Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion
APRIL 2023 SCIENCE FICTION MICROSTORY CONTEST (Comments Only)
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Fantastic theme. I'll do my best to get a story done this month.
Mod
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The year was 2050, and humanity had finally achieved interstellar travel. The first colony ship had been sent out ten years ago, and now it was time for the second one to depart. The ship was called “Hope,” and it was filled with people who were longing for a new home among the stars.
Among the passengers was a young woman named Sarah. She had grown up on Earth, but she had always felt like she didn’t belong there. She had always dreamed of traveling to other worlds and seeing what lay beyond our own.
As the ship traveled through space, Sarah found herself feeling more and more homesick. She missed her family and friends back on Earth, and she longed for the familiar sights and sounds of home.
But as time went on, Sarah began to realize that Hope was becoming her new home. She made friends with the other passengers, and she found herself falling in love with one of the crew members.
One day, as Sarah was looking out at the stars, she realized that she wasn’t just longing for her old home anymore - she was also filled with hope for her new one. She knew that there would be challenges ahead, but she was ready to face them head-on.
And so Sarah settled into life aboard Hope, knowing that she had found a new home among the stars.
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This, of course, is not my work and should not be used verbatim in the contest, but it can be tool that can help you here or with your professional work, such as proofread this story or such. I use it to help generate small code segments for work, especially when it needs to be in a software language that I am not as familiar with.
Certainly there are some questions raised by some about the ethics of this, as seen by the potential impact of replacing skilled labor jobs. That said, it is here and will improve its results and impact over time.
How does everyone feel about it?
Jot wrote: "Has anyone played much with chatGPT4? Easy to do, using the chat feature under Microsoft's bing site on Edge (not accessible on a competing browser). Likely coming to over browsers. A query based o..."I'm not sure how I feel about this. Both appalled and intrigued.
There's the initial, "would I actually purchase a $30 book from Barnes and Nobles that has been written by an AI?
The author still has to create the imagination and nudge it in the right direction, so there are still a lot of non-AI elements that would be in that story.
Or is there a win/win marketing tactic to use here "Written by a Human" or something on the book. Which quite frankly I'd probably be more apt to purchase.
Very interesting. Intriguing, and in some ways - lazy.
So thanks Jot... this has created the never ending rabbit hole path for me.I could see how someone might use the chatGPT for the basics, but there's no soul or passion in any of the stories it's generated for me.
But I'm pretty sure I could go in and flesh it out.
"Longing by Carrie Zylka's AI" 566 words
The longing had been with her for as long as she could remember. Even as a child, she would sit outside on clear nights, gazing up at the stars, feeling a deep sense of yearning in her chest. She didn't know what it was she was looking for, only that it was out there somewhere, beyond the boundaries of her small town and her mundane life.
As she grew older, the longing only intensified. She devoured books on astronomy and cosmology, studying the patterns of the stars and planets, searching for some clue as to where she might find what she was looking for. She dreamed of traveling to far-off worlds, of discovering new civilizations and unearthing the secrets of the universe.
But the more she learned, the more she realized that what she was searching for might not exist at all. The planets she longed for, the ancient civilizations and lost cultures she yearned to explore, might only exist in her imagination.
Still, the longing persisted. It was an ache in her soul, a hollow space that she could never quite fill. She tried to ignore it, to push it down and focus on the tangible things in her life - her job, her relationships, her hobbies - but it was always there, lurking in the back of her mind, waiting for a quiet moment to surface and overwhelm her.
Sometimes, the longing would take on a more specific form. She would catch a glimpse of a photo or painting that seemed to capture the essence of what she was searching for - a sprawling city on a distant planet, or a crumbling temple nestled in the mountains - and for a moment, she would feel as though she had found what she was looking for. But the feeling never lasted, and soon she would be consumed once again by the endless, nebulous yearning.
She began to realize that the longing was not just for a specific place or time, but for a feeling, a sense of connection and belonging that she had never truly experienced in her own life. It was a longing for a world that was kinder, more beautiful, more meaningful than the one she knew.
And so she began to search for that feeling in the world around her. She took long walks in nature, seeking solace in the rustling of leaves and the rush of water. She sought out art and music that spoke to her soul, that captured the essence of what she was searching for. She connected with people who shared her yearning, who understood what it was to feel like an outsider in this world.
Slowly, she began to realize that the longing was not something to be feared or repressed, but something to be celebrated. It was a testament to the depth of her spirit, to her unquenchable thirst for beauty and meaning. It was a reminder that there was more to life than what she could see and touch, that there was a vast, infinite universe waiting to be explored.
And so she continued to search, not for a specific planet or time, but for that feeling of connection and belonging that she knew was out there somewhere. It was in the wind, and the rocks, and the waves. It was nowhere and it was everywhere. And one day, she knew, she would find it.
Jot wrote: "Has anyone played much with chatGPT4? Easy to do, using the chat feature under Microsoft's bing site on Edge (not accessible on a competing browser). Likely coming to over browsers. A query based o..."I have used ChatGPT for work for a while. It's been great for creating content for clients in niche areas. Never tried it with fiction. That would take all the fun out of it.
I use an app called Jasper because it has some Trust and Governance built-in, including safeguards against plagiarism. I have found that the better you are at writing content briefs the better it is. I suppose someone could do that with fiction.
I suppose along the lines of what Carrie said, we already distinguish between human-made items (fancy cars or clothing) versus what machines have made.Perhaps art and literature will be the same (I hope not though).
Perhaps if it improves vastly--the example Jot pointed up for us had, for instance, one grammatical error ("like" for "as if") and a great many segments in the style of: simple-shortish-declarative-sentence-ff.-by subject(noun)-repetition-in-simple-short-other-declarative-sentence---a style heavily loaded into about every example of ChatGPT I've seen.Certainly, such obvious requisites as crediting the authors on whose works a given set of ChatGPT products (books of type RT or BN, for ex.) have been developed, indicating whether a book is human-written or (X %) ChatGPT developed, etc. etc. must be part of further such AI development. And--so far, for sure--as Carrie noted here, a bit of human input is sure needed for the piece to be much more than a non-felt template/attempt.
Of course, we don't know what books have been the teaching ex's input into ChatGPT; I'd be interested to see one built using,, say, only the most emotionally and intellectually compelling works of Dostoevsky, Undset, Tillie Olsen, Chekhov, H. Green/J. Greenberg, Connie Willis, and 4 or 5 others who can rip you to tears while bringing in serious mental content---be interesting to see what an AI development can do with that. And I'm sure each human here has their own cluster of authors whose near-clone works they'd be anxious to examine. After which, one may have more longterm opinions. Maybe.
Of course, by then human opinions may be of lesser weight.
Thank you for bringing this matter up, Jot. Also, folks may be interested in the discussions of this on the Authors Guild's website..
I have no interest in Generative AI to advance my writing. Not because it couldn't be useful in some capacity, but because it would likely complicate my writing life in a way I find unacceptable. I strive to improve my craft. I work to increase the speed, the creativity, the sensitivity, the quality of my work in every piece. But the struggles to be seen, to be recognized continue to be one of the greatest challenges of being a professional writer.
As a Black writer, I already have enough hurtles to jump without having to add whether or not I use a technology which someone will surely equate with cheating, reducing the potential visibility of my writing further.
I wish anyone who uses these writing tools the very best of fortune and it may be that one day they will be improved enough to allow anyone to write meaningfully, creatively and in a manner which showcases their ability, not just the technology.
It is unlikely I will ever get to enjoy that opportunity without a social consequence. This is a tool, which while it may be fascinating, will likely only hurt my chances of being accepted in my creative efforts.
I do, however, use the graphic art programs such as Midjourney, as a visual prompt generator and write stories inspired by the graphics I have found or created online. If you are curious, you can look them up on Facebook using the term ‘Midjourney Follies.’
My two bits. Your mileage may vary.
Mod
I posted it, because the future is here and it helps each of us to understand how the world is changing around us. Funny that I posted a story here years back about an AI that people had gotten use to using for the basic entertainment.
Mod
Best wishes for your daughter's interviews!
Not sure I can get something up this month. My mom died on 4/4 and I have just got back home. My husband goes for knee surgery Tuesday. I got executrix stuff to deal with too.
My condolences on your mother's death, Marianne. Please take the time you need for grieving (and for the work of executrix) and do not feel any time-pressures to post.
Mod
Thanks, eveyone. My mom died with those she loved around her in hospice. She was finally ready to let go.Now, I just have to get hubby back on his feet. Knee surgery went OK.
Marianne wrote: "Thanks, eveyone. My mom died with those she loved around her in hospice. She was finally ready to let go.Now, I just have to get hubby back on his feet. Knee surgery went OK."
I'm glad to hear his surgery went okay, Marianne, and that you and others she loved could be with your mother when she died.
Sorry I didn't get one in. I've been narrating/producing an audiobook for my client. Great stories everyone!!
Thank you, Justin. And, congratulations on the project.
Is the client's audiobook fiction, Justin. I love your audiobook/audio-stories work.
Tom wrote: "Thank you, Justin. And, congratulations on the project."Thank you Tom, much appreciated!!
Paula wrote: "Is the client's audiobook fiction, Justin. I love your audiobook/audio-stories work."Thanks Paula! My client's short book is actually about food invention and innovation during World War II and comparing food resources in colonial possessions to their imperial possessors. It's a short book for this client that I narrate YouTube videos for. I am also narrating one of my sci-fi short story books, but am only about 50% through it.
Hiraeth (pronounced [hiraɪ̯θ]) is a Welsh concept of longing for home, which can be loosely translated as 'nostalgia', or, more commonly, 'homesickness'. Many Welsh people claim 'hiraeth' is a word which cannot be translated, meaning more than solely "missing something" or "missing home."
Alternate:
A spiritual longing for a home which maybe never was. Nostalgia for ancient places to which we cannot return. It is the echo of lost places of our soul's past and our grief for them. It is in the wind, and the rocks and the waves. It is nowhere and it is everywhere.
Element:
Hope. Hope is the oxygen left in your tank when the gauge reads zero. Hope is choosing almost certain death over certain death. Hope is knowing the odds but beating them anyway.