Colleen Anderson’s poem, “Machine (r)Evolution”, may occupy the least page space of any piece in BRAVE NEW WEIRD, but its impact is pretty damn oversized. Colleen and I talked (a lot) about the encroachment of Artifical Intelligence in the art world, among other things.
Your piece for Brave New Weird, “Machine (r)Evolution”, packs a lot into its brevity, as far as timeliness goes. The subject of Artificial Intelligence—Machine Learning—in regards to both art and prose, is a hot issue right now. What are your thoughts?
I’ve seen machine learning from a long time ago. I went to college for photography, [dealing] with film that had to be developed. It was four years of learning how to take a good photograph, in terms of lighting, composition, technique, etc.
Then along came digital cameras. I had to learn the camera again, and every phone has a lens better than what my first camera had. Newspapers—increasingly obsolete in their own way—no longer wanted to pay for photos. While there are still some areas that require skilled photographers, there are many more places that will take…photos shot by the kid down the block.
So in essence, we’ve had machines to change our lives since the beginning. Like my poem illustrates, there have been hiccups throughout history that have caused luddites and technologists to clash. Will we get to a point where the machines take not only all of our jobs but also our intellect and creativity? I think maybe not, yet this has become such a common fear that the intelligent machine is one of Hollywood’s favorite tropes.
And yes, we have hit the age of AI, where poetry, [fiction], and art are now being computer generated through a cornucopia of algorithms. I know several people who have been playing with this and in the SFPA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association) there have been some discussions.
I’ve also used AI to write two poems, “Second Nature” which came out in Goatshed #1 in the UK in 2022, and “Lessons in Spellcasting,” which came out in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly in 2021. In both cases, I plugged a few words into an online AI and then reworked what was generated. Nothing was good to go off the bat. The OI (Organic Intelligence) had to fix them; but then I always have to work and refinine new poems.
OI & AI; it’s a synthesis. Just as video did not kill the radio star, I don’t believe that we will lose the creativity of the human spirit. Will we use AI? You bet. We’ve been doing it for centuries. Will the world be filled with more bad art? You bet. But art is always about pushing boundaries and experimentation. Good artists—of any type—will master the medium, not let it master them.
So yes, we are going to hit another uncomfortable hurdle and some people will lose their livelihoods. That’s never great and not all advancement is great; but we cannot stem this tide, nor the ones that come after. Whether we like it or not, technology will be with us, as long as we don’t destroy the world.
OK, so I am totally gonna open this can of worms. Tell me more about the poems you crafted with the assist of AI.
**I need to note: Tenebrous has made our stance on AI abundantly clear; we've added clauses to both our art and writing contracts, severely restricting/forbidding the amount that AI can be used to create work for the Press. Difficult to enforce? Maybe, but it’s about our commitment to working with artists.
But I'm curious what your experience was like, and to what degree you had to go to sculpt a piece that was uniquely yours.
[So this was in] 2019-2020; even with a few years passing, AI has already changed. At that time, what I used was more a line generator, where you type in text and then more text is pulled from all over the internet.
In this case, it was a lot less sophisticated compared to the AI generators of 2022. A lot of gibberish comes out and you need to start with some text. “Lessons in Spellcasting” came out as a whole lot of gamer related phrases. It was not a finished or coherent poem in any way. I chopped out lines and [added in a thread] so that a story was told. It took as much work as if I’d started from scratch.
I just popped in this line today:
finding snakes in bed
This is what was generated at this link; not good for much but spurring on my brain:
Finding snakes in the bed is scary...
Carrie under Boppy.
What's in your nightstand?
What's in your bedroom?
This is me at 12 months or so!
Happy Halloween everyone!
I am planning on doing my own little get together
“Second Nature” was a little more cohesive, but I had to coax the poem out. The generator pushed me into a new pattern of writing and thinking. It was more choppy, which worked for the piece. I haven’t tried the new AI formats that are causing quite the stir; [though] I might if I hit a block. For me, they’re a tool to push me into seeing differently; but they won’t be my assistant writing work for me. I find that…lazy.
Also: I would strongly advise new writers or artists against using these [methods]; Picasso was a portrait painter and learned the basics of his medium before he deviated into his own experimentation.
What does your writing routine look like? Do you have an office? A preferred coffee shop? The back of the bus? Standing under your neighbor’s eaves, avoiding the rain?
Routine is an interesting word and I’ve always been very bad at it. I work in stops and starts and spurts of energy. I’m not disciplined like other writers; I’m more manic at times. Deadlines are my friend. Procrastination is my demon. My office is my couch; but [it could] also be the local pub. I’m an extrovert, so sitting around people, even if I’m not talking to them, actually helps me focus. Plus, I can look at the locals and study them, and use them as characters.
What does “Weird” mean to you, in the context of storytelling? And what creators/experiences helped sculpt this definition?
Every few years a new term comes out to describe speculative fiction or some branch of it. Much of this is revitalizing from the publishing/marketing point of view so in some senses—while it helps the reader to find the things they like—categorization can be quite arbitrary. There once was cyberpunk, then splatterpunk, solarpunk and you-name-it-punk. Magic realism, horror, bizarro—it’s really hard to know sometimes if what you’re reading is any one of these or all of them. Weird is like bizarro but perhaps with more sanity (I say this tongue in cheek). Weird is strange; it’s horror but perhaps more of an uneasy feeling, a crawling along your spine, an unsettling creep that has changed the landscape as subtly as a frog being slowly boiled. It’s not quite one thing, and not quite the other. Mood sprinkled with unease and something just so strange that you sit back and go, “Well that was just Weird.”
I’ve never loved Lovecraft and if I wanted to slash my wrists, I’d read more of his works. It’s strangely melancholy and nihilistic. It is definitely Weird, but once upon a time Lovecraft’s works were called horror…well, I actually think they were called Weird, then horror, then Weird [again]. China Mieville, now that’s full-on Weird. Jeff Vandermeer, SF Weird. Helen Marshall, body Weird. There are a host of writers and historically many others who are considered the progenitors but I think there have been enough essays on them that I won’t go into the history.
On the Tenebrous Discord, we ask everyone to introduce themselves as a Film-meets-Music Artist (Citizen Kane x Metallica, f’rinstance). It doesn’t have to be your favorite, and don’t spend too much time overthinking it; now GO.
Delicatessen x Brian Eno (ask me tomorrow and it will change)
What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you (that you’re comfortable sharing)?
Well…many years ago I knew a guy who had moved back to Australia. He was coming through Vancouver and we got together for dinner. We talked about Canada’s Loonie and Twonie (our irreverent names for the one- and two-dollar coins). He told me about Australia’s smaller version. The two dollar coin had five kangaroos on it and the one dollar coin had an Aboriginal on it. To keep this relatively short, he gave me one of each. I kept them in a large shell in my bedroom. One day the kangaroo coin went missing. I never found it. It was gone for something like 15 years.
I moved. I’d been in my new place a couple of years. I was walking home one day, with a bag I had bought recently. I reached into the pocket to put something away and felt a coin. I pulled it out, and it was the kangaroo coin. When I got home I went to the shell and yes: there was only the one coin. Here was its mate. I’d moved, I’d packed and unpacked, I’d thrown things out, bought new things, and no matter how I try to deconstruct this, I have no idea where that coin was for 15 years and how it appeared in a relatively new bag kept in a kitchen with shelves that I didn’t have previously. I’ve had the coin back now for a little over a year. I lost contact with the friend who gave them to me and I keep wondering if he died, or was somehow trying to contact me. Now, that is Weird.
Your resumé is stacked. In addition to writing, I know your passions cross into editing, sculpture, jewelry making, and cartography (just guessing with that last one!). What does 2023 have in store for you? Or you for it?
I’m not a cartographer at all, though I drew a map for a novel I wrote; it’s not pretty. I plan to do more editing and will be freelancing in the new year, and maybe I’ll get back to making some jewellery. I’m hoping to find a publisher for a mosaic novel/collection of dystopian climate fiction, with a Weird twist. Plus, a new book of poetry, The Lore of Inscrutable Dreams, should be coming out in the spring. I’m doing a concentrated retreat to work on a new novel and maybe get one of those other novels published. I’m also working on a collection of Rapunzel poems and planning to collaborate with a poet. I’ve never done collaboration before for poetry so I’m looking forward to pushing the boundaries.
There will be other stories and poems that rise like Frankenstein’s monster as [inspiration hits]. This last year I wrote some body horror SF poetry; I might explore that further. Oh, and yes, I’ll be the president of the SFPA so I’ll be busy in that department. promoting and working on building the organization for our members.
BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Vol. One, is out February 6, 2023 and available for preorder now.