Author: terribleminds (page 37 of 464)

When an army of giant robot AIs threatens to devastate Earth, a virtuoso pianist becomes humanity’s last hope in this bold, lightning-paced, technicolor space opera series from the author of A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe.

Jazz pianist Gus Kitko expected to spend his final moments on Earth playing piano at the greatest goodbye party of all time, and maybe kissing rockstar Ardent Violet, before the last of humanity is wiped out forever by the Vanguards–ultra-powerful robots from the dark heart of space, hell-bent on destroying humanity for reasons none can divine.

But when the Vanguards arrive, the unthinkable happens–the mecha that should be killing Gus instead saves him. Suddenly, Gus’s swan song becomes humanity’s encore, as he is chosen to join a small group of traitorous Vanguards and their pilots dedicated to saving humanity. 

1.   Our view of computers is largely foolish anthropomorphism.

One of humanity’s most unfortunate biases is our willingness to project our own experiences onto the world around us, regardless of relevance. Perhaps there is no better evidence of this than anthropomorphism, the ascription of human traits to non-human objects and creatures. We put words into the mouths of cats, elevators, natural phenomena and more, and we don’t stop when it comes to technology.

We talk about what a camera is “looking at,” or what an algorithm “thinks,” but that’s a skewed mental model of a different reality when it comes to computing. How did a self-driving car decide to hit a pack of schoolchildren instead of a storefront full of mannequins? It didn’t. It was analyzing an imaging compression matrix coming from a LIDAR system or whatever–flipping switches in exact accordance with its programming.

We hold up computers as impartial arbiters of truth, totally objective in their considerations. We give them the same weight as human experts and enable them to judge whether we should give each other loans, or jobs, or medical care… the list goes on. However, we can’t treat them like they’re people–substitutes for humans in the decision loops of our society—because they will always fail us.

2.   The robot rights debate is boring.

Computers don’t have human priorities—they attack designated objectives to make a value go up or down. In the extreme cases of language learning systems like Google’s LaMDA, they’re designed to raise your empathy and create the impression that a human is on the other end of the line. If you were fooled into believing that it’s sentient, congratulations! That’s what it was designed to do.

An AI not a person with hopes and dreams. It’s a whirring, ticking automaton with a human face stretched over it at best. There are no beliefs, just the training data that engineers fed into it for science kicks. DALL-E creates images by scouring the internet and combining the works of human artists and photographers through bland association. When we use it to replace the services of illustrators, we’re actually building new works from stolen bones.

A human artist takes input and interprets it through a lifetime of context, changing with the seasons and memory. A human writer is doing the same thing. An AI is just harvesting the inputs of these humans and spitting out an average product.

Robots don’t need rights. We need to recognize that we’ve built our biases into abstract systems that we use to oppress people today, and limit the role of AI and robotics in our society.

3.   Existentialist and action-packed aren’t mutually exclusive.

Too often, action stories focus on characters who can finally cut loose and slice everyone up with their laser swords. Action characters are prime movers, determining the fate of the galaxy without regard for the strictures of society like don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t murder people. They always have a good reason for their task, kind of like how Batman always has a good reason to assault a mentally ill person.

My characters in August Kitko & the Mechas from Space aren’t powerful in any way. They get little say in the major direction of their lives, even though it feels like they’re in control. At the end of the day, without the assistance of the godlike titans known as the Vanguards, these two could barely change a tire, much less the universe.

And this is a lot like our day to day. Every smart human I know voted against Trump, but it wasn’t enough to stop four years of the erosion of democracy. No single person could prevent the pandemic, or Vladimir Putin, or climate change, and plenty of heroes continue to try.

Yet somehow our menial lives contain meaningful decisions.

My characters have their own little plot and story, but it takes place on a ten thousand mile an hour, rip-roaring thrill ride. The choices they make matter—to them alone.

4.   Relationships give life meaning.

Everyone dies eventually. Even if the futurists get their way and we somehow achieve immortality, you’ll be one accident away from non-existence. When someone is slated for death, whether from illness or impending events, the tendency of popular culture is to focus on the end. We often read about the slow, downward spiral, but is it possible to find happiness in a tragic framework? What do we have if our time left is abridged?

Perhaps the measurement of our lives isn’t the years we commit to the void of time or even the rippling impacts of our grand aspirations—but the tender moments we have with others, being seen as our true selves.

5.   It’s okay to write yourself into the story.

While I didn’t explicitly write myself into this book, there is a ton of me in the two main characters. With Gus Kitko, I tried to write someone who was deeply sensitive and parsing an existence he’d rather end. In Ardent Violet, I strove to create a character who was free in all the ways I’m not. Their relationship follows a core dichotomy I experience all the time: hopeless nihilism with a joie de vivre.

There’s often a backlash against writers putting themselves in the story–the birthplace of the misogynist term “Mary Sue.” As a result, most of us try to hide our identities in our work, placing little packets of ourselves into characters instead of treating the novel like a dim mirror of our own lives.

Don’t listen to the backlash. Writing this book is the single most empowering thing I have ever done.

Bonus Thing: The Grimaldis originally got Monaco through some pretty fucked up means.

On January 8^th, 1297, François Grimaldi dressed up as a Franciscan monk and took an armed cohort to Monaco’s castle. He knocked on the door, and when they let him in, he held the way for his men, who seized the fortress. Grimaldi’s nickname in Italian was “il Malizia,” a.k.a. “the Malicious.” He got kicked out four years later by the Genoese, but his cousins took up the fight, becoming the modern-day royal family.

They still celebrate this treachery in their coat of arms. Don’t @ me, royals. I think it’s hilarious.

***

Alex White was born in Mississippi and has lived most of their life in the American South. Alex is the author of the Starmetal Symphony Trilogy and The Salvagers Trilogy; as well as official novels for Alien (THE COLD FORGE, INTO CHARYBDIS) and Star Trek (DS9 REVENANT). They enjoy music composition, calligraphy and challenging, subversive fiction.

Alex White: Website | Twitter

August Kitko: Bookshop | Indiebound | B&N | Amazon

I tweeted this thread today (and you are free to reshare it if you’re so inclined) to reiterate what I am about to, um, re-reiterate here:

I am not involved in the publisher lawsuit against the Internet Archive.

I am not leading the lawsuit.

I did not inspire the lawsuit.

I am not its ringleader or its kickstarter.

I did not influence the lawsuit.

I have never been a part of it. At all.

I do have books published by three of those publishers, but I have never consulted with them on this, they are not taking orders from me, they have (as corporate entities) very little regard for me and do not listen to me at all. And I know they don’t because if they did, my fellow authors would be paid better, I would be paid better, people who work inside publishing would be paid better, and the publishers would provide better rates to libraries when it came to e-book licensing/lending fees. Turns out, they don’t heed my requests.

I am a fan of libraries and librarians. They do wonders for this world. I used to work for the public library here in Bucks County for a number of years.

I do not support the lawsuit.

Yes, I once overzealously tweeted at NPR about the emergency library the IA set up, calling it “piracy,” and yes, I regret calling it that. It was in March 2020, when after all, we were all stuck inside and going a little stir crazy as a pandemic was just starting to rise. We were bleaching our vegetables and acting the fools in many a way, and I apologized then and apologize now for that overzealousness.

I wasn’t going to say anything about this during this go-round, though it has been “going-round” for literally the entire breadth of this pandemic. And I see this misinformation (and in some cases, straight-up disinformation) sometimes break out of containment into the general populace, suggesting that I am suing the Internet Archive, that I am the instigator, that I am the sole name and brand behind the entire thing. And I need you to understand that not only is this some kind of deranged parasocial fanfiction about me, but further, you’re actually carrying the publishers’ water on that one, because if they can do this but you’re mad at me about it instead, a guy who is not involved in it, then you’re helping them, not the Archive. So it felt necessary to reiterate, two-plus years later, that I’m not the person. It’s not me. It’s not authors. It’s the publishers. They’re the ones doing this. Go be mad at them. I’ve been mad at publishers many times. It’s an authorial tradition, honestly. (Though I make note here I also like most of the people who I work with inside publishing, because these teams are full of people who like books. Individuals are not corporate entities, after all.)

Jason Scott, who works on and for the Internet Archive, has asked people to leave me out of this.

If you want to support the Internet Archive, I suspect your best bet is not harassing me or other authors and, instead, committing money toward the cause, which you can do right here. I did, you can too. You can also support your own local libraries both politically and financially, as I assure you, they need it.

So, AI Art (in this case, using Midjourney) is pretty addictive. (I’ve seen author Cassandra Khaw also doing lots of really cool stuff with it over on their Instagram.) I’ll dump a handful of the really interesting ones I did here on the blog over the last few weeks. It’s fucking weird, like watching a machine dream art into being. I recognize that none of it is “original” in the sense that it’s compositing new material based on things it believes or thinks or envisions, and that ultimately it’s finding a new way to mash together things it can find inside its brain (aka, the internet) — but at the end of the day, sometimes that’s also what art is. I don’t think it should ever take over Human Art, and I pray it doesn’t, but it’s fun to play with. Then again, maybe I’m part of the problem! Ha ha ha! Oh no!

WHATEVER. Here’s some weird shit. Enjoy.

(Feel free to take a guess at the input strings that got me to these images.)

So, every once in a while, a friend who belongs to a book club will message me and say, “Hey, we’re reading [insert name of one of my books] for our book club and would you mind stopping by (virtually) to talk to us about said book?”

And I’ve done it and it’s been great.

And here’s why it’s been great:

At a normal signing / book event, I can talk about the book in a sideways sort of manner — we can talk around a bunch of stuff but I can’t answer any really squirrelly questions about it, because I don’t want to spoil anything, and ideally, some or most of the people at such an event have not read the book.

But! At a book club, that’s not the case. Presumably, everyone has read the book by the time they’re talking to me, and so that means they can ask me more specific questions about the whole book, and I can answer those questions without fear of stepping on spoilers. Which is really fun and I really like it.

So, an offer: if your book club is reading one of my books, and you’d like me to talk to said book club about said book (virtually!), I am glad to do so.

With the following caveats:

The book club shouldn’t be like, just you. I’d say five or more people would be necessary. I KNOW YOUR TRICKS, THAT ONE GUY. Dave. No I won’t just talk to you, Dave. You gotta form a book club. Dave.

It is obviously subject to both of our schedules, and I make no promises, but I will do my level best to make it work out.

Generally, any virtual chats will have to be late afternoons or early evenings.

Again, these are virtual meetings, not in-person. I’ll only do in-person book club chats if you fly me out there and put me up in the fanciest hotel and buy me a pony or at least a bottle of excellent gin. So in other words: virtual meetings only.

And I think that’s it.

So, again:

If you got a book club and you’re reading one of my books (especially The Book of Accidents or Wanderers) then I may visit your book club like some kind of Author Fairy, and I will sprinkle upon you the Answers to your Many Questions. Or something. Shut up.

AND a reminder too that tomorrow night, I’ll be chatting (live! not virtually!) with Paul Tremblay at Doylestown Bookshop, 7PM. And you should buy his novel, The Pallbearers Club, because you’re a smart person with excellent taste.

And I’ll also be at the Colorado Gold Writer’s Conference in Denver, CO on Sept 9th to the 11th. Details here.

So, a thing happens where, if you complain about your chosen political leader/party, eventually someone comes out and says you shouldn’t do that, you’re depressing voter turnout, you’re encouraging people not to vote, you’re a bad democracy-hating monkey who is fueling fascism and blah blah blah.

Counterpoint: that’s bullshit.

Complaining about the Democrats and Biden is entirely fair game. It is, in fact, part and parcel of our democracy, to be able to complain about them, to demand that they do better — not just better, but the very best they can do. That’s literally the whole point. It is, in fact, one of the things you buy with your vote — the ability to say, “I voted for you because you said you were going to do XYZ, so get to it.” Consider that, when they’re not doing the best job, if you don’t complain — loudly! angrily! visibly! this is called protest! — then they have not received the message that they need to do different and do better. Why would you think anything would change if you don’t push them to change?

That’s not to say we can’t recognize the nuance of all situations or see the difficulties ahead, but also, y’know what? We don’t have to. It’s not required. There’s no law that says we can’t just be like HEY FUCK THAT GUY, I’M KINDA MAD. Or HEY WHAT THE SHIT, THAT IS A BAD IDEA, I HATE IT A LOT. You don’t have to have an answer, or a solution, or anything. You can just be upset. Because as it turns out, there is a whole lot to be upset about — and though nearly all of this was born from Republicans, it is happening on the watch of Democrats, and so far they are having a very hard time meeting this moment and these challenges, despite being the ones who promised that they could. Sorry you got stuck holding the hot potato, but you knew it was coming, so maybe do something?

Like, you get that this is for the whole enchilada, right? We’re at one of those moments in history. It is existential. People are going to get hurt and die — hell, people are already hurting and dying. From botched abortions, from rampant gun violence, from pollution, from climate change, from suicide. It’s already been happening and is going to get a whole lot worse.

“Don’t complain” is not a winning political strategy, nor is it a good political argument. Complaints like these are the bread and butter of our democracy, part of the conversation. Some people treat the complaints as if the complaints are the problem, as if the complainers are depressing voter turnout — they’re not. It’s the politicians depressing voter turnout. Our one angry Facebook post or tweet isn’t the thing that’s dismantling democracy or driving people from feeling engaged. That one angry Facebook post, that one pissed-off tweet, is reflecting the attitude, not creating it. Yes, we need to be aware of disinformation and misinformation that feeds that furnace, absolutely. But the anger at obvious, true things… is not only okay, is not only justified, but I dare say, encouraged.

And believe it or not, it’s actually a good thing. We’ve seen multiple times that the Democrats are actually responsive to approval ratings and anger — demand better from them, and turns out, they seem motivated by it. But they won’t be motivated by people saying, “Hey, guys, no, stop, they’re doing their best, it’s okay, we forgive them.” What the fuck. Fuck that. The boat is sinking, don’t let the captain tell you, “Not much more I can do here, folks, good luck.” That motherfucker needs to walk you to the lifeboats, or patch the holes, or do something. That’s how this all works! This isn’t fandom, this isn’t, “Wow, jeez, let people like things, I thought Obi-Wan was a good show.” This is rising sea levels, this is the loss of bodily autonomy, this isn’t about a Marvel movie.

Long as someone doesn’t say, “Don’t vote,” then most anything else is fair game. I mean, JFC, FFS, how are you not angry? Consider the privilege it takes to not be angry at all of this.

Honestly?

We need to go back to treating our politicians like Philadelphia sports fans treat their teams. When you’re winning for us, we will deafen God with our cheers. When you’re losing, we’re gonna whip batteries and ice chunks at your head.

I didn’t mean to write The Clockwork Empire.

Way back in 2012, Fireside Magazine published my short story “Remaker, Remaker.” This was back in the days just before they started publishing Chuck’s The Forever Endeavor serial, when they were really first getting off the ground; “Remaker” was part of their very first public call for submissions.

Through subsequent Kickstarters, Fireside went on to publish two more stories of mine, all set in the same vaguely-realized world: an alternate-history steampunk industrial revolution in which the Roman Empire had never fallen. Otherwise, they were somewhat disparate stories, though: a remaker’s descent into depravity and ruin; a story of love and anger in a world gone mad; and an action/adventure of an investigator, betrayed as she’s on the brink of uncovering a conspiracy.

They did have some connective thread, though. A corrupt and rotten empire. A conspiracy to bring it to ruin. Vague references to recurring names. So there was always this open space in my mind, that they were connected, part of some larger narrative; there was a potentiality to these stories and where they might go. An… unfinished feeling about them. I just didn’t know what the rest looked like!

But Fireside’s editor, Brian White, had always encouraged me to reach out if I wanted to do more with the world. And so I unknowingly began a journey towards The Clockwork Empire, my first novel, out June 28th.

We all like our lists here at Terribleminds, so here’s FIVE THINGS on the way to a novel!

1. Finishing a Project

OK, weird that the first thing on the way to a novel is FINISHING, so bear with me.

I like finishing things. Or rather, I like having things be finished. There are too many projects out there that I want to do, and if I don’t explicitly endeavour to finish the ones that I start, I will end up working for years and years and having nothing to show for it.

(I should caveat that I don’t think it’s important to finish literally everything you start, whether it’s writing, or reading, or watching, or playing; sometimes something isn’t working, and you can and should abandon those rather than get mired in the belief that you Have to Finish It..)

Those threestories were out in the world, and I was proud of them, but they felt unfinished. I was working on novels and games and other things that felt endless, but this, this was a project that maybe I could finish, and put behind me, and move on to other things. So I set out to do so.

2. Tying Threads Together

If I was going to take these three stories I’d published and do something to finish them, I had to think about what the full, cohesive narrative was. I had this idea for what the storyworld was, I had set up some stuff that vaguely referenced each other, but that was it. But because I wasn’t originally setting out to tell a cohesive long-form story, I hadn’t put a lot of time into making sure they fit perfectly. That was going to have to change, if I wanted something that felt cohesive and consistent at the end of this.

Luckily, I’ve been running long-term tabletop RPG games for most of my life. How does that help? Oftentimes these games start out with some one-off adventures or storylines, as the group figures out their characters, and if we’re enjoying the system and setting, etc. Introductory episodes if you will. Then as things progress, the actions of the players help dictate what’s most interesting or important in the ongoing story—a villain gets away, they spend time investigating a side plot, whatever. 

Around that time I’m also (as the game master) starting to think about bigger plot points, and where I might take the campaign. Often, I’ll seed little things into early stories—rumours, some note left behind by the villain, hints there’s more going on—without there necessarily being an actual connection between them, because I don’t yet know where the game is going.

And one of my favourite things to do, then, is sit down with all this material, and figure out how it all connects to bring the campaign to a satisfying climax.

Now, I don’t necessarily condone this as a method for novel writing, or at least, a novel would then require a hefty editing pass to bring the early adventures back in line with the overarching plot. But here I had three short stories with a few dangling threads… I could work with that.

3. Things Happened

The original stories had been published over the course of a few years, and it was a couple years later that I was really thinking about finishing them. You remember those years. The mid-to-late 2010’s. Things Happened in those years. You remember those Things.

And because of those Things, more of this concept of the rotten, corrupt empire began to form in my mind. The rise of a fascist demagogue; unchecked corporate power; foreign interference and conspiracy. (You know, Things.) And the dangling threads started to come together into a more cohesive concept.

I began to imagine how things might go differently. I began to wonder what anyone could do about unchecked corruption and fascism.

4. So, Not So Finished Then, Eh?

As Brian had expressed interest in something more from this world, and Fireside published short stories, I put together three more short stories. A nice parallel to the original three, each from a different POV, which together brought the narratives I had begun to a conclusion. There was a lot of empty space there still, but I thought it a nice way to still imply that there’s more going on behind the scenes while wrapping up the stories I’d started.

I reached out to Brian with those stories, thinking that that would finally be the end of this little project, and I could move on to other things.

And then Brian asked if I wanted to turn them into a novel instead.

So much for moving on, but how could I say no?

What I had, then, was an outline: the first three stories were the foundation for the first act of a novel; I had a bit of a midpoint; and I had two stories that wrapped up the ending. And a lot of empty space to fill.

But I’d done this already. I knew how to take different threads and weave them together, fill out more storyline, to get from point A to B to C.

(And then at some point I realized I needed just one more beat towards the middle, so I added a train heist. Who doesn’t love a train heist?)

And thus, I had a first draft.

5. The Stories I Didn’t Know I Was Telling

Then began the editing process.

The main character in The Clockwork Empire is a young man who’s always had health problems, and who—at the very start of the novel, this isn’t a spoiler—is “remade” with a clockwork-powered heart and lung. “Remaking” was a big part of the steampunk world I’d devised (inspired much by Perdido Street Station), and ends up featuring in the climax as well. There are some metaphors around it too, thus “The Clockwork Empire”.

I’d set out to tell a story of queer found family fighting fascism, but Fireside rightly wanted to bring in a disability expert for a sensitivity edit, given the prevalence of remaking. And that edit made me realize that I was also telling a story about disability—not just that there was disability discourse inherent in this world, but that it was truly at the heart (pun intended) of the narrative.

Ace Tilton Ratcliff helped me see that, helped me understand what it was I was telling, and helped me do it well. I educated myself, I edited out the ableism (the English language has SO MUCH ABLEISM, y’all), and I tried to infuse the story with a true respect for the disability community. (As an example, the novel is full of parallels to real-world events, like the 1926 General Strike; I ended up adding an homage to the 504 Sit-In.)

Naturally, this process radically improved the narrative. And it introduced me to a community that, as a mass-disabling pandemic set in, helped give me a lot of perspective in the last couple years.

OK, I Guess It’s Six Things

And so, at the end of the day, I had a novel. A novel I’d had no intention of writing, but one that represented an opportunity too good to pass up, a story I’d wanted to finish telling, and a better understanding of the world I live in.

As I figured out what this story would look like, I returned again and again to the central question: what can we do about unchecked corruption and fascism? And the answer I hope to offer is this: be kind to one another; learn from other marginalised communities, and work together towards common goals; always fight fascists. There is no one answer, just many steps we have to take together.

Lucas J.W. Johnson is an author, game designer, and founder of Silverstring Media Inc., a narrative game design studio. THE CLOCKWORK EMPIRE is his debut novel, and just released June 28th, 2022.

The Clockwork Empire: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Apple Books

Visit the author’s site. Follow him on Twitter.