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Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

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Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
Born (1992-11-26) 26 November 1992 (age 32)
Ratnapura, Sri Lanka
OccupationAuthor, researcher, activist
GenreSpeculative fiction
Science fiction
Fantasy
Notable worksNumbercaste, The Salvage Crew, The Slow Sad Suicide of Rohan Wijeratne, "Messenger"
Website
yudhanjaya.com

Rajapakse Konara Mudiyanselage Bilesha Yudhanjaya Bandara Wijeratne[1] (born November 1992) is a Sri Lankan science fiction author, activist and researcher, classified as part of a new wave of South Asian science fiction writers.[2] His work has appeared in Wired, Foreign Policy and Slate. His novel The Salvage Crew has been lauded as one of the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2020.[3]

He is noted for being a proponent of human-AI collaboration in fiction[4] as well as being the co-founder of Watchdog, a fact-checking organization founded partly to counter misinformation in the wake of state propaganda and inaction.[5][6][7] Wijeratne is the second Sri Lankan to be nominated for a Nebula Award since Arthur C. Clarke[8] and was selected by Forbes as one of 2021's 30 under 30.[9]

Early life

[edit]

Wijeratne grew up wanting to be an astronaut, but instead decided the odds were against him. Discovering Stephen King's The Dark Tower led to him being inspired to sit down and write The Waste, which he describes as "a 130,000 word monster set in a half-magic half-tech world .. . it was horrible: I have the manuscript on my desk and the cat sleeps on it sometimes."[10]

Largely self-taught, he picked up programming after school and went through a stint in game development, working on a project set in a distant future.[11] That failed, and eventually led to Wijeratne becoming a tech journalist and founding editor of Readme.lk, a Sri Lankan tech news website.[12]

In 2015 he joined WSO2, a middleware corporation headquartered in Colombo, and began working on his debut novel, Numbercaste.[13] During this period, he was perhaps best known in Sri Lanka for the blog he maintained, Icaruswept, which was noted by science writer Nalaka Gunawardene for its data-savvy analyses.[14] Icaruswept garnered a reputation for analyses around social media influence on the Sri Lankan 2015 general election,[15] reporting on the Colombo International Financial City and coverage of the 2017 Sri Lanka floods. While the blog now appears to be defunct, key posts remain mirrored on other publications.[16][17]

Wijeratne also worked on the WSO2 Election Monitor, which generated attention and sentiment analysis around the election contests.[18] In an (apparent) parody piece for April Fool's Day, he used observations from the project's actual data to suggest Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 United States presidential election.[19]

Career

[edit]

Fiction

[edit]

Wijeratne's first publication was the self-published The Slow Sad Suicide of Rohan Wijeratne,[13] which follows a suicidal, near-immortal alcoholic who signs up to be shot into a ring singularity. Reviews compared it favourably to the work of both Clarke and Douglas Adams.[20] Wijeratne followed with his first novel, Numbercaste,[10] deemed a "staggeringly ambitious debut"[21] that garnered critical acclaim in South Asia[22][23][10] for its blend of emerging technology and socio-political critique. It led to Wijeratne being lauded by Groundviews as the "first serious voice" in science fiction from Sri Lanka since Arthur C. Clarke,[24] and is classified as Econ-SF by the Edgeryders research network.

In 2018, Wijeratne was the recipient of a four-book deal by HarperCollins,[25] noted by the Sunday Times as the largest deal, in terms of books, ever offered to a Sri Lankan author;[26] Numbercaste was among those four books, and saw its film options acquired by Endemol Shine.[27] Wijeratne subsequently self-published Omega Point, a short story invoking French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's hypothesis of God and marrying it to the Kardashev scale.[23]

His second novel, The Inhuman Race [28] an alternate history narrative set in Sri Lanka, and explores AI, sentience and AI rights in a futuristic world where the British Commonwealth still dominates the Indian subcontinent. It has been noted for subverting philosopher John Searle's Chinese room thought experiment and cementing Wijeratne's "status as one of the subcontinent’s science fiction stars".[29]

Since then, he has published in a number of anthologies. Messenger, co-authored with American urban fantasy author R.R. Virdi, was listed in the Critters Annual Reader Poll as one of the top ten science fiction stories of 2018[30] and was a finalist for the 2018 Nebula Awards.[31] Alongside J.T. Lawrence, Jason Werbeloff and Colby Rice, Wijeratne also launched 2054,[26][32] a shared-world cyberpunk anthology foreworded by physicist, poet and Future Chronicles editor Samuel Peralta.[33] Wijeratne has one known comics project, a 4-page short titled Genesis.[34]

In 2020, Slate.com published The State Machine[35] under its Future Tense program, and Wired published Work Ethics.[36] Both stories explore themes of human-AI collaboration; one from the perspective of governance and the other examining the future of work. Both betray a fascination, and support for a collaborative future, something Wijeratne references in interviews and blogposts. Subsequent tinkerings with OpenAI GPT-2 led him to explore generated poetry[37] and attempt to create a novel by co-writing with procedural generation tools that he had written and with GPT-2.[38] The result was Wijeratne's The Salvage Crew, published in 2020. Narrated by Nathan Fillion;[39] it became a bestseller on Audible[40] and was selected by Polygon as one of the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2020.[3]

Nonfiction and activism

[edit]

Wijeratne then joined LIRNEasia as a researcher, where his work involved the analysis of communities on social media,[41] misinformation and hate speech[42][43] and bot networks.[44][45] He has since discussed the moderation of terrorist and violent content online at the Internet Governance Forum[46] and avenues such as ForeignPolicy.[47] Much of his activism in this field consists of pushing social media platforms to acknowledge the computational and human process limitations of content moderation in low-resource languages, and in pushing Facebook et al. to share data and work with local researchers.[48][49]

In 2018, Wijeratne gave a TEDx talk, outlining his roots as a blogger and his philosophy of avoiding homophily and groupthink wherever possible.[50] In 2019, Wijeratne co-founded Watchdog, a fact-checker.[6][7] In sessions hosted by NATO Stratcom COE, Wijeratne outlined its growth and operation.[51]

In 2020, Wijeratne contributed to the Goethe-Institut's Day-Afterthoughts project,[52] which curated responses to COVID-19 times from artists and intellectuals around the world.

Awards and nominations

[edit]

Wijeratne was nominated for the 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novelette.[53]

He was selected by Forbes as one of 2021's 30 under 30 Asia.[54]

He was the joint winner of the 2022 Gratiaen Prize, with Chiranthi Rajapakse, for his unpublished manuscript The Wretched and the Damned. [55]

Influences

[edit]

Wijeratne's website lists a wide range of possible influences, from novelists (such as Terry Pratchett, William Gibson, Diana Wynne Jones and others) to anime (such as Ghost in the Shell and Fullmetal Alchemist) to games (such as BioShock, Deus Ex, Halo and Final Fantasy VII).[56] Elsewhere, he has spoken about being influenced by Stephen King,[10] Dan Simmons,[23] Peter Watts,[28] Warhammer 40,000, Margaret Atwood and Ursula Le Guin.[10]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya (19 September 2022). "Back to courts tomorrow..." Retrieved 19 September 2022.
  2. ^ "Yudhanjaya Wijeratne". www.platform-mag.com. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  3. ^ a b Liptak, Andrew (10 January 2021). "The best sci-fi and fantasy books of 2020". Polygon. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  4. ^ "Co-writing With Artificial Intelligence With Yudhanjaya Wijeratne | The Creative Penn". www.thecreativepenn.com. 18 January 2021. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  5. ^ Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya (25 April 2019). "The Social Media Block Isn't Helping Sri Lanka". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  6. ^ a b "These are the false news stories that prompted a social media ban in Sri Lanka". Special Broadcasting Service. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  7. ^ a b Christopher, Nilesh (21 June 2022). "Meet the fact-checkers decoding Sri Lanka's meltdown". Rest of World. Retrieved 9 July 2022 – via Nieman Lab.
  8. ^ Editorial (21 February 2019). "Sci-Fi Writer Yudhanjaya Wijeratne amongst the 2019 Nebula Award Nominees". Pulse. Retrieved 24 February 2019.
  9. ^ "Yudhanjaya Wijeratne". Forbes. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  10. ^ a b c d e "The Sri Lankan Sci-fi Novel "Numbercaste" just dropped, and it's hot". Lanka Comic Con. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  11. ^ "Icarus Weeps No More | The Sunday Leader". Archived from the original on 30 April 2017. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  12. ^ "TEDxColombo 2018: You really should grab your tickets now". README. 11 October 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  13. ^ a b Dibbert, Taylor (10 July 2017). "Yudhanjaya Wijeratne On Books And Writing". Huffington Post. Archived from the original on 6 February 2019. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  14. ^ "[Op-ed] Investigative Journalists uncover Asia, one story at a time". Open Minds! (formerly: Moving Images blog). 23 September 2016. Archived from the original on 22 December 2016. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  15. ^ "Social Media and General Elecations 2015". www.dailymirror.lk. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  16. ^ "This Is The Colombo Port City?". Colombo Telegraph. 30 March 2015. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  17. ^ "Sri Lanka Floods Update (May 23rd)". YAMU. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  18. ^ Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya. "Big Data and Politics: How the Internet sees the US Election". wso2.com. Archived from the original on 11 September 2017. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  19. ^ Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya. "Deep Huge: AI Predicts Donald Trump Becoming the Next President". wso2.com. Archived from the original on 10 November 2017. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  20. ^ "The Slow Sad Suicide of Rohan Wijeratne". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  21. ^ "Showing the world we too can write science fiction". The Sunday Times Sri Lanka. Archived from the original on 8 January 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  22. ^ "Efflorescence of South Asian Sci Fi?". The Daily Star. 30 December 2017. Archived from the original on 9 March 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  23. ^ a b c "Love the journey. Live for it: Yudhanjaya Wijeratne". FactorDaily. 5 May 2018. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  24. ^ "Some thoughts on 'Numbercaste' by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne | Facebook". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  25. ^ "HarperCollins India acquires Sri Lankan author Yudhanjaya Wijeratne's The Commonwealth Empire Trilogy. | Facebook". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  26. ^ a b "Post Numbercaste, Yudhanjaya dreams up more worlds". The Sunday Times Sri Lanka. Archived from the original on 21 June 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  27. ^ Laghate, Gaurav. "Endemol Shine India acquires rights of Richa Mukherjee's 'Kanpur Khoofiya'". The Economic Times. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  28. ^ a b "This sci-fi author built a world in which you rate your neighbour". GQ India. 15 December 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  29. ^ "Being Inhuman: Emotion, ethics, adventure and artificial intelligence intersect in Yudhanjaya Wijeratne's latest novel". FactorDaily. 5 January 2019. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  30. ^ "Critters Writers Workshop Readers Poll". www.critique.org. Archived from the original on 16 September 2015. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  31. ^ Liptak, Andrew (20 February 2019). "Here are the 2019 Nebula Award nominations". The Verge. Retrieved 24 February 2019.
  32. ^ "Four authors. One future". project2054.com. Archived from the original on 27 June 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  33. ^ "Samuel Peralta". Samuel Peralta. Archived from the original on 21 November 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  34. ^ "Behance". www.behance.net. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  35. ^ Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya (26 September 2020). "Read a New Short Story About a Government Run Entirely by Machines". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  36. ^ "The Future of Work: 'Work Ethics,' by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  37. ^ Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya (17 April 2019). "The Poetry Machine". Medium. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  38. ^ "Adventures in machine-generated text: short-burst creativity, and why classical CS has it wrong – The Ricepunk Diaries". Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  39. ^ Bennett, Tara (7 October 2020). "Firefly's Nathan Fillion aims to misbehave in space again as AI narrator of 'The Salvage Crew'". SYFY WIRE. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  40. ^ "Yudhanjaya Wijeratne's 'The Salvage Crew' narrated by Nathan Fillion". The Morning - Sri Lanka News. 30 October 2020. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  41. ^ Samarajiva, Rohan; Lokanathan, Sriganesh; Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya (14 March 2018). "Countries of a Feather: Analyzing Homophily and Connectivity Between Nations Through Facebook Data". Rochester, NY. SSRN 3140408. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  42. ^ Safi, Libby Hogan Michael (3 April 2018). "Revealed: Facebook hate speech exploded in Myanmar during Rohingya crisis". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 6 February 2019. Retrieved 4 February 2019.
  43. ^ Bengali, Shashank (29 March 2018). "Muslims faced hatred and violence in Sri Lanka. Then Facebook came along and made things worse". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 13 January 2019. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  44. ^ "Namal Rajapaksa, bots and trolls: New contours of digital propaganda and online discourse in Sri Lanka". Groundviews.org. 24 January 2018. Archived from the original on 16 June 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  45. ^ "Weaponising 280 characters: What 200,000 tweets and 4,000 bots tell us about state of Twitter in Sri Lanka". Groundviews. 23 April 2018. Archived from the original on 23 July 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  46. ^ malia.graves_6743 (27 November 2019). "IGF 2019 – Day 2 – Convention Hall II – Addressing Terrorist And Violent Extremist Content Online". Internet Governance Forum. Retrieved 3 February 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  47. ^ Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya. "Big Tech Is as Monolingual as Americans". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  48. ^ "The US's online language gaps are an urgent problem for Asian-Americans". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  49. ^ "Facebook, language and the difficulty of moderating hate speech". Media@LSE. 23 July 2020. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  50. ^ TEDx Talks, How Our Friendships Define Us - And Why They're Dangerous | Yudhanjaya Wijeratne | TEDxColombo, retrieved 24 January 2019
  51. ^ Yudhanjaya Wijeratne. Fighting disinformation in Sri Lanka., retrieved 21 May 2021
  52. ^ "Day-Afterthoughts". www.goethe.de. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  53. ^ copyrighted, The material on this website is; SFWA®, may not be used without the author's consent; Fiction, Nebula Awards® are registered trademarks of Science; America, Fantasy Writers of; SFWA, Inc Opinions expressed on this web site are not necessarily those of (20 February 2019). "2018 Nebula Finalists Announced". The Nebula Awards. Retrieved 4 March 2019. {{cite web}}: |first2= has generic name (help)
  54. ^ "Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2021". Forbes. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  55. ^ "Dual winners for Gratiaen prize 2023 - Life Online". www.life.lk. Retrieved 20 June 2023.
  56. ^ "About me / Press". yudhanjaya. Archived from the original on 24 August 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
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