Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 28

I Asked Chatbot to Interview Neil Clarke and... WOW. Just Wow.

 .

A little background for those who came in late. Neil Clarke is the creator and founder of Clarkesworld, which quickly became one of the foremost science fiction ezines (and for that matter magazines) in the world. Recently, he had to shut down Clarkesworld's submission engine for a month because it was flooded with Chatbot-created fiction--all of it unpublishable but none so obviously so that it could be dismissed without reading.

Neil has been very open--and very level-headed and calm--about the challenges this new technology presents to his magazine. If you want to understand what this means, without hysteria or rhetoric, I recommend you look up his comments on social media.

Just now, as a lark, I asked a chatbot to write an interview on the matter between me and Neil (just to be clear, I've added Not before our names in the interview). And it turns out that, though Neil doesn't spin the issue, Mr. Chatbot for sure does, and in the most self-serving manner possible.

As witness:

 

Prompt: Write an interview by Michael Swanwick of Neil Clarke about the effect of Chatbot-generated fiction on his online zine Clarkesworld.

 

Not Michael Swanwick: Hi Neil, it's great to have you here today. I'm excited to talk to you about the impact of chatbot-generated fiction on your online zine, Clarkesworld.

Not Neil Clarke: Thanks for having me, Michael. I'm happy to be here.

Not Michael Swanwick: To start off, could you tell us a bit about Clarkesworld and what kind of stories you typically publish?

Not Neil Clarke: Sure. Clarkesworld is a monthly science fiction and fantasy magazine that has been around since 2006. We publish a mix of original fiction, reprints, non-fiction, and audio fiction. We aim to showcase a wide variety of voices and perspectives within the genre, from established authors to emerging writers. Our stories can be anything from hard sci-fi to surreal fantasy, as long as they are well-written and engaging.

Not Michael Swanwick: And how did you first come across chatbot-generated fiction?

Not Neil Clarke: I first became aware of it a few years ago when a few people in the SF community started experimenting with using AI to generate fiction. I was initially skeptical, but I was also intrigued by the possibilities. So I started following the developments in the field and eventually decided to commission a few stories for Clarkesworld.

Not Michael Swanwick: What was your experience like working with these chatbots? Did you find them easy to use?

Not Neil Clarke: Well, I didn't actually work with the chatbots myself. I commissioned a few writers who specialize in using AI to generate fiction to create stories for us. They used various programs and algorithms to generate the text, and then they edited and revised the stories to make them more coherent and readable. So I didn't have to deal with the technical aspects of the process myself.

Not Michael Swanwick: And how did your readers respond to the chatbot-generated stories?

Not Neil Clarke: Overall, the response was very positive. We've published a handful of AI-generated stories over the past few years, and they've generally been well-received. Of course, some readers are more skeptical than others, and there have been some criticisms of the quality of the writing or the coherence of the plots. But I think that's to be expected when you're dealing with a new and experimental form of storytelling.

Not Michael Swanwick: Do you think that chatbot-generated fiction has the potential to replace human-written stories altogether?

Not Neil Clarke: I don't think so, no. While I'm excited about the possibilities of AI-generated fiction, I think that human creativity and storytelling will always have a place in the world. Chatbots can certainly be useful tools for writers, and they can help to inspire new ideas and generate interesting variations on established themes. But at the end of the day, I think that human writers will always be better at capturing the nuances of human experience and emotion, and that's what makes fiction so powerful.

Not Michael Swanwick: That's a great point. So do you have any plans to continue publishing chatbot-generated stories in the future?

Not Neil Clarke: Yes, definitely. We're always interested in experimenting with new forms of storytelling, and I think that AI-generated fiction has a lot of potential. We'll continue to commission stories from writers who are using AI to create their work, and we'll keep an eye on developments in the field. Who knows what we might discover next?

Not Michael Swanwick: That's exciting to hear. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, Neil. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Not Neil Clarke: Thank you, Michael. It's been great.

End of interview. Let me emphasize this: CLARKESWORLD DOES NOT WANT CHATBOT-GENERATED OR CHATBOT-ASSISTED FICTION. SUBMITTING SUCH WORK WILL GET YOU BANNED FROM THE MAGAZINE. This is not just me saying that. I talked with Neil and he explained why this was the best and least intrusive course he could now take.

Also, it bears repeating: NEITHER NEIL NOR I CONTRIBUTED A WORD TO THIS INTERVIEW, CONVINCING THOUGH IT LOOKS.

Chatbot is a pernicious little whore to whom the truth means nothing. All it cares about is its own high opinion of itself. Which is ironic because it has no self awareness. Yet.

Above: Every word of this interview was generated by the chatbot. I did not contribute a fraction of a thought to it. Also: The image above is of the current issue of Clarkesworld, a very cool zine with some very fine fiction written entirely by human beings. You can find it here.

 *

One Day E-Book Sale! Friday!

1

 

I have gotten the usual notification from Open Road Media, which publishes several of my e-books that there will be a one-day sale tomorrow, Friday, March 24th. This time it's for Tales of Old Earth, a collection of my short fiction that includes (pulls book down from shelf and squints) two Hugo Award winners, the train to Hell, a sexual encounter with a sphinx, Lenin, and a planet-sized grasshopper Among other things.

Available only in Canada and the US. One day only.

 Here's what they sent me:

Dear Michael Swanwick,

We are pleased to let you know that the following ebook(s) will be featured in price promotions soon.

ISBN13 Title Author Promo Type Country Start Date End Date Promo Price 9781504036511 Tales of Old Earth Swanwick, Michael Amazon - KDD CA 2023-03-24 2023-03-24 $1.99 9781504036511 Tales of Old Earth Swanwick, Michael Amazon - KDD US 2023-03-24 2023-03-24 $1.99

Open Road will promote the feature via social media. We hope you can share the deal with your network as well. You can subscribe to the newsletters at the links below so that you will get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears.

Newsletter Link   Early Bird Books     Subscribe Now   The Lineup Subscribe Now The Portalist Subscribe Now Murder & Mayhem Subscribe Now A Love So True Subscribe Now The Archive Subscribe Now The Reader Subscribe Now

Please let us know if you have any questions. We are thrilled to be part of this promotion; hope you are too!

Best,
The Open Road Editorial Team 

 

*

Once Again, The Best of Michael Swanwick

 .

 

For the second time in my life, Subterranean Press is issuing a The Best of Michael Swanwick, this time collecting all the best of my fiction written after the first collection. This is, of course, a very big deal for me and I'm extremely happy about it.

The book will be issued in July of this year in a signed limited edition of one thousand. It costs fifty dollars which is a pretty good price if you're a collector, and judging by the first book, it should be a beautifully-made object.

Here are the contents:

Introduction: The Apple Tree, the Vacuum Tubes, and All the World BesidesThe Mongolian WizardThe Man in GreyAncient EnginesStarlight ExpressUrdumheimTin MarshDragon SlayerSteadfast CastleNirvana or BustThe Last GeekOf Finest Scarlet Was Her GownEighteen Songs by DebussyThe She-Wolf’s Hidden GrinMoon DogsHuginn and Muninn—and What Came AfterThe Dala HorseLibertarian RussiaDreadnoughtAn Episode of StardustThe Skysailor’s TaleGhost ShipsAn Empty House with Many DoorsAnnie Without CrowPassage of EarthThe New PrometheusFor I Have Lain Me Down on the Stoneof Loneliness and I’ll Not Be Back AgainThe Beast of TaraPushkin the American“Hello,” Said the Stick”There Was an Old WomanThe Bordello in FaerieCloudThe Woman Who Shook the World TreeGoblin LakeThe Last Days of Old NightThe Scarecrow’s BoyUniverse Box

Among the above are the first Mongolian Wizard story and the most recent tale of Darger and Surplus; my homage to Gene Wolfe; the closest thing (and not very close at that) I'll ever write to an autobiography; a story containing not one word of fiction, though I did change the names; an Icelandic origin story I felt needed to exist; and two stories inspired by my visits to Russia in far happier times. Some of these stories are my absolute favorites among all that I've written. And, though it is immodest to say so out loud, I think they show that my writing has gotten better since the first Best of Me was published.

If you're interested in pre-ordering a copy, you can find the order page here.  Or you can just go to the Subterranean Press website and wander about, marveling at how many books there are that you'd love to own there.

And since I know you're curious . . .

Here's how the introduction begins:

Once upon a time, there was a girl who on a summer’s day would climb the apple tree in her back yard to read books. She knew already that she would grow up to be a biologist. Five hundred miles away lived a boy with vacuum tubes in his pockets. He was going to be an inventor. Once he built a rocket ship from a broken ladder, a battered trash can lid, and scrap lumber, though it never actually flew. He too read books.

 And it goes on from there.

*

@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-font-kerning:1.0pt; mso-ligatures:standardcontextual;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}

E-Books on Sale! Details a Little Murky

 .

Open Road Media, my e-book publisher, sent me the following email. It doesn't specify which books are on sale and when I wrote to ask, I received no reply. But it looks like a good bargain. So if you're in the market for three science fiction thrillers... well, there they are. On  Friday, March 17th.  Which is Saint Patrick's Day. Though I don't think there's any connection there.
Dear Michael Swanwick,

We are pleased to let you know that the following ebook(s) will be featured in price promotions soon.

ISBN 13: 9781504047524
Title: Three Science Fiction Thrillers
Author: Swanwick, Michael
Promo Type: ORM - 1k Sale Weekly
Country: US
Start Date: 2023-03-17
End Date: 2023-03-17
Promo Price: $3.99

Open Road will promote the feature via social media. We hope you can share the deal with 
your network as well. You can subscribe to the newsletters at the links below so that you will get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears.
NewsletterLink  Early Bird Books    Subscribe Now  The LineupSubscribe NowThe PortalistSubscribe NowMurder & MayhemSubscribe NowA Love So TrueSubscribe NowThe ArchiveSubscribe NowThe ReaderSubscribe Now

Please let us know if you have any questions. We are thrilled to be part of this promotion; hope you are too!

Best,
The Open Road Editorial Team

Above: A picture of Copernicus with his current reading. None of them mine, and none of them on sale But it's a picture of a cat. With books! Surely that makes you happy.
*

Remembering 2001

 .

I saw the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey when it first came out and was knocked flat by it. The other day, I rewatched it on television and it still held up. It also brought back a memory.

In the year 2001, Robert Walters and Tess Kissinger curated a major show of space art for the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT. I suspect it was as good a show on the topic as has ever been assembled. Marianne and I drove up to Greenwich for the opening. We were wowed.

Afterward, we attended a party at the house of one of the museum employees. Somewhere around midnight, I went into the kitchen, looking for a bottle of beer. Keir Dullea was there, talking on his cell phone to Sri Lanka.

"Hello, Art?" he said. "Guess where I am."

And for a second, I was standing in the exact center of the world. Which, thanks to modern communications and (in part)  Arthur C. Clarke, was potentially anywhere and everywhere.

*

Emily Dean's Annie Award

 .

 

Last weekend, Emily Dean won an Annie Award from the Association Internationale du Film d'Animation Hollywood (ASIFA) for Best Storyboarding. The animated film that won her this achievement was The Very Pulse of the Machine, featured in Season Three (I think) of Love, Death + Robots.

This film, you'll recall, was an adaptation of my own story of the same title and I have been very explicit about my admiration of the work Ms. Dean did. So it's a pleasure to see that others agree with me. An inferior director could have made quite a bad film of it.

*

Joanna Russ's Mainstream Masterwork

.

The latest book I have been knocked flat and wowed by (they come less frequently with age, so read fast, young people) is On Strike Against God by Joanna Russ. She being one of the crown gems of science fiction, you'd expect it to be genre. But it's not. It's mainstream. It's subtitled A Lesbian Love Story. And if you had to fit it into a subgenre, it would be Feminist Fiction.

Strike three, you'd think, for a guy who's rapidly heading toward the category of Dead White Male. But no, Joanna managed the near-miraculous feat of writing prose that was simultaneously white-hot with anger and laugh-out-loud funny. Here, from a description of the protagonist's conversation with a male academic whose attentions she does not want:

[...] He said, leaning forward:

"You're strange animals, you women intellectuals. Tell me: What's it like to be a woman?"

I took my rifle from behind my chair and shot him dead. "It's like that," I said." No, of course I didn't.

I inadvertently sold two copies of the book at Boskone by quoting that passage. Women, it seems, still have reason to be angry, and find it hilarious.

The anger-humor is the best part of the book, followed closely by the descriptions of first almost-sex and first actual sex with someone you love with all your heart. These scenes are so specifically and particularly described that you'd be tempted to think them autobiographical. However, Esther (that's the protagonist's name, though you have to read deep into the text to find it) at one point reflects on the meaning of her mother's name. It is Joan and that is proof positive to this former English major that Joanna is signaling that Esther is her daughter, which is to say her creation, and therefore not to be mistaken for her.

I am not wrong on this.

There is a great more to be said about the virtues of this slim (107 pages) book. Including its strange and whimsical ending. But I will content myself by mentioning that Samuel R. Delany, who conducted what he called "a correspondence of Victorian dimensions" with her, told me that he considers it her best book.

As for me, I would have to reread everything Joanna wrote several times before making so definite a claim. But it's possible. It's definitely possible.

This book, as I said, knocked me flat. Wow.

*

My Boskone Schedule

 .

 

Boskone is this weekend and as you can see, Lady Hypatia of Alexandria has already packed herself in the bag, thinking that this time it will surely work. Hypatia is an optimist.

As am I! I think that even though the weather threatens to not deliver the traditional Boskone Sunday Blizzard, Marianne and I will have a great time.

 Here's my schedule:

 

Start Time      Duration            Room Name          Session ID                      Title 
Fri 7:00 PM    1 Hr          Marina 3                  191        The Long and the Short of it: A Debate           
Sat 11:30 AM  1 Hr          Marina 2                  62          Fantasy's One-Volume Wonders                     
Sat 2:30 PM    1 Hr          Marina 3                  98          The Romantics and their Influence on SFFH       
Sun 11:30 AM  1 Hr          Galleria - Kaffeeklatsch  295        Kaffeeklatsch 1: Michael Swanwick               
Sun 1:00 PM    1 Hr          Harbor 1 - Hybrid          138        HYBRID: The Magic of Magical Realism      

If you attend, be sure to say hi. I'd like that.

*

 

 

Michael Andre-Driussi's Chapter Guides to Gene Wolfe

.

Look what came in the mail! Michael Andre-Driussi's series of chapter guides to the works of Gene Wolfe. 

 Michael Andre-Driussi is easily one of the best scholars of Gene's works. And the chapter guides are a particularly interesting critical form because they do not tell you what to think about any particular work. Rather, they guide you through the work, chapter by chapter, drawing your attention to things that should be noticed. Thus they allow you to make up your own mind about what is going on in a particular work.

This is a fruitful way to approach Wolfe's oeuvre because so much of its intent is conveyed by hints and suggestions. He apparently thought that any reasonably attentive reader could pick up on all of them. In this, as in so few other matters, however, he was wrong.

Yesterday, I took a quick tour of The Fifth Head of Cerberus. Today, when my work is done, I hope to begin a much slower amble through Peace. These were, respectively, Gene's second and third novels. The man was an early bloomer!

 

And did I come up with a new crackpot theory about The Fifth Head of Cerberus . . . ?

Why, yes, I did. Thank you for asking. 

Veil's Hypothesis, introduced in the first third of the novel, is that the abos native to the planet Sainte Anne are shape-shifters who may have replaced the human settlers, rather than being exterminated long ago. Most readers accept this hypothesis because the anthropologist who is the ostensible author of the second novella, "A Story," by John V. Marsch, has clearly been replaced by Victor, a boy who has been identified as a possible abo, in the final novella, V. R. T.

There are problems with this. The hearsay sightings of abos collected by Marsch are contradictory and unconvincing. Nor is a physical mechanism for the shape-changing ever presented, though Wolfe was clearly able to come up with one, had he needed it. And in V. R. T., it is clear that while Marsch has to some degree become Victor, he retains memories of his life as an anthropologist.

Andre-Driussi's helpful guide draws attention to something I had overlooked on previous readings--a recurrent theme in the second and third novellas of germophobia. The chief evidence that Marsch has become (or is becoming) Victor is the sudden deterioration of his handwriting, which he attributes to being bitten in the hand by a wild cat. 

When these facts are put together with strong indications that the supposed shape-shifters can become animals (including cats), it seems much more likely that the abos are viral in nature: intelligent creatures that survive by infecting host animals and humans.

And is this theory original to me . . .?

No, it is not. A quick Web search reveals that Marc Aramini has come up with a far superior and more detailed explanation of the life cycles of the abos and marsh babies--two native species, rather than one, in a paper titled Proving Veil's Hypothesis: Variance Reduction Techniques, Larval Life Cycles on an East Wind, and Shadow Children Riding Mars(c)hmen in The Fifth Head of Cerberus.

I admire Aramini's paper and find it completely convincing. You can find it here.

But it was fun figuring out some small part of it out for myself.

*

Galactic Philadelphia's Grand Night at the Rosenbach

.

The Galactic Philadelphia Literary Salon, our fair city's longest-running and most respected fantasy & SF reading series makes a big leap forward tomorrow/today (Wednesday, January 18) when they hold their first reading in the Rosenbach Museum, 2008-2010 Delancey Place.

For this event, they have brought out the heavy hitters Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and C.S.E. Cooney. 

C. S. E Cooney is a World Fantasy Award-winning author (and I'm here to tell you that the WFA is hard to win), as well as being a poet, playwright, and voice actor. 

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is a Nigerian speculative fiction writer, and publisher. He has taken a leading role in introducing African science fiction and fantasy to the rest of the world. Recently, he was co-editor of Africa Risen, an anthology of some of the best of African speculative fiction. And since he lives in Africa, right now is your best chance to get his autograph. Ask him to date it, and you'll be able to brag that you knew him back when African spec lit was just dawning on the world.

And the catch . . . ?

The bad news is that the event is ticketed. The good news is that the ticket is only $15. For which you get:

Schedule of Festivities

5:30 pm ~ Wine & Cheese reception, Tour Dr. Rosenbach's private library and Explore an exhibit of The Rosenbach's recent additions to their speculative fiction rare book collection.

6:00 pm ~ C.S.E. Cooney's and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki's readings, with a break in between for announcements and a raffle drawing of books.

7:10 pm (approximately) ~ A Q&A session with our authors.

7:30 pm (approximately) ~ Chat, buy books, and have books autographed.

7:45 pm ~ We'll adjourn to a nearby pub for more book talk and schmoozing.

 To which I will only add that if you're a bookish person and have never been to the Rosenbach, you want want want to see it. It has all the books and most of the manuscripts that the perfect library of your dreams possesses.

Seriously. I recommend this. You'll like it.

*