As a lover of technological innovation, I love conceptualizing where our technology might take us and where our path and the path of innovation might converge. Thus, I am always intrigued by works that ponder this question, this idea of the next evolution of species. Greg Chen here, in Cora Chronicles, presents an immediate and tangible connection to this reality, not just infusing a manuscript with ideas but grounding this in a very humanizing relationship to Cora, who although she is of the new race of machine, is very much human. I'm intrigued by the world and reality Chen creates not just because of its profound echoes about what our future might be, but because he has ingeniously grounded these questions within machine itself and opens up one of my favorite science fiction questions: what does it mean for machine to be human, and what is the future of machine as the new human?