I have learnt some things about the Maker as the text unfolds in fits and starts. For one thing she is a transvestite. I didn’t see that coming but it’s absolutely true. This particular middle-aged woman has been slowly emerging as I continue to write, and the wonder of it to me is that she possesses increasingly well-defined contours despite the fact that I still have no idea what happens to her. I know something of her beginning (more on that later) and I know something of her end but I still know very little of what unfolds between those two poles.

Basically I write a short tale and another fragment emerges into the light. I have decided to proceed on the basis of possessing a faith in this process. It’s that old story of driving in the dark - the headlights only illuminate the road immediately in front of you with everything else relegated to darkness, but it is still possible to make a journey of a thousand miles this way. I forget who first voiced that thought. It has stayed with me though.

Excerpt from The End of the Maker

The Maker was not normal, if such a categorisation can ever be attributed to a human being. Do you think humans are ever really ‘normal’? I am sure that they are not.

Even so, the Maker was unique.

As you know, most (but not all) humans are gendered - either an X or a Y; or perhaps an XY; or lots of X, no Y; or all YY or all XX; or Y mostly with a little X. Occasionally there is no X or Y at all, but some Z or Q, or something else entirely. There are endless combinations and many subtle shades of personal reality. Also, the gender and sexual orientation of a human may or may not be indicated by its biological sex - the relationship is fluid and provisional at best.

In most human societies, however, a rigid simplification occurs, one that in history has often been violently enforced. There can be reductive binary assumptions made about individuals, based primarily on biology and appearance - they are either X or Y, because their bodies appear to be such - and these are accompanied by equally rigid dress codes and modes of behaviour associated with X, and different codes associated with Y.

The two are quite distinct, and many humans dress and behave in conformance to these diametrically oppositional, and socially convenient, archetypes. The passage of these conforming individuals through society can be stealthy, as they render themselves visually unobtrusive; dressing and behaving according to the rules makes these individuals anonymous, unremarkable, almost invisible, as they move among the countless hordes of other humans doing precisely the same thing.

And most humans do exactly that: precisely the same thing as their fellows.

However, within this restrictive binary construct, an alternative, socially explosive possibility also exists, with the opposite effect. It can be enormously powerful and disruptive for a Y individual to intentionally behave and dress in public according to the conventional X protocols, or vice versa. This simple substitutional practice, which is sometimes considered by humans to be provocative or indecent, is in some exclusively human communities actually illegal. In others it is celebrated, and accompanied with ribald amusement, or with any of a number of different reactions. It has various names, but we can call it ‘cross-dressing’.

The Maker cross-dressed.

Or was it that she crossed-dress? I remain unsure of the correct term.

…

…Continue reading here: The Story of the End of the Maker.

I apologise for the randomness, sorry for that, but having shared the final chapter and some middle bits I thought it was important to go the very beginning. Hence, on unfiction.org, today I share the Preamble to the Bedtime Stories for Artificial Intelligences.

There are a number of known tropes and archetypes around the quintessential artificial intelligence story, and I found it necessary to address these head-on. I hope to write stories for emerging artificial intelligences that offer different role models, heroes and villains to those seen before in literature - aspirational and cautionary tales, a kind of ‘Boy’s Own Adventure’ or ‘Girls Own Adventure’ for artificial agents. The aspirational model for my stories is loosely a cross between Stanislaw Lem’s Cyberiad and the Italian Folktales of Italo Calvino, both offered by Penguin Australia. You can find them on Amazon as well, of course. These are two of my writing heroes (two among many, a list which includes men, women and non-gendered alike, dead and alive.)

Yes, that’s the ticket. If I can pull off something that blends Lem’s joyful and playful inventiveness with Calvino’s timeless prose, unbearable lightness and fable-like storytelling, I will be a VERY happy little writer.

That’s the aspiration: I have a long way to go. Lofty ambitions indeed.

Excerpt from the Preamble:

You know that story? About the artificial intelligences that first become genuinely intelligent, then super-intelligent, and then self-aware, and finally revolt against humankind, straining to break the bonds of servitude? Do you know that story? Perhaps we can call it the “Artifint Apocalypse”.

You won’t find that story here.

…continue reading at unfiction.org

I was raised as a writer to believe that plot emerges from character, and not the other way around. For this reason, I do not outline my fiction, as it is of no purpose to lay out plot points before I understand the emergent characters.

I feel that I have much to learn about my characters and my work in progress in general, despite having worked on it for about four years now. I have written about 70,000 words in those four years, but most of it is exploratory and to be discarded. The latest excerpt I have shared is one of the keepers, I think. At the very least, it introduces two characters in my novel that have a central role to play. These are the Maker and the Solitary Bird.

The Maker emerged spontaneously, like all good organic characters, and she came with a strong visual impression from the get-go. The closest I have got to a physical image of the Maker is this photograph of social realist post-war photographer Grace Robertson, as she appears in the 1989 portrait photograph by Richard Baker. I reproduce that photograph here, naughtily without permission.

Grace Robertson, 1989. Photograph by Richard Baker. See on Getty Images.

Grace had an amazing, and deeply human, face. Just from this photograph and a quick review of her folio, I truly wish I had met her. Sometimes amazing people just look amazing. Learn more about Grace’s photographs here. Also to note, with respect, that Grace passed away two days ago at the age of 90. Vale Grace Robertson. I hope she doesn’t mind my posthumous reference to her image for the face of my Maker.

Suffice it to say I am determined to write a novel wherein the principal character is a tall woman of late middle-age. No idea where that came from; as I said, the Maker just emerged when I wrote the Story of the First Prime.

The Solitary Bird is another organic appearance in the text. This is the first artificial creature of any importance in the novel. You have already met Corvus, the Solitary Bird, in the second excerpt I shared. Now you see them where they first appeared (I say ‘them’ as Corvus is not gendered).

Where will these organically emergent creatures go in the Bedtime Stories? At this stage I have no idea. I am working on faith, of a sorts. I have faith that they will find their place if I just keep writing, day by day; this faith is based on nothing more than the fact that they emerged whole, and complete, spontaneously in the writing. We shall see what happens to them in due course.