by INDIRA CHARUNDER-MACHARRUNDEIRA, Alternate Reality News Service Literature Writer
Since time immemorial (not to be confused with time in memorial, for which Proust pretty much cornered the market), everybody has always felt that they had a novel in them. The unfortunate thing about the times in which we live, where writing courses, books on writing and digital tools make writing almost trivially easy, is that people who used to be content being pig farmers, stagecoach drivers and dental agronomists now tear the novels out of themselves and foist them on an unsuspecting world.
This has resulted in a torrent (less than an avalanche, more than a bowel movement) of manuscripts being submitted to publishers and agents. The term for the pile onto which unsolicited manuscripts are thrown is “slush,” because readers need to be wearing rubber galoshes to wade through them and should expect to be sniffly the next day. Of course, most manuscripts are submitted digitally these days, which changes everything (except for the sniffling the next day part); since submitting can be as simple as pressing a button (and studies have shown that 76 per cent of writers know how to do that), the volume of slush which used to go up to readers’ ankles now goes up their eyeballs.
One possible solution to this is – oh, but you’re way ahead of me, aren’t you? Yes, Artificial Intelligence. This article wouldn’t be part of a special report package on AI if it wasn’t about AI (although knowing Brenda Brundtland-Govanni’s capriciousness and Pops Moobley’s sense of humour, anything is possible). Some publishers are using AI to determine whether a manuscript is ready for human consumption.
“YakTNT is a Gordsend!” enthused Maryke Burbank-Pastafarr, an editor at Greensleeves Oakridges Phaser Blasters, a science fiction imprint of Doubleday Peppermint, a wholly owned subsidiary of MultiNatCorp (“We do literary stuff!”). “It never sleeps, it never needs pee breaks and it never hallucinates that it’s the Queen of Graceland on a secret mission to save the world from mutant squids mailed over state lines after a 36 hour reading session!”
“Gordsend? Good thing I’m an atheist!” said author Ira Nayman. He can be an oversharer that way. He explained that his first novel, Welcome to the Multiverse*, was rejected by GOPB, the imprint of DP that was a subsidiary of MNC, which sent him the AI’s assessment.
“YakTNT said that the manuscript was riddled with typographical errors,” Nayman said. “No, it wasn’t. I like making up words! I can be frabstemious that way!”
The AI also reported that the manuscript contained too many fonts. “I love typefaces!” Nayman complained. “I enjoy using them as a method of illustrating something about the text. Because let’s face it: plain text is…boring!”
The AI also reported that sections of the manuscript made no sense. “I sometimes use non-sequiturs to get a laugh. Anybody who doesn’t understand that should take a long walk off a short penguin!”
The AI concluded its assessment of Nayman’s manuscript with: “and his sentences are too long.” Shaking his head, the author retorted: “Oh, that’s just ball socks. I love it when the kernel of a sentence spawns a second thought, then the interplay of the two thoughts leads to a third thought; but where most authors would split the thoughts into separate sentences, I like to portray them in their original state (if I had wanted to be most authors, I would be writing for The Post-national Inquirer).”
Nayman warned that using AI to reject stories from the slush pile would lead to literary conformity, since anything that didn’t adhere to already established norms would be rejected. “So, it would be more or less the same as the major publishers operate now,” Nayman allowed, “but with more hydrangea bushes.”
After a pause, he added: “Non-sequiturs – you gotta love ’em!”
“One person’s conformity is another person’s product consistency,” Burbank-Pastafarr philosophized all over the love seat.
“AI!” despaired Founder and Executive Director of Bastard AI Governance and Safety, Canada Wyatt Tessari L’Allie (his real name). “Bastard AI!”
“Exactly!” Nayman agreed. “And I’m not saying that just because I created the fictional version of Wyatt and put those words in his mouth – I really mean it!”
“Well, I think we’ve learned a valuable lesson from this discussion,” Burbank-Pastafarr commented. I gave her several seconds to share the valuable lesson with me; when she didn’t, I asked her what it was. “From now on, we’re not going to show writers the AI’s assessment of their work!
Nayman sadly shook his head as if he had known this was coming.
* Sorry for the Inconvenience