Welcome

A Note for first-time visitors

Artificial intelligence has landed. Every technology threatens to “change everything,” and AI is no different, though few technologies threaten to end everything and so AI is also within that more exclusive club with nuclear weapons, nanotechnology, biological weapons, and genetic manipulation.

Until the world ends, however, we will go on living and as we do so we will continue to both create and engage stories. This site is about a form of storytelling called the novel and how the existence of AI will now change how they are created, edited, published, marketed, sold, bought and read.

It is often said, in one form or another, that “Fiction is a lie through which we tell the truth.” Albert Camus said that. Neil Gaiman repeated it, saying “Fiction is a lie that tells the truth,” and Stephen King gave it a twist, “Fiction is a lie. And GOOD fiction is the truth inside the lie,” and Tim O’Brien gave it a thoughtful motive: “Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.”

I’m not so sure.

I think novels are the most complex, nuanced, and sophisticated models of expression ever devised by humanity to represent and communicate the experience of living. A model of expression is not a lie, any more than music is a lie or a dance is a lie.

If this form is now going to be influenced by AI, then our lives — at their beating hearts — will be too. It is time to give this close attention.

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— Derek B. Miller