Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1992- ) Sri Lankan author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Dreadnaught" in The Expanding Universe: Volume Three (anth 2017) edited by Craig Martelle. His first novel, the Near Future Numbercaste (2017 ebook), embroils its protagonist in a vast information-resource firm called NumberCorp whose goal – slightly anticipating the third season of Westworld (2016-current) – is to create something like Utopia through centralized AI-driven profiling of all humans, presumably on a world-wide basis, so that, properly measured, they can be properly serviced. Wijeratne's second novel, The Salvage Crew (2020), is a Space Opera set in a traditional venue – a long-deserted planet housing an ancient artefact that needs to be salvaged – but is told through the viewpoint of a foulmouthed Brain in a Box now embedded into a shipmind, where he seems to be at the point of earning transformation into full AI status. Much Poetry is quoted, and it seems the narrator and his crew may escape the dilemmas they face through some kind of Transcendence. Buddhism (see Religion) is evoked. [JC]
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
born Ratnapura, Sri Lanka: 26 November 1992
works
- Numbercaste (no place or publisher given: 2017) [pb/]
- The Salvage Crew (Fort Worth, Texas: Aethon Books, 2020) [hb/]
links
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