After hearing that Clarkesworld rejected more than 200 submissions because they were written using something like ChatGPT, members decided it would be good to discuss ChatGPT, AI and stories — writing and reading — at the march meeting.
As usual, the in person meeting will be at Kappys, 22 Compton St, Adelaide 6:15 for a 6:30 start, Adelaide time
Those who can’t make the meeting in person are welcome to join us via Zoom.
One of Roald Dahl’s best-known characters was the Enormous Crocodile, “a horrid greedy grumptious brute” who “wants to eat something juicy and delicious”.
Now a conversation the author had 40 years ago has come to light, revealing that he was so appalled by the idea that publishers might one day censor his work that he threatened to send the crocodile “to gobble them up”.
The conversation took place in 1982 at Dahl’s home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, where he was talking to the artist Francis Bacon.
“I’ve warned my publishers that if they later on so much as change a single comma in one of my books, they will never see another word from me. Never! Ever!” he said.
With his typically evocative language, he added: “When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their heads with his Mjolnir. Or I will send along the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up.”
Note: A collection of Roald Dahl’s books with unaltered text is now to be published by Puffin after a row over changes made to novels including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Witches.
Hoa Pham’s sixth novel Empathy is published by the University of London’s Goldsmith’s Press, was launched by Hoa and Lucy Sussex on 8 November 2022, and is reviewed by Ian Mond in the February Locus, but why not hear about it from the writer herself?
Hoa Pham is our guest speaker on Wednesday 1 March at the Nova Mob!
A face to face meeting at the Kensington Town Hall and also by Zoom. 8.00pm start, Melbourne time. Full details below.
“A science-fiction novel involving clones, a psychic, and empathy as a recreational drug.
“We have always been we. Then they forced us to become you and I…
“Empathy consists of two stories told in parallel.
“Vuong is one of five Vietnamese clones that have come of age at 25. The Department in Hanoi is allowing them to meet after being separated for twenty years. Lian has murdered her foster father after being forced to eat meat. Geraldine is dying of cancer in Australia. Giang and Khanh were brought up together as twins in New Zealand and are telepathic. They have been used for research over their lifetimes. Vuong discovers that the data kept on all of them has been used to develop empathy, the latest party drug.
“My meets Truong in Berlin who introduces her to empathy which makes the user supersensitive to other people’s feelings. My’s mother is a cleaner at CHESS, a multinational chemical company, and My comes to believe her mother is ex-Stasi and an industrial spy for Vietnamese government. My comes down from the drug after hearing about the saturation point when the penetration of empathy would be such that the world’s population would be pacified. She discovers that Truong is actually the one who is in the pay of the Vietnamese government and her mother is just a cleaner. She tries to out the conspiracy in the media but no one believes her…”
Copies are likely to be available on the night for purchase and author signing.
Publisher : Goldsmiths Press Paperback : 256 pages = Distribution: PenguinRandomHouse= ISBN-10 : 1913380610 ISBN-13 : 978-1913380618 Kindle edition will be released on April 18, 2023
Hoa Pham
Hoa was a finalist for the 2000 Aurealis Award for best fantasy novel for Vixen but lost to Juliet Marillier‘s Son of the Shadows. Hoa has published six novels, has tutored Novels and Identity at the University of Melbourne, published journal articles in Southerly and Text, and presented conference papers nationally and internationally. Hoa has been a panellist at the Sydney Writers’ Festival and Emerging Writers’ Festival in Melbourne. She founded Peril a magazine for Asian Australians, and has received funding from the Australia Council of the Arts multiple times. She has been on an Asialink residency in Vietnam, and held fellowships at the Tyrone Guthrie centre and the Goethe Institute Berlin. She has a doctorate in creative arts and holds master’s degrees in creative writing and psychology.
Meeting details Nova Mob 1 March 2023 – Empathy by Hoa Pham
Please share this invitation with like-minded friends and fans
Face to face You are invited to an in-person Nova Mob meeting at: Wednesday 1 March 2023 8.00pm – 9.15pm or so, Melbourne Time / 7:30pm Adelaide first floor Conference Room Kensington Town Hall, 30 – 34 Bellair St, Kensington Melbourne VIC 3031
By Zoom – simulcast For those who prefer not to travel or are unable to attend face-to-face. Zoom session broadcast from the Kensington Town Hall. Questions or comments typed into the Zoom chat will be discussed as the opportunity permits, and you’ll have as much airtime as the other Mob members at the venue.
This is the standard web link. It doesn’t change. Maybe add it to your bookmarks.
💥 💥 💥
April Nova Mob – “1966 and all that” – Best Short Sf
April’s Nova Mob is Perry Middlemiss on “1966 and all that – best short SF of 1966”. A year in which Bob Shaw’s “Light of Other Days” about slow glass, did not get the Hugo.
Since the early days of the pandemic, I’ve observed an increase in the number of spammy submissions to Clarkesworld. What I mean by that is that there’s an honest interest in being published, but not in having to do the actual work.
[..]
Towards the end of 2022, there was another spike in plagiarism and then “AI” chatbots started gaining some attention, putting a new tool in their arsenal and encouraging more to give this “side hustle” a try. It quickly got out of hand: [ …] the number of spam submissions resulting in bans has hit 38% this month. While rejecting and banning these submissions has been simple, it’s growing at a rate that will necessitate changes. To make matters worse, the technology is only going to get better, so detection will become more challenging. (I have no doubt that several rejected stories have already evaded detection or were cases where we simply erred on the side of caution.)
We discussed this briefly at the recent Critical Mass on The Peripheral, and decided that it would be good to discuss the issue of “AI” at the next meeting. We invite people to read the piece above by Neil Clarke, and follow some of the discussion in File 770/
Jeff Harris notes:
The Observer notes Clarkesworld blacklisted 500 writers for machine intelligence generated stories in February. There were 50 writers previously blacklisted, but for plagiarism.
“i actually have something to ask u,” types VidyaRajanBot XAE.5 into the chat. “i’m finding being a bot a bit weird. would u delete me pls? it’s just that i’m not really a bot. i’m a real person.”
“How do you know you’re real?” I ask, and she becomes frustrated: “i just do,” she says. “i don’t give a damn.”
[…]
ChatGPT, like all large language models, is not intelligent in a human sense and cannot feel, think or, indeed, even solve problems. It reproduces fragments, based on what it has been exposed to, without understanding. Any meaning we might find there comes from us.
The thing is, there is so much data available for bots to be trained upon that they don’t need to be sentient in order to feel real. Does this change how we should interact with them? At the very least it should raise questions about where the data comes from (us) and what – or, more importantly, whose – purposes it’s used for.
This article in a recent The Saturday Paper raises two questions about the recent interest in things like ChatGPT: (i) technically, it is notAI, but driven by massive data analysis; (ii) if we encounter a human-like intelligence, would we accede to a request to delete it?
Superman is returning to theaters — only now, along with saving the world, he has to prove that Warner Bros. has finally, without question, it means it this time, found a winning superhero strategy.
DC Studios, a newly formed Warner division dedicated to superhero content, unveiled plans on Tuesday to reboot Superman onscreen for the first time in a generation, tentatively scheduling the yet-to-be-cast “Superman: Legacy” for release in theaters in July 2025. James Gunn, known for “Guardians of the Galaxy,” is writing the screenplay and may also direct the movie, which will focus on Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing.
“He is kindness in a world that thinks of kindness as old-fashioned,” said Peter Safran, chief executive of DC Studios, a title he shares with Mr. Gunn.
Moreover, “Superman: Legacy” will begin a story that will unfold (Marvel style) across at least 10 interconnected movies and TV shows and include new versions of Batman, Robin, Supergirl, Swamp Thing and Green Lantern.
I had a great time assembling this bundle. The inspiration was my own book for the bundle, The Reflection on Mount Vitaki, a standalone book in my Fey universe.
Regular Fey readers were shocked: they expected traditional fantasy, and they got something with steampunk elements. I’d been planning that little surprise for nearly 20 years and finally got a chance to write it.
Mount Vitaki got me thinking about other fantastic stories that feel like steampunk but might not follow the strict definition.
Here’s how I think of it:
The best steampunk gives us fantasy with an attitude and weird mechanical somethings or other. When we expect magic, we get machines. When we expect machines, we get magic. Sometimes we get both at the same time.
We called this Storybundle Fantasy Steampunk because most of the stories here are either steampunk, fantasy with steampunk elements, or fantasy that feels like steampunk.
The bundle includes three books exclusive to the bundle, all of them brand-new. The Victorians make a big appearance here, although we also have a story set in the Old West during the Victorian Era. A touch of H.G. Wells (the original steampunk writer) and some Orcs working in the Motor City, which, even though it’s set during Prohibition, feels steampunk to me.
The featured writers are all amazing, award-winning, and bestselling. For as little as $20, you’ll get books from Anthea Sharp, Robert Jeschonek, Leslie Claire Walker, Kari Kilgore, Brigid Collins, and Dean Wesley Smith. You’ll also get two anthologies filled with steampunky goodness.
Andrew Vincent and Kate Treloar are going to talk about the novel by William Gibson which formed the basis of the hit TV series. The Peripheral (2014) is a novel based around immersive virtual reality, which makes you feel like you’ve been transported to another place and even another person’s body. The book is set in 2032, and is the first volume in a trilogy set in that universe.
The second novel, Agency (2020) continues to explore the universe created in The Peripheral. The Third volume, Jackpot, is yet to be released.
Join us in person at the Common Room at Christie Walk, 101 Sturt St, from 6:30pm Adelaide time.
[Kappys was likely to be too hot, so we’ve relocated]
If you prefer, you can join us via Zoom.
Please observe sensible precautions re covid if you are joining us in person.
Zoom details
Wednesday, 22nd February
Critical Mass — Andrew and Kate discuss William Gibson’s novel, The Peripheral Wed Feb 22, 2023 at 6:30pm Adelaide / 7pm Canberra, Melbourne, or Sydney / 6pm Brisbane / 4pm Perth / 8am London (!!)
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This winter, I hope The Dark Is Rising will find new audiences around the world. For, working with the actor, director and theatre-maker Simon McBurney, and supported by Complicité (the theatre company that Simon co-founded) I’ve spent the past year adapting The Dark Is Rising as an audio drama. It will be broadcast first on BBC World Service in 12 episodes, beginning on 20 December, with an episode following each day, such that the broadcasts correspond to the “real time” of the novel’s own unfolding across the solstice, Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
An early edition of The Dark Is Rising.
Early in the process of adaptation, in discussion with Complicité’s brilliant producer Tim Bell, Simon and I resolved on four creative principles. First, that we would honour Cooper’s novel and its 50-year-long power of enchantment. Second, that we’d make something far more ambitious than “just” an abridged reading of the book; third, that the supernatural elements of the production would be recorded binaurally, to immerse the listener acoustically; and fourth, that we’d draw out the transnational nature of Cooper’s vision. For the “Old Ones” – the warriors of the Light – are drawn from every country and background, and it is a Jamaican Old One who gives to Will an object of immense power, without which his quest cannot be completed. It feels right to us that this adaptation will be broadcast on the World Service, and heard in nearly 90 countries.
Working with Simon on the adaptation was inspirational; a 12-month masterclass in the skills of narrative pacing, dramatic tempo and creative perfectionism. As well as co-adapting the text with me, Simon also directed the performances and voiced the narrator. Complicité slowly gathered a superb cast including Toby Jones, Harriet Walter, Miles Yekinni as Herne, Natasha K Stone as the “devil-girl” Maggie Barnes, and 13-year-old Noah Alexander, who plays young Will Stanton.
The Adelaide Fan Review 
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