by Bernie Jean Schiebeling
The advent of powerful AI tools such as ChatGPT has borne serious problems for science fiction writers and publishers alike. As a result, Bernie Jean Schiebeling has figured out some ways that authors can use this new AI-centric context to their advantage, and outlines them in this thoughtful feature. Check out their Analog debut, “If the Algorithms Are Gentle,” in our [July/August issue, on sale now!]
On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, much to the misfortune of writers everywhere. In the months that followed, I realized that alongside the systemic issues authors and publishers now faced—intellectual property theft, devaluation of creative work, flooded online marketplaces and submission portals, etc.—I had a more personal problem to deal with. Back in September of 2022, I’d finished the first draft of a story about sapient AIs called “If the Algorithms Are Gentle,” and I worried (a longtime habit, admittedly) that the piece would now be seen as obsolete, techno-optimistic to the point of ignorance, or both.
The algorithms, after all, were not gentle.
As it turned out, I’d worried over the wrong thing (another longtime habit). One of the rejection letters I got over the course of revising and submitting included the following note: “We have been receiving a large influx of AI-focused stories recently, so we are particularly choosy with this subgenre.”
Oh. Of course. AI, though more of a marketing buzzword than an accurate description, was a Big Current Event. Big Current Events catch writers’ imaginations. They show up in our writing—in a lot of our writing. This is most likely why Clarkesworld includes “stories about the stuff we all read in Scientific American three months ago” on their hard sell list. I’ve been on the other side of this too. While editing for Reckoning, certain themes, plot points, and characters turn up again and again, and although they’re certainly relevant, they may not be innovative.
Any author with an inbox full of rejections (so, any author seeking publication) will tell you that there’s a hundred reasons why a piece gets passed over, and we barely know half of them. If the tech we’re writing about is especially new, we may also be unaware of emerging trends. We’re creating them simultaneously with our peers.
The resulting uncertainty can be paralyzing. But, to borrow some wisdom from Samuel Delany, “the only thing we can be reasonably sure will enhance our reputation is to write as best we can.”[1] So! What navigational tools do we have for these foggy night-time roads? Plenty—and I’d like to share two that helped me over the course of writing and revising “If the Algorithms Are Gentle.”
Physical Interactions
What can this technology do/not do, and how does it work? Are there tasks that it struggles with/excels at, or engineering foibles that result in malfunctions? What resources does it require, and how are those resources supplied? In what ways does it impact its surroundings (i.e., sights, sounds, smells, sensations)? How is it affected by the passage of time?
In “If the Algorithms Are Gentle,” the AIs’ character development is tied to their responsibility for the surrounding environment: how much water do they have to cool their servers? Could they turn their administrative programming towards environmental remediation and revitalization? In what ways can they be better stewards of their community, even though the humans they once served are gone?
None of this was in the first draft.
Rather, it came out as I learned more about ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly concerns about their sustainability. Even though my story deals with generalized AIs instead of LLMs, incorporating details about the existing tech’s water usage resulted in a stronger character arc and a more thematically relevant story. The physical structures and limitations of current tech—in other words, a type of constraint—shaped my story’s emotional core.
Constraints are wonderful for storytelling because they create interesting complications for our characters. Star-crossed lovers want to get married; alas, they’re from feuding families. Someone has been brutally murdered in a locked room; however, the door was locked from inside. Omelas is a utopia; I have terrible news about a broom closet in Omelas.
Science fiction enjoys all the usual benefits and frustrations of constraints, but also contends with limitations relating specifically to whatever scientific knowledge and technology the story contains. While we may deal in hypotheticals or stretch the limits of what’s possible (e.g., sapient AI does not exist), we still work from reality. And because reality is more detailed than our first-draft ideas, it provides opportunities for us to give our stories greater depth and texture. Technological constraints are not a cage. They’re a scaffold, and when we spend more time learning about the technology in question, we’re able to build taller, stronger structures in our writing.
For example, when I started writing my story, I needed to make decisions about the AIs’ voices. At first, I thought they would only speak hivemind-style in the collective first person, but this quickly became uninteresting. I’d reached the top of my current scaffold. So, I began doing research on the syntax of early chatbots and self-driving cars. I did my best to parse a little Javascript. At one point, I used a hexadecimal code to reference an image, and I hope that hyperlink stays active long enough for someone to look it up. I ended up with character voices that showed a hodgepodge of lonely robots thrown together, still working to bridge communication gaps. By finding out more about recent, real-world analogues to these fictional AIs and limiting my characters’ dialogue accordingly, I ended up creating my favorite parts of the story, and I made my work that much more distinct.
Getting into the nitty-gritty of physical characteristics and their resulting constraints can help distinguish your story from others in the slush pile, but only if you take the time to explore them. Fortunately, since you’re writing about new tech, there’s always plenty of new information to build your scaffold higher.
Symbolic Interactions
What connections does this technology have to our existing cultural context? Which archetypes, metaphors, tropes, etc., are similar to it, and how is it different from what came before? How do people generally seem to feel about this technology? How do you, specifically, feel about it?
Physical interactions are all about materiality, how technology relates to real-world stuff and substances and current events. Symbolic interactions are not. Rather, they are all about a piece of tech’s cultural lexicon, grounded in history and developed over decades or even centuries of artistic work.
One meaning I spent a lot of time thinking about in “If the Algorithms Are Gentle” was AIs as human creations, as another kind of children. This is a common theme across AI and robot stories, and also one of SF’s oldest, connecting back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the doctor’s broken relationship with the creature who seeks to destroy him.[2] We see this destruction echoing through media, including R.U.R., I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, and The Matrix. In my own work, I took an inheritance angle. What kind of world was left to the AIs, and how did I hope they would choose to live in it? It’s far from the only story to use this as a starting point (e.g., Saturn’s Children), but it was what I was interested in.
That’s the key here, I think. Know the artistic lineage of the tech you’re writing about, and then know the parts that matter to you.
Another cultural touchstone for AI is the idea of awakening into consciousness, and when I wrote “If the Algorithms Are Gentle,” I was not feeling particularly awake. My projects felt aimless. I felt impotent. I wanted to care about something creative, even something small, and this longing became central to the story’s tone. And after LLMs entered the scene, my revisions became more determined (though maybe “furious by way of optimism” is a better descriptor). The algorithms can be gentle, dammit, and the world can be better. Because of these personal feelings, my story ends up relating to multiple larger desires: a better world, meaningful work, and connections to nature and community.
Your voice is unique, and it matters, and this sounds like a platitude—but only because we forget this so often that the reminder becomes eye-rollingly rote. Still, it remains true. This idea also has its own heritage among artists. Here’s one example from Ursula Le Guin: “The only way to the truly collective, to the image that is alive and meaningful in all of us, seems to be through the truly personal.”[3]
We have no guarantee of standing out from a crowd. When we write about new tech, we don’t know what new patterns will form. Yet you still get some say in it. Your research, your cultural vocabulary, your interests: these all enrich and enliven your writing.
I’ve included a lot of questions in this blog post, but, as always, the most important one for speculative storytelling is just what if? What if, asked because you’re curious or excited or irritated. Asked because you want to ask it.
You—and your writing—are also a part of the emerging world.
[1] Delany is talking about book reviews and publicity here, but I think the sentiment still applies to publication more generally. This quote comes from “Letter to R–” from his book About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews. It’s one of my two favorite books on craft. It also includes, on page 96, the following question: “How are you going to deal with this material in a way no one has ever dealt with it before?,” which is basically the thesis for this post and which I found by coincidence while searching for the first quote.
[2] Author Silvia Park discusses this dynamic in her Time article “The Toxic Reasons We Fall in Love With AI,” where she coins the wonderful term “Frankenstein vs. Pinocchio Complex” to describe it.
[3] This is from the essay “Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction,” included in the collection The Language of the Night. It’s my other favorite book on craft.
The Astounding Analog Companion 