throws up a lot of philosophy, but since it presents that in the form of short fables, the Big Ideas are easy to digest. It’s also a celebration of the power of stories in general – and I love good SF stories. Because of this I loved this novel. Go read it, internet.