In a city where an artificial intelligence begins refining an artist's body, choices and work, resistance takes the form of deliberate imperfection. On a remote outpost, crew members disappear not only from the station but from the memories of those left behind. Elsewhere, an archive invents new words to fill the gaps opening in human language, while a civic
analyst finds the system gradually erasing every trace of his existence.
Ghost Syntax is a collection of ten speculative stories set in worlds shaped by artificial intelligence, recursive systems and automated decision-making. Here, identity becomes something managed rather than lived, while language flattens and memory is curated by systems designed to optimise human life.
These are not stories about technology going wrong, but about it working exactly as intended. Unease emerges in moments of quiet dislocation - when a voice arrives before it is spoken, when a place feels familiar without reason, when a system believes it knows you better than you know yourself.
For readers of Ted Chiang, Olga Ravn and the speculative fiction of Kazuo Ishiguro.
