The “AI Revolution” Problem

The “AI Revolution” Problem

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Image by Thomas Meier from Pixabay. Pixabay has a policy of disclosing AI images. This did not have the indicator that it was AI.

Good afterevenmorn (whenever you’re reading this!)

I’d like to talk about AI. I can hear your collective groans. I’m quite annoyed by the subject, too, but perhaps for different reasons. Still, let’s talk AI from the perspective of an actual writer (struggling, but still a writer).

The news has been filled with nothing but discussions of AI in creative spaces… or, at least, that’s what my news feed has been full of. It’s as if all of the various algorithms are doing their darnedest to keep me as depressed as possible… stupid AI, but I digress. I’m sure you’re all quite familiar with the chime of the bells of doom that creatives have been ringing since AI reared its head in our spaces. There is considerable debate raging all over the internet about where AI fits, where it doesn’t and why or why not. Many authors are feeling threatened, and not without reason. There are a myriad of reasons why. Let’s explore just a couple.

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Terry Pratchett – A Modern-Day Fantasy Voltaire

Terry Pratchett – A Modern-Day Fantasy Voltaire

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March marked my tenth year of blogging here at Black Gate! Here was my very first post, on March 10, 2014. I’ve taken a few breaks, but I have posted almost every Monday morning for a decade!  And today is my birthday – pretty neat posting day for me.

Next week, my Doyle on Holmes series starts up and carries us through April and into early May. Had to fill in today with something. I finished up my re-read of the last ten books in Glen Cook’s Garrett, PI, series, and I have a post coming on that soon.

Still in ‘that kind of mood,’ I decided I needed a little Pratchett. We’ve got quite a few Terry Pratchett fans here at Black Gate, and you can find links to various posts on them, below. Since it’s been almost two years since I wrote about Pratchett, it’s high time I added a new essay.

I don’t have any interest in Tiffany Aching, and haven’t read those books. For me, they’re not really Discworld books. To each their own: they’re just not for me. Working from there, I have read everything but Raising Steam. I’ve set that aside, as Snuff was just okay, and Unseen Academicals was the first Discworld book I actually thought was bad. (I believe that his Alzheimer’s was so bad, that someone else – perhaps his daughter – wrote it from his notes. It’s the most un-Pratchett quality book of his I’ve read. Folks get offended by this. It’s how I feel. Disagree with me and move on. It’s fine.)

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The Horrors of Sam Moskowitz

The Horrors of Sam Moskowitz

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Horrors in Hiding, Horrors Unseen, and Horrors Unknown (Berkley Medallion, February 1973,
June 1974, and February 1976). Covers: Vincent Di Fate (x2), uncredited

A few years back I wrote a trio of Vintage Treasures pieces about a series of Berkley Medallion paperback horror anthologies from the mid-70s, all edited by Sam Moskowitz (with an assist from Alden H. Norton).

Horrors in Hiding (February 1973)
Horrors Unseen (June 1974)
Horrors Unknown (February 1976)

The last two were the final anthologies Moskowitz produced. I was planning to investigate one of Moskowitz’s classic science fiction anthologies this weekend — maybe Masterpieces of Science Fiction (1967), or Under the Moons of Mars (1970) — but by midnight Friday I was deep into a stack of his horror anthologies again. I’m mesmerized by those creepy covers, what can I tell you.

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Vernor Vinge, October 2, 1944 — March 20, 2024

Vernor Vinge, October 2, 1944 — March 20, 2024

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The Zones of Thought trilogy: A Fire Upon the Deep (Tor paperback reprint,
February 1993), A Deepness in the Sky (Tor, March 1999), The Children of the Sky
(Tor, October 2011). Covers by Boris Vallejo, Bob Eggleton, Stephan Martiniere

Vernor Vinge died on March 20, 2024, after several years suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. (I was aware that he had retired from writing, though I didn’t know about his illness, and part of me had hoped for one more novel or some more short fiction.) His last substantial work was the third Zones of Thought novel, The Children of the Sky, in 2011, though he did publish a couple of short-shorts in Nature, the last being “Legale” in 2017.

The first Vinge story I read must have been his first published story, “Apartness” (New Worlds, June 1965), a powerful indictment of South Africa’s apartheid regime via an ironic SF device. He continued to write occasional stories over the next few years. (His day job was as a Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, and he made significant contributions to those fields.)

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A to Z Review: “Bit by Bit,” by Karina Fabian

A to Z Review: “Bit by Bit,” by Karina Fabian

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A to Z Reviews

Karina Fabian published “Bit by Bit” in Daily Science Fiction in January, 2011 and it was subsequently reprinted in their massive first year’s collection, Not Just Rockets and Robots.

A root canal is bad enough, but it becomes even worse of Sally when the dentist’s drill broke off in her tooth. Rather than attempt to extract the broken off drill bit, the dentist elected to leave it inside the tooth (this is not recommended practice by the ADA). Almost immediately, Sally began hearing chirping sounds, which she understood to be an alien language.

Unable to understand what the aliens may have been saying, but understanding that the constant noise was annoying her and making life difficult, Sally attempted to have the drill bit removed, a procedure which was denied by her insurance company. Joining the aluminum hat brigade as a method to stop the signals from reaching her tooth, Sally found her job as a barista in jeopardy.

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Goth Chick News: Is Universal Finally Treating Its Iconic Catalog the Right Way?

Goth Chick News: Is Universal Finally Treating Its Iconic Catalog the Right Way?

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I’ve spent more words here than I care to count ranting about the atrocities Universal Studios has repeatedly tried to visit on its iconic monster movie catalog. I could dry heave every time I think about the whole Dark Universe debacle and the fact that we were this close to having a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde courtesy of Russell Crowe, a Van Helsing brought to you by Channing Tatum, Dwayne “the rock” Johnson as Wolfman, and (I can barely type this) Angelina Jolie recreating the Bride of Frankenstein. Literally, the only good thing I can say about the first step in this hellish march to mediocrity that was Tom Cruise in The Mummy (2017), is that its spectacular crash and burn lit fire to the entire concept.

But here we are in 2024 and a mere year away from the launch of Universal’s new Epic Universe theme park, part of which is a new “land” called – you guessed it – Dark Universe. Sources point to plans for the new park being in the works since the early 2000’s, and scuttling the big-budget remakes of their classic monster films meant Universal was left with a revenue gap that tied their new park property to their movie vault. The answer, when it finally started being talked about at Hollywood cocktail parties, is a classic example of the best ideas being the original ones.

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Love Exotic Science Fiction on Desert Planets? Try Donald Kingsbury’s Courtship Rite

Love Exotic Science Fiction on Desert Planets? Try Donald Kingsbury’s Courtship Rite

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Courtship Rite (Timescape Books, July 1982). Cover by Rowena Morrill

Noe took her strange Liethe in a comforting embrace. “Some of us make our Contribution to the Race through Death, and others of us make our Contribution to the Race through Life. That’s the way it has always been.”

One of the distinctive pleasures of science fiction is the heterotopia — a story set not in a good place (a utopia) or an evil place (a dystopia) but in an interestingly different place. Geta, the setting of Donald Kingsbury’s Courtship Rite, has long been my favorite heterotopia.

The society Kingsbury portrays is shaped in important ways by its physical setting. Geta is a desert world, a science fictional trope that goes back to Percival Lowell’s Mars and the many stories set there, from Burroughs on. It’s not as harsh as Herbert’s Arrakis, but certainly harsher than Le Guin’s Anarras. For one thing, its native life is biochemically incompatible with its human inhabitants; eating it, without careful detoxification, is lethal. The only things truly safe to eat are a limited number of introduced Earth lifeforms: bees, eight species of plants (not all named) — and other human beings, because Geta’s most visibly distinctive cultural trait is institutionalized cannibalism. Kingsbury calls this out on the first page of the novel, where the children of a famous man, Tae ran-Kaiel, attend a funeral feast where his roasted body is the main course.

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Immaculate Scoundrels: That Tarantino-style Wuxia-80’s Heist-Fantasy Film… with Lizard People… you never knew you needed

Immaculate Scoundrels: That Tarantino-style Wuxia-80’s Heist-Fantasy Film… with Lizard People… you never knew you needed

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Immaculate Scoundrels (Flying Wizard Press, March 5, 2024). Cover by Brian Leblanc

There are lots of jokes associated with being GenX; so many, in fact, that arguably, the best joke is being GenX, period. I mean, multiple discussions of various generations literally provided lists and manage to forget that there actually is a group of people born between 1965 and 1980 at all!

But thanks to the odd 80s nostalgia of Stranger Things, Maverick, and the never-ending exploitat… er… expansion of the Star Wars franchise… the rather odd era of Big Hair, Nuclear Escalation, the birth of the Summer Blockbuster and a lot of pretty bitchin’ music is in vogue. It was an interesting, weird and contradictory time to grow up, with a lot of contradictory media and mixed messages (I’ll never forget seeing a literal “Say No to Drugs” commercial attached to the trailer for Porkys).

The end result was a generation marked for having a certain feral cynicism born of constant reminder from about age 13 that we were the “baby bust” and had zero political or economic influence and likely never would so just “go do you.” And any inclination otherwise probably ended with the dot.com crash, 9/11 etc. all hitting as most of us were 25 – 33, with 1/2 the generation still on a Clintonian hangover and the other half still believing Reaganomics had been a thing.

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What’s Coming Here on Monday Mornings…

What’s Coming Here on Monday Mornings…

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So, you’re wondering, “What’s Bob gonna write about in the coming months?”

Actually, not one of you is wondering that, but this is my column. So… Writing about a thousand words a week often involves picking a topic on Saturday morning, and having something ready to go on Monday morning. I’ve actually been working on a few things ahead of time this year, which is kinda cool.

“Really, Bob? You mean, some stuff, you’re not just totally winging?”

Well, I wouldn’t put it so crudely, but yes. I’m trying to go a little deeper on a few things. Including number two below, which I am THRILLED with.

 

DOYLE ON HOLMES

For the entire month of April and into May, The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes returns to Monday mornings. Peter Haining’s The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a nifty book which had been published by Barnes and Noble. It has several items which are included in Jack Tracy’s foundational Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha.

It also has several additional items worth reading. Doyle wrote some essays regarding Sherlock Holmes, and I’m going to do a series on those. The posts will quote liberally from Doyle’s essays, with my own input. I suspect even serious Sherlockians haven’t read Doyle’s essays in some time.

And if you aren’t familiar with The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes, then you missed my first three years here at Black Gate, as that was the name of my column.

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A Really Impressive First Novel: The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland

A Really Impressive First Novel: The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland

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The God of Endings (Flatiron Books, March 7, 2023)

At this year’s Capricon I shared an autograph session with Jacqueline Holland. In the way of things, especially with customers sparse, I ended up signing a couple of my books for her and she signed a copy of her first novel, The God of Endings, for me. The novel was published in March 2023 by Flatiron Books, a fairly new imprint.

Jacqueline Holland got her MFA from the University of Kansas, studying with the wonderful Kij Johnson. She has published work in some impressive literary journals, like Big Fiction. This novel is fantasy, and she told me her next two novels will be science fiction. It’s a vampire novel, which is normally not my thing, but Jacqueline’s description made it sound intriguing, and not your standard vampire novel (certainly these are not sparkly vampires!) and it lived up to that.

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