Lost in worlds
I have a few recurring topics. Give it enough time and I'll return to one months or years later.
Part of this is from the joy of appreciating ideas more deeply, and part of it is due to a shoddy memory.
Maybe at some point I'll set up an LLM to remind me if I've written something before—but really I don't think I'd want to do that. I like revisiting the same areas.1
One recurring topic I've been thinking about lately is fiction writing, and the worlds that are created when you enter thoughts generated from authors.
This comes around to all the AI content generation, and further cements a feeling I've been having.
I don't want (unknowingly at least) to enter a world, dive into a concept, explore a made-up universe—if it's absent a human mind.
That just feels wrong.
That doesn't mean it couldn't be good. I'm sure, in late 2026, that we're at the frontier of what's possible, and great AI writing is better than many shoddy writers. But I reject it, don't want it.
My friend Saadia has been pushing a concept that's been starting to stick in my mind over time. If AI gets so good that we can't tell the difference from human creation, then what? His premise is that the authorship matters, because of the emotion and impression it creates on us. I tend to agree.
If I were to read a novel, and find it was a thinly veiled prompted thing generated by someone hacking away and asking Claude to "write the best Stephen King novel, make no mistakes" well—I'd be hurt. Betrayed, dismayed.
If I entered such a situation knowing, understanding the authorship ahead of time, well then I'd feel a bit different.
All this is weird, in a time where we're trying to figure out what authorship means—if I tell AI to make something that comes from my mind—does that mean it's AI or mine? I tend to still think it's mine. But I'd like to have an understanding of how much human intent went behind it.
So back to these worlds. Right now I'm enjoying my fifth or so book from Adrian Tchaikovsky (thanks Austin for the recommendations!).
Cage of Souls pulls you in from the first few pages, and halfway through the book I have no idea where it will go, so many unanswered questions, with a desire to return each evening to go through a few more digital pages.
I have faith in Adrian, having read his works before, and appreciate the payoff and the journey of the other stories I've read.
A story like this is a connection between two humans, over time. An author hacking and slashing their way through a work, and a reader digesting and feeling it impressed on their life years later.
What a gift, what a joy. And for those who haven't found any great novels recently, I encourage you to dump whatever you were slogging through and just keep trying, keep searching, ask for recommendations, ask for worlds that friends got lost in.
I don't want these generated by some fancy chips somewhere, I want them wrestled and argued and generated through the minds of another messy human.
That's not to say I'm opposed to AI being used editorially. I don't mind if someone asks a tool like ChatGPT to help them find things wrong, wrestle through problems—so long as the thought generation comes from a human.
With that I look forward to getting lost in that world again tonight, and seeing what kind of creature Gaki actually is (it's been hinted at for chapters, and I still have no clue).
- Once, my memory almost got me in big trouble. I was testing an experiment, something I learned in one of the many books I was studying on the importance of learning how to write great fiction. That experiment, when completed, was set aside and forgotten. Until, much later, I found a note on my computer, the start of a novel. Not anything new. I've got lots of those pieces floating around, but this one was good. Really good. The prose, the ideas, the concepts, I was drawn into the page and knew this was a winner. I got excited, started to imagine where the story might go. I almost published a draft to get feedback. Then, something poking at the back of my brain, I stopped, and considered. I looked at the words further, examined them a bit. They were good, but they didn't sound like me. Then, grabbing a sentence or two, with Google to the rescue, I did a quick search. Turns out I'd inadvertently come close to plagiarizing and publishing the first few pages of a Stephen King novel.