Blog – Page 2 – Elspeth Cooper

Folks who know me know I read fast. I always have done. As a kid, my school called me in for a special reading class – sadly, the moths have been at my memory so I can’t recall whether it was because I demonstrated advanced reading skills, or they couldn’t quite believe that yes, I really was reading adult books when barely into double digits in years, and wanted to see me prove it.

Anyway. Here we are, many (many) years and many hundreds of books later, and I’m back on my reading habit. Rather than buying scads more new books (although I have bought some, because reasons) I have been making steady pace up the south ridge of Mount Toberead. Here’s what I’ve checked off since the end of March:

Cover of City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett — of Stairs - Robert Jackson Bennett

Cover of Sovereign by CJ Sansom — Sovereign - CJ Sansom

Cover of A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan — A Natural History of Dragons - Marie Brennan

Cover of All Systems Red by Martha Wells — All Systems Red - Martha Wells

Cover of Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal — Shades of Milk and Honey - Mary Robinette Kowal

Cover of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin — The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - NK Jemisin

Cover of Artificial Condition by Martha Wells — Artificial Condition - Martha Wells

Cover of Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells — Rogue Protocol - Martha Wells

Cover of In Midnight's Silence by T Frohock — In Midnight's Silence - T Frohock

Cover of Threading the Labyrith by Tiffani Angus — Threading the Labyrith - Tiffani Angus

Cover of Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone — Three Parts Dead - Max Gladstone

Cover of The Once and Future Witches by Alix E Harrow — The Once and Future Witches - Alix E Harrow

Cover of Planetfall by Emma Newman — Planetfall - Emma Newman

I enjoyed all of these reads in their own way; there’s not a duff choice in the lot. Several different takes on the idea of a fantasy novel, from fully-realised secondary worlds like The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms to Los Nefilim‘s historical fiction with a quarter-turn to the fantastic, which subgenre has always been a particular favourite of mine.

Some observations, in no particular order:

City of Stairs, The Once and Future Witches and Three Parts Dead were stand-outs.
Greek myths, my beloved! I have had a soft spot for these since I was small, so I found Circe a delight.
Who doesn’t love Murderbot?
I have now added The Divine Cities, The Glamourist Histories, The Craft Sequence, Inheritance Trilogy, Los Nefilim, Planetfall and The Memoirs of Lady Trent to my list of series to finish, which now numbers 30. I don’t know whether to be proud of that or embarrassed.
As a self-confessed fan of Guy Gavriel Kay, I am frankly shocked that I managed to buy Ysabel on or around publication and then just . . . not read it for close to 17 years. I am telling myself that since I switched to ebooks, my shelves have looked the same for so long now that I’ve just stopped seeing what’s on them. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
It’s amazing how much reading you can get done in hospital waiting rooms when the patient transport flakes out and doesn’t send a driver for you.

In terms of continuing the TBR readathon,, there’s a difficult traverse looming, across the Wheel of Time glacier (book 9 onward). For years I re-read the series to date each time a new book came out, and round about Book 8(ish? I think?) I just stopped, although I continued to buy them up to Book 10 (Crossroads of Twilight). Usually I can rely on my memory to hold enough detail about previous instalments that I can handle a break between books in a series, but the last WoT I read was so many years ago that I might need to go back to the beginning to avoid being lost.

On the other hand, starting again from The Eye of the World feels daunting, I’m not gonna lie. Part of me wants to complete the whole series, because warts and all it is part of my fantasy journey, and remains a significant work in the genre. At the same time, another part of me is muttering about sunk costs and more books in the sea. Hmm. Will have to think on this.

So what’s next? I have stuck a bookmark into Chapter 1 of The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. This is another book that has been patiently waiting since publication day (I know, I KNOW!) and I’m keen to continue my Murderbot adventure. We shall see what else the summer brings.

Happy reading, everyone!

Someone suggested to me today that I use ChatGPT4 to help me finish The Wild Hunt Quartet.

The suggestion was kindly meant. I believe they genuinely thought it might be helpful, that maybe I could use this technology to help finish The Dragon House faster. Whilst I appreciate the thought, I will not be using any kind of AI tools in my work, either now or in the future.

I haven’t waded into the social media furore about large-language models (LLMs) being trained on copyrighted works, or various websites entering into agreements with AI companies to sell them training data without users’ consent, because pretty much everything I’ve wanted to say has already been said by folks more articulate and well-informed than me.

There are any number of objectively valid reasons not to perpetuate the AI bubble, quite apart from the hideous environmental cost of powering these LLMs and that AI-assisted search engines straight up lie to you. But the one I want to talk about is subjective, entirely personal.

What a generative AI writing assistant spits out will not be my story any more.

There, I said it. Does it make me sound precious? I don’t care. I’ve invested too much of myself into this world and these characters. Even if this AI is trained on my books, given prompts I have fine-tuned to the nth degree, it will not be a product of my brainmeats. And if I will have to edit what the AI spews out anyway, I might as well just write it myself. Then the book, and by extension the series, stands or falls by my efforts.

When I read this person’s email this morning, I was reminded of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Arthur Dent’s attempts to teach the Nutri-Matic to make him a cup of tea.

He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject’s brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

— Douglas Adams

I am not going to spend vast amounts of time and energy trying to teach a machine how to write almost, but not quite, entirely unlike me.

Featured image credit: Markus Winkler on Unsplash