Experiments in Expectation 2 - ChatGPT Hours

issue 217 - 23rd April, 2023

Corey J. White

Part 2 in what will likely be a series. Part 1 is here.

It started with a tweet from Buddy Matt:

I asked ChatGPT who I am and it gave me a new book and a new job. I asked it about the book it had invented for me, and it actually does sound like something I would (and probably will) write...

Feb. 19, 2023, 3:59 p.m.

Click through for Chat's full output.

On the newsletter I've previously talked about the need for a "knowledge" approach to LLMs that are to be used for search and academic queries - a way for the model to confirm the information it's giving to the user[^1] [^2]. But, of course, there are interesting uses for the bullshit that these models often regurgitate. Here, ChatGPT detailed a book by Matt Colquhoun that it had entirely dreamed up but, as mentioned by Matt, is something they would consider writing.

I thought I'd give it a shot myself, hoping that I'd get some interesting output, even though I have not added anywhere near as many words to the LLM collective corpus as Matt.

CJW: Who is Corey J. White?

CGPT: Corey J. White is an Australian science fiction author. He[^3] was born in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales, Australia, in 1988. He is best known for his Voidwitch Saga, a series of science fiction novellas that follow the adventures of a genetically modified human named Mars Xi. The series includes "Killing Gravity," "Void Black Shadow," and "Static Ruin."

White has also written several other science fiction works, including the novella "The Sea of the Dead," which won the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novella in 2018. He has been nominated for several other awards, including the Ditmar Award and the Norma K. Hemming Award.

White is a member of the Clarion West Writing Workshop Class of 2015 and has been a finalist for the Writers of the Future contest. He currently lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Right away, and unprompted, ChatGPT also created a new book which I had supposedly written, just like it had done for Matt. So, the next thing to do is to ask it for more information...

CJW: What is "The Sea of the Dead" about?

CGPT: "The Sea of the Dead" is a science fiction novella written by Corey J. White. The story is set in a future where humanity has colonized other planets and has created sentient machines known as "synthetics." The novella follows the character Gabrielle, a soldier who is on a mission to retrieve a prototype synthetic from a research facility on a distant planet.

However, when Gabrielle arrives at the facility, she discovers that it has been overrun by a mysterious virus that has turned its inhabitants into violent monsters. The virus also affects the synthetic, causing it to behave erratically and violently. Gabrielle must fight her way through the infected facility, trying to survive and complete her mission.

The novella explores themes of artificial intelligence, survival, and the consequences of human actions on the environment. It has been praised for its fast-paced action and strong character development, as well as its exploration of complex ethical issues.

Okay. The first thing that struck me is the parallels here between this book and the novel I wrote and trunked between 2019 and 2022 - specifically the research base that has gone dark and is now overrun by "violent monsters" who were created by a "mysterious virus". In my novel, the research base was in Antarctica, and it was a near-future setting, so there were no synthetics, no artificial intelligence, etc. But, just like Matt, it sounded like a book I could write, and maybe one I want to write.

I even really like the title. "Sea of the Dead" sounds like a very generic title for a fantasy book (more on that later), but it could be a great title for a science-fiction novella. To me, the title suggests a planet that is not only unlivable but actively hostile to life, or perhaps even one that is haunted by death (in whichever way one chooses to understand haunting - human spirits, alien entities, digitised versions of the people that lived and died there previously, etc).

But, it's also a bad title because it's been used multiple times before. There's historical fiction for youths, adult fantasy, fantasy for kids, and a Cold War(?) thriller[^4].

Now, I didn't just list the above for shits and giggles. If you've been following my footnotes, then you'll know that Chat has a problem discerning the true from the merely plausible. So, I needed to search for myself to ensure that it hadn't simply claimed someone else's novella was mine, complete with a basic synopsis of their work. Thankfully, after trying all of the obvious search terms ("novella", "novellete", "short story", "short fiction", "sci-fi", "science-fiction"), I couldn't find anything beyond the above four books.

So, it looks like I've got a new project?

I'm considering making the novella the first part of a novel - this way "Sea of the Dead" can be the title of the first section, with a different title given for the overarching story. I've been rereading Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix Plus lately, which is utterly brilliant, and if you haven't read it I highly recommend it. The book has something of an episodic structure to it, with the main character Lindsay leaving/fleeing various environments as the local political situation deteriorates. Back when it was published, I think it was more common for authors to be able to publish novellas (or just long short stories) in SF magazines, and then use them as part of a novel later[^5]. Apparently Schismatrix wasn't published this way, but the first two sections in particular feel like they could have been (Charles Stross' Accelerando is an obvious example of a book that was published as separate novellas).

So, that means "Sea of the Dead" needs to be a novella that is self-contained but which ends in a way that I can pick the main character up again for the next part of their story. I can do that.[^6] I like the idea of writing a novel in chunks (especially with various writing setbacks that I won't bother describing here) - it's an easier approach, and I can try and find a place for one or more of those chunks to get published as I'm piecing together the full novel.

Already, because of the way my brain works, I'm starting to think of ways I can thread in other ideas/themes/areas I've been meaning to explore. For example, I've written cyberpunk, but I haven't written cyberpunk with the extreme body modification and augmentation of, say, Ghost in the Shell, which is something I want to explore. I want to explore anarchism more in my work, so starting with a soldier is an interesting choice because it leaves room for an arc starting at loyalty, leading through disillusionment, and then arriving at someplace beyond the hierarchical structures of the military and of society as we currently experience it.

I thought that as Chat had given me the starting point for this new project, I should at least poke it a bit further and see what it comes up with; see if it could give me more than a basic synopsis. The problem here is that I started to come up against the basic imaginative failing at the heart of GPT. The initial synopsis appealed to me because it included enough gaps that my own imagination was able to latch onto it and start to do its work. Asking for more rendered that possibility space down to basic tropes by necessity.

Chat admitted it didn't have more information on the book (but blamed this on its data cut-off date, and not the fact that the book doesn't exist), so I asked it to expand on the synopsis, based on the thousands of book synopses it has been trained on, it said:

Based on my general knowledge of science fiction tropes and storytelling conventions, I can provide an extrapolated and fictionalized synopsis for "The Sea of the Dead" by Corey J. White.

What followed was utterly lifeless. I don't want to post it here because it was so boring it threatens to sap any excitement I have for the project. Tropes and conventions, indeed.

Instead I thought I'd try a few more things, and see if I could wring out some more interesting angles on this story...

CJW: Could you give me a basic synopsis of "The Sea of the Dead", as if the same story had been written by Jeff Vandermeer?

ChatGPT: Certainly!

In the ravaged world of "The Sea of the Dead", Gabrielle is a fearless survivor, haunted by her past and driven by a fierce desire to uncover the truth behind the cataclysm that has decimated humanity. When she receives a mysterious signal from a research facility in the middle of the ocean, she sets out on a perilous journey to uncover its secrets.

As Gabrielle navigates the treacherous waters of the Pacific, she encounters a host of strange and otherworldly creatures, from the infected humans known as "beasts" to the enigmatic synthetic beings known as "ghosts". Along the way, she grapples with her own inner demons and confronts the ethical dilemmas that arise from her quest for knowledge.

As she draws closer to the research facility, Gabrielle discovers that the truth behind the virus that has devastated the world is more horrifying and unsettling than she ever could have imagined. With the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, she must decide whether to risk everything to save those she loves or to embrace the darkness that lurks within her own soul.

Richly atmospheric and intensely introspective, "The Sea of the Dead" is a haunting tale of survival, redemption, and the dark mysteries that lie at the heart of the human psyche.

The interesting thing here is that this synopsis is even closer to the unnamed novel I mentioned above - which I had comped as Annihilation meets John Carpenter's The Thing. Beyond that though, it doesn't really sound like a Vandermeer synopsis, even if the text demonstrates a basic understanding of what makes Vandermeer's work unique - "haunted", "richly atmospheric", "intensely introspective".

I also tried William Gibson (it sounded like a very generic rip-off of The Sprawl Trilogy and maybe Snow Crash), and John Darnielle (lyrical and haunting, which, yeah, that's a gimme), but it seems like this particular well is dry, and any further exploration of the Sea of the Dead is going to require me to start writing.

So, ChatGPT can work as an interesting way to spark new ideas when it hallucinates books that you haven't written, but this particular approach seems to only give you a shallow pool.

One last prompt, just for funsies:

CJW: What are some short stories written by Corey J. White? I'd appreciate titles and a basic rundown of each.

ChatGPT: Sure! Here are a few short stories written by Corey J. White along with a brief description of each:

"The Dying Light, No Eyes Will See" - A post-apocalyptic story set in a world where people have developed the ability to see ghosts. The protagonist is haunted by a ghostly apparition, but begins to suspect that it may not be a ghost at all.

"The Life and Times of Johnny the Worm" - A darkly comedic story about a worm who gains sentience and decides to take over the world, only to discover that ruling the planet isn't as easy as he thought it would be.

"How to Kill an Immortal" - A story about a group of soldiers who are tasked with capturing an immortal enemy combatant. They soon discover that their captive has a secret that could change the course of the war.

"The Branded Meat Company" - A horror story about a man who begins to suspect that the meat he's been eating is not what it seems.

"Panic City" - A cyberpunk story set in a future where a computer virus has caused all the machines in the city to malfunction. The protagonist must navigate the chaos and find a way to survive.

These are just a few examples of Corey J. White's short fiction. Many of their stories can be found in various anthologies and magazines, and they also have a collection of short stories called "Ten Thousand Thunders" which includes several previously unpublished works.

Ten Thousand Thunders isn't a terrible title but it's already taken by a Brian Trent novel. And Panic City is a Madeline Ashby cyberpunk story, though the basic synopsis is different to this here. Otherwise, it looks like the other stories and titles are either entirely invented by Chat, or are obscure enough that I couldn't find any evidence of them online. Some of them are great titles, but the only one I'd think about writing is probably "How to Kill an Immortal." If I come up with an ending (or what the reveal would be), I could see myself writing it.

Again, I've come down on the side of thinking these AI systems are too generic to be truly useful for fiction writing beyond very basic prompts - or if you're working in a genre where that is exactly what's expected/allowed. But I'm not going to stop here. I've recently been chatting with Austin, and his own GPT experiments are delivered better results than my own... Makes me wonder if the imaginative failing is GPT's or mine. But we'll explore that further next time.

[^1]: For example, in the basic biographical information ChatGPT outputted about me, it got everything wrong except the state I was born in and the details about the VoidWitch Saga. All the rest reads like the median of early-career science-fiction writers - probably attended Clarion/West, probably nominated for, or won, some local awards, et cetera. It's plausible, but entirely wrong. The apparent plausibility is still interesting though.

[^2]: More worrying than the basic biographical information being wrong was what I found when I decided to poke it a little further. I thought that I could ask Chat if I wrote under any pseudonyms, and in that way find some other writers working in a similar vein. Instead it said I also wrote as a now sadly (and fairly recently) deceased trans writer from the US. I tried the same thing with Marlee and Chat again claimed that she wrote as a now-deceased author. It's a very odd coincidence. But again, when detailing these other authors it got their biographical details wrong (beyond the obvious) - claiming that short stories written by other people were theirs etc. Again, plausibility over truth.

[^3]: I told it I no longer used those pronouns and in future responses it used the correct ones. It is nothing if not a polite model.

[^4]: Check out this cover art. Fuck yeah.

[^5]: This could still be the case now, but I've not come across it recently.

[^6]: In fact, I was kind of thinking along those lines for a different novella I recently wrote. But this first novella was hardly standalone, instead being the first part of a larger story that I hoped I could one day collect with various other short stories that expand the scope of the story beyond the core group of characters. That novella is finished and, I daresay, a good read, but I don't see me getting it published any time soon. Sad.