lowry hart

My story "It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand" (aka bird story) is in this month's issue of Lightspeed Magazine!

I'm so excited to finally be able to share bird story. Whenever I write sci-fi, I spend way too long on the speculative biology, and this is no exception. The gastor birds are one of my favorite creations, where I challenged myself to design an animal capable of traveling between planets. I hope you enjoy reading their story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Hear my words, Great Riashmanei, and I will deliver you paradise beyond your understanding. Riashmanei, I have divined our allegiance. I have cast aside the material world for seven days and seven nights until God wreathed me in the sight of you, red-coated and striped by the night, asleep in a bed of stars. Riashmanei, do me one service and you will never hunger, never tire, never want. Hear me. No other creature will come bearing such gifts. Hear me, please. Can you hear me? Yes, girl, I hear you. Get you from this place.

under the light of the corpse star.

Marx's theory of alienation describes the ways that the things you make become separated from you and your relationships because of the transactional nature of capitalism. I don't really want to get into the entire concept for just a Tumblr post, so I am just going to link to the Wikipedia article.

Of particular relevance to AI is this: when you are selling a novel, the relationship between you and the people reading your novel is transactional - you share no particular connection with the people buying your book other than that they are giving you (or your publisher) money. Your relationship is entirely abstract. The actual meaning of the story you've written - whether it’s entertainment or of importance to a particular culture - is more or less irrelevant to the transaction.

This is as opposed to, say, a story you wrote for your friends, or a cultural myth (alienation is so deeply embedded in our culture it is difficult to come up with examples of unalienated writing that I think will resonate with most readers of this post.)

AI is the ultimate expression of this kind of abstraction. It is the total absence of meaning implied by the transaction. The way to fight back against it is by restoring cultural and social connections between people, to write stories and make art that are an expressions of something shared between you and other people, as part of building a culture together.

all sold

naughty child: i would unveil my terrible opus

Hear my words, Great Riashmanei, and I will deliver you paradise beyond your understanding. Riashmanei, I have divined our allegiance. I have cast aside the material world for seven days and seven nights until God wreathed me in the sight of you, red-coated and striped by the night, asleep in a bed of stars. Riashmanei, do me one service and you will never hunger, never tire, never want. Hear me. No other creature will come bearing such gifts. Hear me, please. Can you hear me? Yes, girl, I hear you. Get you from this place.