Author: Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.

The rough AI draft of The Soulbond and the Sling is complete!

So I just finished the rough AI draft of The Soulbond and the Sling, after nine days of outlining and prewriting, and five days of working with Sudowrite to generate it. The rough draft clocks in at 18 chapters (plus a prologue and an epilogue), 80 scenes, and 153,254 words. I used about 770,000 AI credits from start to finish, including for generating all of the characters and worldbuilding in addition to the text of the draft itself.

I have to say, I am really impressed with the incremental improvements over at Sudowrite, and with Claude 3.7, which was the AI model that I used to generate most of this book. I did try out Sudowrite’s new Muse model, but I wasn’t too impressed with it, at least for generating new chapters. For the in-chapter tools, such as guided write, expand, or rewrite, it’s probably fantastic, but with generating new chapters from my outline it just felt too much like it threw all my worldbuilding into a blender. Most likely I either had the creative setting set too high, or I gave it too many prompts.

But when I switched to Claude 3.7 (Sudowrite’s “Excellent” model), the results were amazing. I seriously felt less like I was writing the novel and more like I was reading it for the first time. There’s still a lot of work to be done, especially in the second half of the book, where many of the scenes strayed from the overall story structure, either forgetting things that had already happened or assuming things that hadn’t yet. There’s also quite a bit of worldbuilding that I would like to add in, and a handful of small hallucinations that need to be cut out, as well as a major change that I made in one of the characters and need to smooth out in other scenes… but overall, I found myself really enjoying this book, and was frankly surprised at how well it fleshed out the setting and characters, making them really stand out. It also added some really great dialogue that is probably going to make it to the final draft.

I was originally planning to lay this WIP aside while I switch to another project, but I think now the best course will be to work on the AI draft until I make it as good as I can. That way, I can tinker with the AI prompts while they are still fresh in my mind. Once I’ve gotten the AI draft as good as I can make it, I’ll lay it aside for awhile to let my subconscious work on the story, so that when I pick it up again, I’ll be better able to do an awesome human draft.

I would have added a mock-up for the book cover, but you would not believe how hard it is to get an AI image generator to give you a picture of David and Goliath that doesn’t have David holding a bow and arrow! Seriously—every time I prompt it for a fantasy illustration of David and Goliath, where Goliath is a giant horned monster, it shows David with a bow and arrow instead of a sling. It’s almost as bad as the strawberry problem! But let’s see if WordPress can do it…

Nope. Yet another AI image fail. I even specifically said he was wielding a balearic sling. Sigh.

Did I predict it?

On July 24th, 2024, eleven days after the (first) Trump assassination attempt, I posted the following prediction:

8. There will be a major shakedown of the administrative state in the first 100 days of Trump’s second term.

It hasn’t been 100 days yet, but enough has transpired that this prediction has certainly come true. Which brings my current prediction score to five out of eight. Not bad.

Five things I did at work last week

I’ve been so busy, I almost forgot to do one of these posts! Here are my five bullets from last week, feel free to add your own in the comments:

  • Wrote a detailed scene map for The Soulbond and the Sling. I estimate the novel will be 20 chapters, 80 scenes, and 110,000 words, though the word count estimate is probably low.
  • Wrote seven-point outlines for the other six books in the series.
  • Generated all of the characters and worldbuilding cards for The Soulbond and the Sling on Sudowrite.
  • Wrote and sent an email newsletter.
  • Conducted a monthly planning session.

How I Would Vote Now: 1970 Hugo Awards (Best Novel)

The Nominees

Macroscope by Piers Anthony

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Up the Line by Robert Silverberg

Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The Actual Results

  1. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
  2. Up the Line by Robert Silverberg
  3. Macroscope by Piers Anthony
  4. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  5. Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad

How I Would Vote Now

  1. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
  2. No Award
  3. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Explanation

Wow—I’d forgotten just how terrible book covers were in the 70s. I particularly had trouble finding an early edition cover for Bug Jack Barron that didn’t have psychadelic topless women plastered all over the front of it. The 70s was a weird time.

First, the good: Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the best science fiction writers of all time, and her novel The Left Hand of Darkness may be the greatest book she’s ever written. Personally, I was more impressed by The Dispossessed, but they’re both quite excellent. The thing I like most about Le Guin is that she genuinely follows her characters wherever they lead her, even (or especially) if their own beliefs and values contradict her own. This means that all of her books present a fully developed and well-rounded argument, which makes them ring true in a very deep and compelling sense.

On the surface, there are a lot of reasons for a conservative reader like myself to hate this book. It’s written by a left-wing atheist, it was published in the 70s, and it won the Nebual Award, the Hugo Award, and the Tiptree Award. Digging a little deeper, the core concept of the story is an exploration of gender issues, where biological sex is fluid and the characters may be male one month and female the next. And yet, Ursula K. Le Guin’s unwavering commitment to telling a truthful story keeps it from feeling “woke,” at least to me. Le Guin is one of the most clear-eyed and honest writers I have ever read, which is why none of the surface level stuff bothers me. It’s also what makes her books so timeless.

Now, for the bad—although “bad,” in this case, is more just a matter of personal taste, since I don’t much care for the literary genre (and yes, “literary” is a genre—just because your books aren’t commercial doesn’t make them superior to everything else). Slaughterhouse Five is written with such a heavy-handed style that I just couldn’t get into it. But since that’s more of a personal taste issue, I’d still put it on the ballot under No Award, and if it weren’t for the other three books, I wouldn’t have put No Award for this year.

But now, we come to the ugly, starting with Macroscope. I have to admit, I skipped this one on account of the author. I never grew up reading Piers Anthony, so when I finally got around to picking up his books, it was immediately clear to me that he’s a dirty old man. Which is a shame, because it’s clear that he knows how to write an entertaining story—it’s just that these stories all seem to be peppered with weird sex stuff, often bordering on rape fantasies. I have no idea if that’s true for Macroscope, but I’ve DNFed enough by this author that I don’t really care to find out.

I’ve also DNFed a lot of stuff by Robert Silverberg that was just too explicit for me, so I asked ChatGPT to screen Up the Line for me, and this is what it said:

The narrative features frank depictions of sexual relationships, including a controversial incestuous encounter resulting from a time-travel paradox. Silverberg uses this scenario to examine the moral implications of unrestricted access to history and personal indulgence.

Yeah… Silverberg’s exploration of incest sounds like exactly the kind of book I never want to read. Hard pass.

I also asked ChatGPT to screen Bug Jack Barron for me—though from the fact that so many editions of this book feature outright pornographic cover art, I suppose I didn’t have to go that far to know this would get a hard DNF. This is what ChatGPT said:

Sexual Content: The novel includes graphic depictions of sexual relationships, often tied to the characters’ moral complexities. The narrative explores Jack’s personal relationships with raw detail, including manipulative and transactional dynamics, as well as moments of stark intimacy.

Social Justice Themes: Issues of race, class, and exploitation are central to the narrative. Spinrad tackles these topics with a provocative, satirical approach, which might align with modern “woke” sensibilities despite the book’s 1960s origin.

Yeah, I’m gonna give this one a hard pass too. And given what I already know about 70s science fiction, I suspect that ChatGPT will be invaluable in screening the books from this decade.

How I Would Vote Now: All Years

One of the best takes on AI-assisted writing that I’ve seen thus far

Even though I’ve been using AI in my writing process for nearly two years now, I still feel like I have so much to learn. Everything is changing so fast, and these tools are becoming more and more breathtaking with each passing month. Just when you think you’ve got them mastered out, you break through to the next level and feel like a beginner all over again. It’s quite invigorating.

Five things I did at work last week

So apparently DOGE’s “what are five things you did at work last week” is now an ongoing weekly task, which I am heartily in favor of, at least until the Trump Administration’s reforms to the executive branch are complete. The best counter-argument for this policy that I’ve heard so far comes from Cal Newport, who points out that this sort of request is typical of an insecure and overbearing manager, but I don’t find that argument very convincing. Given the sheer amount of corruption and outright fraud that Elon Musk’s DOGE has already uncovered, I think there are very good reasons for the Trump Administration to be overbearing. Besides, it really shouldn’t be that hard to come up with five bullet points, as I will demonstrate now.

Last week, I:

  • finished releasing all of my books in audio on Audible, using KDP’s AI narration tools,
  • made a rough outline for a seven book series, of which my current WIP (The Soulbond and the Sling) will be the first,
  • re-released “Lord of the Slaves” as a free short story,
  • wrote up character sheets for all of the viewpoint characters in The Soulbond and the Sling, and
  • outlined twelve separate throughlines in the story bible for The Soulbond and the Sling.

Oh, the trauma. How can I possibly be expected to do this every week? And people say that writing isn’t a “real” job… in any case, I plan to make this a regular thing for as long as DOGE and Elon Musk continue to keep it going. Feel free to add your own five bullets in the comments!

If the Bible had a movie trailer…

The YouTube algorithm recommended this to me this morning, and while it’s very obviously AI (and parts are more than a little cheesy), I’m not gonna lie, it’s kind of awesome. Also, the fact that it’s got more than 120k views in three days is pretty impressive, and a sign that the culture is moving more toward this sort of thing.

How I Would Vote Now: 2005 Hugo Awards (Best Novel)

For some reason, I have a handful of these posts that I thought I’d scheduled months ago, but that never went out.

The Nominees

The Algebraist by Ian M. Banks

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke

River of Gods by Ian McDonald

Iron Council by China Mieville

Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross

The Actual Results

  1. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke
  2. River of Gods by Ian McDonald
  3. The Algebraist by Ian M. Banks
  4. Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross
  5. Iron Council by China Mieville

How I Would Vote Now

  1. No Award
  2. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke

Explanation

To be frankly honest, the only book from this year that I actually picked up was Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It wasn’t a bad story, but it didn’t hook me enough to want to commit to almost 900 pages of reading. I think I got through about the first 100 pages before I gave up on it. Filling 900 pages is not a difficult thing to do; what’s difficult is filling 900 pages and making all of it compelling reason. Tolstoy, Dumas, and Tolkien all achieved that feat. Susanna Clarke’s debut novel did not achieve it, at least for me.

The reason I didn’t pick up Iron Council by China Mieville is because I DNFed his New Crobuzon series with the first book. I’ve written about this before, but the first book, Perdido Street Station, had a sex scene in one of the first chapters that was explicit enough to make me check out. That might not be an issue for most of you, but it was for me.

I didn’t pick up Iron Sunrise because I’ve read enough of Charles Stross’s other work to know that he doesn’t write the kind of books that I care to read. A lot of that comes down to explicit content as well, though I also detected a heavy strain of nihilism that I just have no interest in bringing into my life. So unless I get a strong recommendation from someone I know and trust, I’m just going to skip all of his books.

I’ve also decided to skip everything Ian Banks has written, after getting about halfway through Consider Phlebus before ultimately deciding to chuck it. In that book, there’s about a hundred page interlude where the story just comes to a stop so that the author can slip in a thinly-veiled lecture about how atheism is the only religious worldview that isn’t a scam. After getting through those hundred pages, I decided I’d read enough: Ayn Rand is just as preachy, and much more compelling.

(Interestingly enough, I don’t think I have ever read a Christian author who is as preachy or dogmatic in their Christianity as the hardcore atheists like Banks and Rand are dogmatic in their atheism. I’m sure they exist, but I have yet to discover them.)

That leaves River of Gods by Ian McDonald, but before picking up that novel, I decided to run that title by Orion, my AI assistant whom I now use to screen all of these novels for woke and explicit content before I try to read them. I trained Orion to screen these books after I had such a horrible experience reading The Man Who F***ed Himself by David Gerrold (you can read more about that here). When I ran River of Gods by Orion, this is what he said:

Synopsis (Spoiler-Free): Set in mid-21st-century India, River of Gods presents a richly woven tapestry of interconnected stories that explore a future shaped by climate change, political tensions, and technological advancements. From an AI researcher grappling with the ethical implications of her work to a comedian turned politician and a genderless individual navigating societal challenges, the novel offers a kaleidoscopic view of a diverse and fragmented world.

Explicit Content: The book includes some explicit sexual content and mature themes. Violence is present but not gratuitously described, serving to underscore the stakes of the characters’ struggles. Strong language and depictions of societal corruption also feature in the narrative.

“Woke” Elements: McDonald addresses issues like climate change, gender identity, social inequality, and the impacts of globalization, reflecting a progressive outlook. The exploration of gender fluidity and societal norms is particularly prominent, as is the novel’s focus on the intersection of tradition and modernity in India.

Overall Assessment: River of Gods is a bold, sprawling work of speculative fiction that blends science fiction concepts with cultural depth and complexity. Its explicit content and overtly progressive themes may not appeal to all readers, but its ambitious scope and richly detailed world-building make it a standout in the genre. Those who appreciate deeply layered narratives with a strong social and cultural lens will find much to admire.

The “exploration of gender fluidity” and “genderless individual navigating societal challenges” is a dead giveaway to me that this is not the kind of book I want to read. Honestly, the plot sounds a bit like Love Actually set in a near future version of India, where the love is replaced by wokeness. I suppose I could be wrong, but I don’t feel like reading 500+ pages to learn that Orion’s assessment was right. So far, he’s been surprisingly good at the other titles I’ve given him.

So much for 2005. It feels like every year since this one has been a tug-of-war between the kind of science fiction that I like, and the kind of science fiction that I absolutely cannot stand. That’s why I keep having to put No Award on the ballot for these How I Would Vote Now retrospectives. When I’m done, it will be interesting to go back and see which years got No Award and which ones didn’t. The 70s was another era where the award-winning science fiction really turned sour, but the good stuff came back in the 80s and 90s, if only briefly. I wonder if it will ever come back from what it is now.

How I Would Vote Now: All Years

Re: DOGE: Five things I accomplished at work last week

  1. I started and finished the rough AI draft of The Unknown Sea, at 54,330 words (cover reveal forthcoming).
  2. I published 14 titles from my backlist on Audible using Amazon’s AI narration system.
  3. I compiled ten years of author’s notes for an upcoming book release.
  4. I developed a magic system for a new fantasy series, where magical powers can only be unlocked through marriage between a man and a women who both have latent abilities.
  5. I workshopped the first three chapters of an unpublished WIP through my writing group, and used their feedback to start outlining my next WIP, a fantasy adaptation of David and Goliath (but with 100% more jackalopes).