Ada Hoffmann's Blog, page 4

To Pan Or Not To Pan: On Negative Reviews

I was thinking recently about negative reviews, spurred partly by Charles Payseur’s post on the topic and by the recent Critical Friends episode featuring Aisha Subramanian, Dan Hartland, and Abigail Nussbaum. All these people are much more prolific reviewers than me, but I want to talk about my own experience, because I think when your reviews have a special purpose like Autistic Book Party’s – boosting good representation, calling out and dissecting bad representation – it changes things slightly.

(Read the full post on Substack)

Writing For A Video Game

Now that Trinity Fusion is out, I wanted to talk about what the writing experience was like, especially for readers who don’t have any experience writing in this industry. I didn’t when I started, and it was a really fascinating process!

(Read the full post on Substack)

Welcoming (Or Not) Our New AI Overlords

I’ve been thinking about AI writing a lot these past few months, which is no surprise, because so has half the Internet. But for me, it feels personal in a different way, because I worked on AI creativity for my PhD, back in 2018, before it was cool. The program I wrote was pretty useless (and it was basically a toy that was supposed to do a cool/funny thing – even if it had worked well, it wasn’t going to replace humans!) But my theoretical writing – about how we define creativity and how it could be evaluated, taking cues from psychology and other fields that computer scientists often ignore – was judged good enough for a doctorate.

Nowadays I teach cognitive science to undergraduate students, and their interest in this topic is huge. I rewrote a whole unit in one of my courses last fall so that we could talk about large language models. I vividly remember the discussion I got into with one student who’d read Blake Lemoine’s LaMDA transcripts and was convinced, like Lemoine, that LaMDA might be sentient. (Spoiler: it is not, but it is very good at pretending to be, based on our cultural expectations of the kinds of things a sentient AI would say.)

I’ve also written, in the Outside series, about tropey AI that takes over the world. I wrote it that way, not because I think AI will actually take over in that way, but because I was reaching for something oppressive and religious to hang the worldbuilding off of ; “AI Gods” seemed like as good a concept as any.

I was always clear – in my head, at least – that the AI Gods were just fantasy and not a representation of AI from real life. At the beginning of the series I was fine with that. By the time I got to the third book, I’d started to question it more. I’d had time to think about how AI hype and inflated notions of AI’s abilities can itself be harmful. As Ted Chiang writes so eloquently, the problem isn’t AI “getting out of control”; it’s corporations that deliberately or callously use AI to harm people. The idea that the AI is somehow all-powerful, unerring, or wiser than us, enables a lot of that harm. Sometimes we have to puncture the hype, not so we can downplay the harm, but so that we can see the harm clearly in the first place.

(Read the full post on Substack)

Autistic Book Party, Episode 78: Tiger Honor

Today’s Book: “Tiger Honor” by Yoon Ha Lee

The Plot: A young tiger spirit named Sebin gets their acceptance letter from the Thousand Worlds Space Forces – on the same day that they learn that their beloved uncle Hwan has deserted forces and been disgraced. As Hwan’s presence haunts a disastrous first day of training, Sebin must decide between loyalty to their family and sacrifice for the greater good.

Autistic Character(s): The author!

This book is a really interesting sequel to Dragon Pearl – in part because the tone is so different. Sebin is a very different narrator from to Min – serious, rulebound, and dutiful, not to mention their steadfast devotion to a family which, to an adult reader, looks fairly unloving and shifty from the very first scene.

Seeing the setting through Sebin’s eyes instead of Min’s means losing most of the caper-y tone that made Dragon Pearl so charming – but it also adds unexpected depth. Sebin feels the injustice when people betray each other, and the confusion when they’re getting mixed messages about who to trust, more strongly than Min, and they think through the ethics of their situation in a different way.

Min is in the story too, of course!. She arrives early on, intent on a mission of her own. After seeing through her eyes in the previous book it’s fascinating to see her through Sebin’s as they slowly puzzle out what’s going on with her. In Dragon Pearl, from Min’s perspective, the mind control capers felt fairly innocent, even when they went too far; there was almost a sense that foxes were viewed with suspicion because people were small-minded or something. In Tiger Honor, we get a much clearer sense of why people fear foxes, and of how distressing the mind control really is for those who realize they’ve been affected. It’s a sobering shift. Having read the previous book, we know that Min is ultimately on the side of good, but it makes total sense why Sebin views her as an enemy or even a monster. The way that they do reconcile with her, towards the end, is non-obvious and quite interesting.

Despite a more serious tone, there’s still a lot of fun to be had! Tiger Honor is still ultimately an adventure story about a quirky young group of space cadets who find creative ways to use their skills to foil an enemy. The character and setting details are as delightful as ever. Overall it’s a solid addition to the series that adds new dimensions to the previous book’s themes. The trilogy will conclude in October 2023, with a book called “Fox Snare.”

The Verdict: Recommended-2

For a list of past/future/possible Autistic Book Party books, click here.

Portrait of the Artist

One of the new-to-me Substacks I’ve been enjoying lately is Joy Baglio’s newsletter, “Alone In a Room.” Updates are not very frequent but they’re each full of some really meaty, interesting, open-ended prompts that I’ve enjoyed playing around with. I thought I’d share some of what I wrote in response to the most recent series of prompts – on setting creative intentions for yourself as a writer.

(Read the full post on Substack)

Autistic Reader Month: Week Four

Here’s who we interviewed on Everything Is True this week:

April 24: S.J. Groenewegen

“[Special interests] were particularly intense during my teenaged years, and I now ponder whether it was partly my brain’s way of dealing with the hormonal storm of adolescence.”

April 25 (subscribers only): Caitlin Starling

“I love any book (fiction or non) with a narrator/protagonist who really knows their stuff, and where the author has also taken a clear delight in researching and writing about the topic.”

April 26: Mad McDaniel

“The romantic formula always feels to me as if the author is stealing their autonomy by forcing them toward that happily ever after.”

April 27: E.A. Alderdice

“SFF is comforting escapism but it’s also a safe place in which to explore stressful and scary issues. I go to SFF to look at alternative ways of being, thinking, and doing.”

We’ve got two more bonus interviews coming up this week, so if you want them delivered fresh to your inbox, you can subscribe!

Autistic Reader Month: Week Three

Here’s who we nterviewed on Everything Is True this week:

April 17: Koda Joie

“All of my stories will have autistic representation because I am autistic and it’s quite impossible for me to write a neuro-typical story. Who I am is my voice, and my voice will tell these stories.”

April 18 (subscribers only): Bogi Takács

“I actually like a combination of both, where there are both humans and aliens, humans and robots, etc. and they can all have different kinds of neurotypes. I don’t frequently find this in fiction!”

April 19: C.M. Crockford

“Some of my favorite works of fiction also tend to serve as philosophy or a challenge – my brain frankly gets bored with any media which can only offer up what I already know.”

April 20: Z.J. Cannon

“The imperative to be likeable reminds me too much of my time in school, when I had friends trying to make me over against my will to render me more socially acceptable.”

We’ve got four more interviews coming up this week, so if you want them delivered fresh to your inbox every morning, you can subscribe!

Autistic Reader Month: Week Two

Here’s who we talked to in Autistic Reader Month’s second week!

April 10: Emmalia Harrington

“I like the challenge of psychological horror, to make scares intangible but powerful.”

April 11 (subscribers only): Jay Edelson

“You don’t have to conform to neurotypical models of how to enjoy things, whether that’s books or comics or anything else.”

April 12: Jennifer R. Povey

“Some of us are assholes, but it’s not because we’re autistic. Just saying.”

April 13: Michael Helsem

“I don’t read to see myself in fiction. I like moods, landscapes & atmospheres, idiosyncratic world-building.”

We’ve got four more interviews coming up this week, so if you want them delivered fresh to your inbox every morning, you can subscribe!

Autistic Reader Month: Week One

My Substack has been updating 4x/week with autistic reader interviews! I decided not to spam people off-Substack with links every single day (and, er, this recap is late because it was a holiday weekend and I forgot) but here’s your round-up of who we talked to in the first week:

April 3: Jes Battis

“Neurodiversity and gender diversity are often intertwined, so I think I tend to connect with characters who are figuring out their own bodies and minds.”

April 4 (subscribers only): Chelsey Flood

“A lot of autistic people use alcohol as a way to hide their differences and sensitivities, and so I hope writing about my experience will help them feel less alone.”

April 5: Andi C. Buchanan

“There’s a way I recognised myself not just in autistic or even autistic coded characters, but in characters who had a singular passion and focus.”

April 6: Cleoniki Kesidis

“The way society works is very chaotic. I connect best with books where the world is also portrayed as chaotic and wild and unexpected, and the characters have big struggles alongside their big joys.”

 

We’ve got four more interviews coming up this week, so if you want them delivered fresh to your inbox every morning, you can subscribe!

Welcome to: AUTISTIC READER MONTH

It’s April! And instead of lighting anything up in any color, I want to celebrate autistim this month by talking to autistic people about the books we love. This month you’re going to hear, from varied perspectives, what we love about reading, what makes a book appeal to us, and what makes a book more challenging.

(Read the full post on Substack)