This piece on the things Apple’s new voice assistant Siri says in response to various questions is pretty funny, as the Apple programmers have gone out of their way to offer some clever, amusing answers to a surprisingly wide variety of queries.
What the piece reminded me of was the snide, sentient, semi-malevolent electronic chess game in George Alec Effinger’s “My Old Man,” which (if you squint a little) could double as Siri’s Evil Twin. I provided the introduction to it in Live From Planet Earth, and I do think it’s a really swell (and underrated) story. (I still have one copy of Live From Planet Earth available through Lame Excuse Books, but you should be able to find it wherever better SF books are sold.)
Tags: Apple, George Alec Effinger, iPhone, Science Fiction, Siri