I agree with this message: in fact I am not against doing it by hand. It could be a nice life project. I will look into all the advice that you have given me, thanks everyone!
Are the readers-in-residence allowed to read their books on their phone?
In simpler terms, you won’t find labels like “fiction” or “biography” on the shelves. Instead, you’ll find genre labels lifted from book titles (“Living by Fiction”), poetry lines (“Flood the Margins”) or wordplay (“Subject, Object, Predicament”).
I get what they’re going for, but good grief that sounds like it would be annoying if you’re looking for a particular book.
Organization: Shelved largely in order of acquisition instead of by subject or author.
Benefits: This encourages readers to browse rather than search directly. This leads to chance encounters with books outside their usual interests, expanding horizons and making unexpected connections.
Goodreads’ strongest utility is its shelves, which function as a kind of external brain for some folks.
That’s me, ha ha! I use Goodreads solely to keep track of my book collection and reading data, and completely ignore the reviews and all of the social media features.
Asimov’s Foundation series is pretty solid. Mostly the same main character for a few of them and then it’s his relatives / friends for the rest. Lots of “space politics” very similar to Dune but with a little less war and more science adventuring. I especially liked the first book in the series. The prequels are good but not required reading. It’s one trilogy with two prequels and two sequels released decades later.
edit: I also strongly recommend “The World at the End of Time,” which has a couple narratives intertwined but is mostly about one man who gets cryogenically frozen a couple times. Very adventurous and pretty sad. Lots of speculative future visions in that one.
Thanks for mentioning it. I definitely should’ve added it to my post, since I enjoyed that story so much. Also, just in case you haven’t seen the Apple TV adaptation of it… don’t… They completely botched that one imo.
I wrote a really long praise of Foundation before I realised that you’ve just said you already like it… instead I’ll just say have you read Caves of Steel and its sequels? They are set about 20k years before Foundation and are also very good
I haven’t read the robot series yet but I’ll definitely add it to my list now. Also, please don’t feel discurraged to post your perspective here. Even if I’ve already read the books, there might be others who’ll find it helpful!
I'm not sure if The Expanse (TV series) ruined Foundation (TV) for me, if it's just not a good adaptation, or if the books are just not particularly adaptable (or all three), but I agree. I only made it through the first two episodes before I gave up. I've heard the second season is better, but I don't know if it's worth it to force myself to sit through season 1 for.
The Expanse is just spectacular when it comes to realising its world but also, with how much depth there is to the characters and politics, Foundation immediately felt very shallow in comparison. Obviously The Expanse books lay a lot of the foundations for the TV series to build on, but I think the TV series did a great job of adapting it to a new medium without much being lost in translation, and it even added to it in its own ways. Foundation's world-building, characterisation and politics all kind of just felt like it was going through the motions and showing surface-level stuff because it felt it had to rather than because it actually had any substance to work with. Which wasn't helped by the fact that the books don't provide much in that regard to work with.
Ultimately, I don't think the Foundation books aren't particularly well-suited to being adapted to the screen. It's so focused on the "bigger picture" - on civilisations rather than characters, on philosophical and sociological concepts rather than particular plot points, on macro-narrative - while TV needs characters and micro-narrative.
I will say that the TV series' idea to use three different-aged clones of Emperor Cleon, and to keep the actors persistent through the ages, seemed like a great addition. It's good to try to keep some recognisable faces while jumping across such long time periods.
Peter F. Hamilton’s books may fit the bill: Futuristic, not hopeless/dystopic, and the main characters tend to make reasonable decisions. Be wrned though that he favours deus ex machina conclusions. Most will suggest Pandora’s Star as a starting point (with good reason, as the Commonwealth Saga is quite expansive), but it does not have to be. I personally read the Night’s Dawn trilogy first. The Salvation trilogy also stands on its own, and for a completely standalone book Great North Road was a good read.
Adrian Tchaikovsky is another wonderful author! the Children of Time and Final Architecture series were quite enjoyable.
Redemption Space (Alastair Reynolds) is another series one that I like to recommend. Closer to The Expanse. House of Suns also is a great read by the same author, as are several of his other stories.
The White Space books by Elizabeth Bear should be on your reading list.
Vorkosigan Saga (Lois McMaster Bujold) is a bit dated but similar to Vatta’s War in the earlier books. Later on the plot tends to be more along the lines of whodunnit mystery… in space.
And let’s not forget another scifi favourite, Iain M. Banks! The Culture series are great of course, but I liked The Algebraist the best.
So I think there are ways that you can do it to kill the flavor of books, but the core premise that some of those books are no longer appropriate for children as written is absolutely real. They're not capable of reading critically and recognizing that some of the characterizations aren't appropriate. They just absorb. And if you did want them to engage with "this isn't right", you need to be more direct with it and deliberately make it part of the story.
Adult books IDK. I'm not really a big classics reader generally, because while historical relevance is important, I just don't think a lot of the themes translate to modern culture. I'm kind of torn on reading them in literature class for the same reasons. They do provide examples of literary techniques that most modern stuff doesn't really do, so I can sort of understand using them to demonstrate allegory and metaphor, etc, but at the same time, very few people enjoy reading them and the actual messages that don't really apply today also don't get through anyways. If you read more modern stuff you might actually engage people with reading, but updating curriculums is a slog and a half.
They do provide examples of literary techniques that most modern stuff doesn't really do, so I can sort of understand using them to demonstrate allegory and metaphor, etc, but at the same time, very few people enjoy reading them and the actual messages that don't really apply today also don't get through anyways.
As an old English major, I agree that the "canon" is probably larger than it needs to be, and educators generally do a piss poor job of accepting that excellent works of literature continue to be written while the length of a school year does not change. I'll stick up for a heavy dose of the classics though. Even more than the techniques, which absolutely are present in modern literature, Shakespeare and Dickens and Melville provide a shared set of norms and expectations and feed into references and provide a vocabulary for conversation and even subconscious engagement with newer works of lit and drama.
In a lot of ways they ARE the historical context of English literature, and to that extent, yes, you should cram some of them into the brains of teenagers. Not so many as we do now, and the point is well taken that newer works can engage more readily, but school is the right time to have people read these works and to discuss why some parts are relevant, and to take a moment to explain why other parts were relevant. I'd love to see a curriculum that includes some "family tree" type stuff for themes and techniques and shows how writers have more- or less-consciously adapted and built on the DNA of previous works. Kind of a "Huck Finn begets Holden Caulfield begets Harry Potter" kind of thing. Nothing could be worse for engagement than a pure chronological lesson plan for the year.
I appreciate the enthusiasm, I’m not too sure if Beehaw would feel this is the appropriate place for this though which would be totally OK. Might be worth checking ❤️
I’m allllllmost done with Yumi and the nightmare painter. It’s great! I was a little iffy on it at first. It was a little young adulty for my tastes (stereotypical teenage love interest awkwardness). But as per usual with Sanderson the end gets really good really quickly. Eager to see how it ends!
Occasionally do some proof-reading for them here, if I’m having an off day it makes me feel like I’ve at least done something useful lol - pgdp.net/
Edit: They also have some interesting books up - particularly dated nonfiction where you probably wouldn’t want to read the entire thing but 5 pages is kinda cool.
The book you’re describing is most likely “The Shadows Between Us” by Tricia Levenseller.
Here’s why it matches your description:
Island Nation in the South: The story begins on the island of Iolara, a tropical island with a strict code of conduct called the “Way.” Discipline and Quest to the North: The protagonist, Alessandra, is being punished for practicing magic, which is forbidden. She joins a group on a quest to the tyrannical Empire of Aethel in the north. Crown Prince with Magic and Internal Struggle: One of the main characters, Kallias, is revealed to be the crown prince of Aethel. He possesses forbidden magic that manifests as dark veins and threatens to consume him if he uses it too much. Abandoned City, Temple, and Possession: The group ventures into the ruined city of Aethel’s former capital and break into a temple. There they encounter the Shadow Queen, an ancient deity who temporarily possesses one of the characters. Evil Palace and Power Struggle: The climax takes place in the Obsidian Palace, carved into a mountain, where Kallias faces betrayal and assassination attempts from his siblings vying for the throne. Although some minor details might not perfectly align with your exact memory, the core plot points you mentioned strongly suggest “The Shadows Between Us” is the book you’re looking for.
Unfortunately, that’s definitely not it. I’ve never read anything by Tricia Levenseller. None of the other names align either. :( Thanks for the input though!
No, LLMs can’t write good novels and they won’t be able to in the future. Yes, LLM-produced text is going to show up in all kinds of places where it doesn’t belong. Having an LLM write an entire novel from a single prompt and then selling it for money through self-publishing is a kind of asset-flipping and it is a scam. I think this is the use people are the most upset about.
This is an interesting article because it’s not featuring a scammer, but featuring a professional writer who has decided to use LLMs to assist her in writing including using LLM-produced passages in the context of her original writing. This is much more of a gray zone to me and not actually something I’m necessarily opposed to.
One of the first things I did with an LLM was to have it convert my silly ideas into iambic pentameter and it was a lot of fun. I didn’t tell it, “write a poem in iambic pentameter about X” and then try to sell whatever it gave me. I had it convert each of my descriptions part by part one at a time and often I had to generate several different versions of the same passage before I even had something to clean up. Some of what ended up in the finished product was directly from the machine, but most of it I had to re-write. It was interesting to experiment with.
The difference between a scamming people and using an LLM as a tool is reflected in the finished product. A writer has to know what works and what doesn’t work because most of what the machine will give is not going to be usable as-is, and if it is usable it is by happenstance as it happened to conform with what the writer was trying to express at that moment. A human mind is still absolutely necessary to write something someone would want to read, especially if they are choosing whether to read it, and I don’t see that changing with what these models are capable of or possibly capable of. This being the case there are probably going to be some distinctive traits of LLM-produced stuff that people will probably pick up on and get tired of. I’m interested to see how all art develops in a direction to distinguish it from what LLMs can produce such as when painting diverged significantly after the invention of the camera.
LLMs are really crappy at writing books right now.
However there is zero evidence they will not get better, in fact they are getting exponentially better all the time at all tasks which are getting measured.
My bet is on LLMs soon being able to put out mediocre fiction, and then not much later great fiction, indistinguishable from the best authors out there.
That’s not possible with the technology. LLMs will never be able to write compelling stories because they are incapable of comprehending anything. There will need to be a human “at the wheel” guiding every stage of the process.
Or maybe that’s what you meant? LLMs will get better at making compelling snippets, if guided correctly.
I know I’m more confident than most that LLMs are incapable of producing art. Although you are correct to say that it has not been disproven that LLMs may have the potential to produce art, there is also not currently any evidence supporting that they could create art. We’ll see how it ultimately plays out but allow me to explain why I don’t find it likely that LLMs are the technology we can ever expect art to come from.
Inherent Limitations
LLMs are fascinating and useful for a lot of things, but they are not intelligent. A “neural net” which is “learning” through exposure training data is more sophisticated than other ways of text and image generation that we have yet invented, but compared to the system it’s meant to resemble it is hopelessly outclassed. We can’t currently make something which resembles a human brain because we don’t have a firm grasp as to how one works at all. What little we do know indicates a level of complexity that might literally be beyond human comprehension. A brain is made of billions of neurons connected to one another at trillions of points by branches. At any given moment, these trillions of branches are sending and receiving not in binary but by various combinations of neurotransmitters. At a basic level we know that the the result of this neurotransmitter activity (which is different by the area of the brain it occurs in and even is highly variable between different brains) is a mind made up of some kind of consciousness, subconsciousness, and instinct. This system was not designed by human minds but is the result of eons of natural selection. We have no idea how to even begin replicating something like this, although neural nets could be a step forward. We would need a much larger system working in a fundamentally different way which we may not be able to replicate with our limited faculties
The Quality of Art
In my opinion, of all intellectual processes the production and appreciation of art is probably the most demanding of the system I described above. There is a continuum from concrete to abstract, and while computers are excellent tools to store and process concrete data, art falls on the furthest end of abstraction. Mathematics and the natural sciences are often clearly quantifiable. Social sciences, containing social constructs which change depending on variables we are not fully aware of including the interaction of billions of the above system interacting with one another, is significantly more difficult to quantify although still possible. It is not possible to quantify the quality of art. What makes good art? We have no idea. We have never had any idea. Art is not quantifiable and may often be appreciated on a level beyond our ability to describe or even understand. There is absolutely no guide to making good art and there can’t be. Every attempt to define art has been defied in a way which is considered more expressive and more artistic than the limited products a definite process may produce. At the highest level, art is the pure expression of intentional and/or unintentional meaning from one mind to another on levels we aren’t even aware of in many cases. A machine using sophisticated word-association algorithms using a tiny fraction of the computing power a typical brain has is just not powerful enough to accomplish what a human can.
The Human Element
LLMs are not aware in the same way a human is aware and couldn’t be. Although I think it’s possible to create a true Artificial Intelligence and LLMs may be a step forward in that direction, any AI is not going to be able to understand a human experience because they can’t have them. LLMs don’t have needs or desires, they don’t have relationships or a reason to form relationships, they don’t even have the basic requirement of life to maintain a system against entropy. These are things most animals with a nervous system more developed than a worm can act according to. Building upon these animal needs, our neo-cortexes in addition allow us to have thoughts, rationally solve problems, make plans, and form and store memories. Some of those things we find computers have an easier time with because they have fewer biases, but we have biases for reasons good and bad and this is relevant to art. An artificial mind which has not themselves had to survive and seek satisfaction in this world and without even the basis to do so is never going to be able to create something meaningful to a human mind except by sheer accident. If a true AI does produce art, that art will be most meaningful to other AIs rather than to us. LLMs are mindless machines which can only imitate but don’t have the foundation to produce art themselves. The best it could ever do is challenge the kind of writing which is done with the least amount of effort which is most reliant on common tropes and cliches. The best it could be is a shadow of what we are capable of.
Conclusion
With all of that considered I actually do think that LLMs will become better at applying human language and may even be capable of replicating writing styles which we find appealing when they are being used to tell the stories we enjoy. They may even be able to generate ideas which we may find appealing as well. However, just like we might see or read something we thought we wanted but are left feeling hollow by I think there will always be the most important things missing from AI produced text and images when compared to art from any human.
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