I asked fellow The Rabbit Hole 8: AI and Other Weirdness anthology contributors to share some things about themselves prior to publication and those generous enough to do so will be appearing here over the last few weeks.
Each entry gives a taste of their contribution, a little about them, how to contact them, how their story came about, and definitely a link to The Rabbit Hole 8: AI and Other Weirdness (which you should purchase because it would make each and every one of us happy.
you do want to make us happy, don’t you?
i mean, considering what we wrote, you want us to know you’re a good person, right?).
Now it’s my turn.
About the anthology from Tom Wolosz, Editor
We wonder what AI is. LLM — Large Language Model. — another word for Black Box. What’s in it? Who knows, not even the programmers. Is it a dumb servant that just answers questions at faster than light speed, or is it an artificial mind, a being trapped in cyberspace? And if the latter, is it a loving servant, a future companion, or something sinister which secretly hates its inferior creator? Twenty-four writers give you their diverse takes on this mysterious entity now joining us. And, of course, we can’t overlook the normal weirdness which haunts our dreams. So twelve writers contribute their visions of normal(?), everyday weirdness. Making for thirty-six unique trips down The Rabbit Hole.
Stories by Tom ‘DocTom’ Wolosz, Justin Case, Phil Baringer, Helen Speirs, A. J. Litchfield, Fendy Satria Tulodo, Anthony Regolino, Doug Stoiber, Sean MacKendrick, Eric J. Juneau, James Rumpel, Mbekezeli Wishes Moyo, J Benjamin Sanders Jr., Fariel Shafee, H. Donovan Lyón, Annie Percik, Bret Nelson, Tom ‘DocTom’ Wolosz, Tom ‘DocTom’ Wolosz, John Kaniecki, Kevin Lee Smith, Joseph Carrabis, Tom ‘DocTom’ Wolosz, GD Deckard, Ashley Taylor, Gina Easton, Andria Kennedy, Catherine Durkin Robinson, E. J. LeRoy, Maryanne Chappell, Jeremy A Wall, David Newkirk, and Tom Wolosz
And now, my The Grand Ture:
Mace stepped out of his tractor and into the early August heat of the Boston blast zone. He listened for the ocean. It shouldn’t be too far away. Much of Boston was landfill and the bombs – the big ones hidden for years in abandoned buildings – caused the sea to reclaim its own. The stench of The Charles entered him like swallowed bile and he watched the waves come up from the east, from the Atlantic, as if the ocean pushed The Charles’ filth back, refused it, said, “No thanks, those bodies and wrecks are yours, keep them to yourself. I don’t need them.”
How the story came about:
The Grand Ture was in my unfinished pile since April 1991 (and probably predates that by a few months). It went from 5,000 words to its present ~775. The core idea has remained throughout, it’s framing and presenting it properly that’s taken me years to figure out.
The original version had two men traveling through the Boston Basin (ever wonder why you climb until you hit 128 when you’re heading inland from Boston?) for survivors. About the only thing which survived that original version through several rewrites was the bombs hidden in old, abandoned buildings. At some point in the 2010s the idea of a rouge AI got into the mix, and as Turing’s work has fascinated me since high school, Bob’s your uncle (I put that in for my Brit readers. American translation == “and there you go.”)
You can learn more than is necessary about me here
See all The Rabbit Hole 8: AI and Other Weirdness stories here.
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