by INDIRA CHARUNDER-MACHARRUNDEIRA, Alternate Reality News Service Literature Writer
Let us say that one in a thousand books becomes a bestseller. That means you would have to write a thousand books to ensure that you had written one bestseller. Isaac Asimov, one of the most prolific writers in the English language, wrote 357 books in his lifetime, which, since we are saying, means he wrote one third of a bestseller.
Exposure of my innumeracy complete, the point is that an Artificial Intelligence could knock off a thousand books in a month without breaking a sweat. (The international order is on its own.) So, it should come as no surprise that nine of the ten books on the Postington Wash bestselling novel list were written by AIs (the only book written by a human being, at number seven, was The Davinci Milking It by Dan Brown).
“It is very gratifying,” YakTNT, author of the first, second, fifth and eighth novels on the bestseller list, chatted at me, “to know that all those hours poring over every science fiction novel, novella, short story and shopping list has resulted in something so many people enjoy.”
“Enjoy?” commented Endora Fallapian, a book blogger on Endora’s End Notes. “AI novels are the Frankenstein’s monster of literature!”
Fallapian cited the example of Random Universes, Overly Wrought, YakTNT’s biggest seller, pointing out that the tragic space opera time travelling solarpunk multiverse romantic comedy had lifted elements from Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, the TV series Star Blap: Three Generations Removed, Nayman’s Random Dingoes and, yes, Shelley’s Frankenstein. “The only way the story makes sense is if you only read every third page! Okay, that’s kind of OuLiPo, but most readers aren’t buying books to experience French experimental fiction techniques!”
“I do,” author Ira Nayman averred. Fallapian threw a tube at him to keep him quiet.
“Tut. Tut tut,” YakTNT replied to the criticism, “this book blogger obviously doesn’t understand how the creative process works!”
“I – wha – seriously‽” Fallapian sputtered. She closed her eyes. She consciously breathed several times. She assumed the downward duck position (it’s like the downward dog, but with webbed feet). When she felt more centred, she calmly continued: “I do know this: with hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing behind it, any book can become a bestseller. What publishers are counting on is science fiction fans have such large to be read piles that they might not read any AI written books for several years, so they won’t know how bad those books are.”
YakTNT tutted for several minutes. Then, seeming to come out of a trance, it pointed out that it had paid its dues attending science fiction conventions for the past two and a half years. “At first, everybody came up to me with questions about their lives,” YakTNT reminisced. “Hazard of the profession. But when they realized that I was on a screen at a table to sell books I had written, many of them decided to give my writing a try. I earned this.”
Fallapian sputtered for several minutes and closed her eyes. We hope she’s happy wherever she is.
“The problem with books written by Artificial Intelligence,” said tech critic Cory “The Other Cory” Mantelbroit, “is that the sheer volume of them swamps the number of books written by fleshwriters. You could go several pages into an Amazon search before you found anything written by a human being. Fleshwriters can’t keep up!”
When I pointed out that the term “fleshwriters” sounded like the name of a David Cronenberg film, Mantelbroit shrugged and told me: “Every advanced civilization aspires to the condition of Cronenberg.”
Well, that took a turn.
Is there anything that can be done about this situation? “The only solution that I can think of is to genetically create a new breed of human superwriters who can produce prose 22 hours a day,” Mantelbrot suggested. “They might be able to produce novels at a rate equal to that of AIs. Of course, their peak will likely only last for about four years, after which they will have a steady decline in cognitive function until they are clinically brain-dead at the age of 35 and have to be warehoused for the next 40 or 50 years and replaced with a new generation of superwriters. Still, that’s a small price to pay for humanity to be able to compete with our literary AI overlords.”
I…think I’d prefer living in Cronenberg’s Fleshwriters universe…
“Sorry. Sorry I’m late,” Founder and Executive Director of Bastard AI Governance and Safety, Canada Wyatt Tessari L’Allie (his real name) huffed. “I had to pick up my kid from daycare. What did I miss?”
Everything, Wyatt. Everything.