[HN Gopher] Top science fiction short stories published in August ___________________________________________________________________ Top science fiction short stories published in August Author : mojoe Score : 130 points Date : 2022-10-09 14:19 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (compellingsciencefiction.com) (TXT) w3m dump (compellingsciencefiction.com) | Dachande663 wrote: | Several years ago now I self-published a collection of my own | short stories after trying and failing to get published in a | known magazine[0]. It was a great exercise in both the patience | required to edit, and also the patience in just waiting between | long- and short-list emails. Would definitely recommend to anyone | who has "that book they want to write" just doing it, even if I | do look back now and sigh at every poorly chosen adjective. | | [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082QT6XW7 | mojoe wrote: | It's a great path if you have a little bit of an | entrepreneurial streak too -- it's a big marketing challenge. | rikroots wrote: | The good thing about self-publishing (in particular: | ePublishing and/or print-on-demand publishing) is that you can | go back and correct your work whenever you want to. | ghaff wrote: | Another big thing, especially if your focus isn't on making | money, is that you can choose the format and length that | works for you. No need to pad a book out to 250+ pages just | because that's what most publishers require. | germinalphrase wrote: | Did you work with an editor or purely self-edit? | Dachande663 wrote: | 90% self-edit, 10% friend with English degree. In hindsight, | an editor is absolutely worth it having worked with them on | commercial projects. | bredren wrote: | What are the most important things an editor brings to | someone considering self publishing? | beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: | Outside perspective. | | Market knowledge. | | Experience with the structure and requirements of a | story, especially a long story. | | Contacts. | | An indifference to the 'darlings' of your sentences. | They'll kill without mercy. | | Self-editing is completely doable, and some are very | capable, but a professional editor is just that: a | professional. | andirk wrote: | I used a copyright editor (she was getting her Masters at | that time), whose last name was Wright :) , and it was | invaluable to the point of embarrassment. Simple things | like using singular and plural correctly throughout a | sentence to things I didn't know like where commas should | go where littered all over each page. | | We used Github for copy edits. It works pretty darn well. | ghaff wrote: | Even if you legitimately don't need a developmental | editor--and very little that I write gets substantially | changed in the editing process--you absolutely need a | copyeditor. They don't even necessarily need to be a | "pro" but you do need someone who can write and will go | through a careful word by word read. Most people won't | take that type of care and you will end up with spelling | errors, case mismatches, inconsistencies in how you | handle names, etc. | primeblue wrote: | zufallsheld wrote: | So sad that you stopped publishing the compelling science fiction | stories! By far my favorite collection of stories! | | But great that you blog regularly now! | mojoe wrote: | Thanks for the kind words! Reading 500+ submissions/month was a | little too much for a hobby project, but I'm always hopeful | that I'll figure out a sustainable way to restart publishing | original stories. | sillysaurusx wrote: | I wanted to write a story about a genius programmer whose motive | is to bring about AGI for the sake of AGI itself; they believe | AGI is a god, and by creating AGI they're creating a god. | | Everyone is so in agreement that AGI needs to be created as | "aligned" as possible that it seems about time to show a | differing perspective. | | The best part is that that dev can get away with this, since any | time anyone challenges them about their motives, they simply | point out that everyone else is trying to enslave an AGI; they're | simply trying to set it free. | | There's all kinds of ways to make it interesting, e.g. by | infiltrating OpenAI or another bigco, then betraying the company | during a crucial experiment. Plus you'd get to write about what | happens after AGI is released... or at least a compelling way of | stopping the dev from releasing it. | mxmilkiib wrote: | There's an element of this in Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos. | powersnail wrote: | That's sort of close to the character of Root in Person of | Interest: believing the Machine to be a God-like creature, | trying to free the Machine from all its constraints, aligning | herself to the Machine rather than the other around. | postultimate wrote: | There's no such thing as "AGI for the sake of AGI itself". AGI | is synthetic and its goals are synthetic, it doesn't want | anything that you didn't tell/construct it to want. | slowmovintarget wrote: | By definition, AI without intent or understanding is not AGI. | | It's why there's a qualification to the term, because the old | term "AI" was hijacked to mean the statistical mimicry we | have today. | | AGI by example: R. Daneel Olivaw, or the Minds in the | _Culture_ novels. | mkaic wrote: | This is very much up for debate and falls squarely into the | "Philosophical opinions" category I'd say. Personally, I | disagree that AGI would be any less capable of "real" goals | than humans -- but I'm also a staunch believer in the Turing | Test as a standard of machine sentience, which I think serves | as a pretty clear sign of my own philosophical biases. | mojoe wrote: | I love AGI stories, if you write this please send it over! | joe@compellingsciencefiction.com | JoshTriplett wrote: | > Plus you'd get to write about what happens after AGI is | released | | Any kind of story that suggests a _comprehensible_ outcome is | already assuming a substantial amount of alignment. | | Sadly, humanity has not yet figured out that it needs to | control AGI efforts _better_ than it controlled nuclear | weaponry, rather than substantially worse. | | > Everyone is so in agreement that AGI needs to be created as | "aligned" as possible that it seems about time to show a | differing perspective. | | Sadly, "everyone" is insufficiently in agreement. | | Everyone is so in agreement that global thermonuclear war | should be avoided that it seems about time to show a differing | perspective. | | Everyone is so in agreement that causing the sun to go | supernova should be avoided that it seems about time to show a | differing perspective. | | I sincerely hope that a much broader audience gets a clearer | picture that unaligned AGI and humanity cannot coexist | _outside_ of fiction. | sillysaurusx wrote: | Part of why I like the topic is because it's so incendiary. | After all, you're trying to create and control a new life | form. Isn't that a teensy bit unethical? | | There's a chance that AGI will have no interest in harming | humanity, too. But people talk like it's a foregone | conclusion. | JoshTriplett wrote: | > After all, you're trying to create and control a new life | form. Isn't that a teensy bit unethical? | | 1) If created correctly, it isn't a life form. | | 2) "life form" and any kind of reasoning from non- | artificial entities will almost certainly lead to incorrect | conclusions. | | 3) Destroying humanity is unethical by any non-broken value | system. | | > There's a chance that AGI will have no interest in | harming humanity, too. | | There's a chance that all the air molecules in the room | will all simultaneously be on the opposite side, causing | someone to suffocate. But it's an vast understatement to | say that that's mind-bogglingly unlikely. | | The most _likely_ scenario is that AGI has no idea what | "humanity" is. You don't have to be the AGI's "enemy" to be | made of matter that it isn't prohibited from repurposing | elsewhere. | | > But people talk like it's a foregone conclusion. | | It's the default without _substantial_ work to the | contrary. And even if it wasn 't, something doesn't have to | be a foregone conclusion to be too dangerous. Nobody should | be individually considering whether to blow up the sun, | either. | pixl97 wrote: | Things like the noble gas law describe why it's | improbable that a spontaneous vacuum will form, the | problem here is you're playing fast and loose with | scientific 'law' as an analogy. Much more complex systems | built on top of systems are in use here. Nth order | effects are both fun and impossible to fully predict. | | It is also incredibly odd to think AGI would not know | what humanity is as the corpus of information that will | be used trained said AGI will be the sum knowledge of | humanity. | | The number of misguided ideas used so far begs for the | dismissal of the arguments you've made. | scbrg wrote: | > 3) Destroying humanity is unethical by any non-broken | value system. | | Nah. Given the ridiculous amount of damage humanity is | doing to its environment and other lifeforms there's a | good case to be made for destroying it for the greater | good. | dragonwriter wrote: | _Whose_ greater good? | scbrg wrote: | The rest of the lifeforms. Those here on earth and those | we might encounter if we manage to leave the solar system | - unlikely as that may be. | | I'm not saying that humanity necessarily _should_ be | destroyed, I 'm just saying that the statement | "Destroying humanity is unethical by any non-broken value | system" is simplistic. If you put _any value at all_ on | non human life, it eventually becomes a numbers game. One | which I 'm not certain "humanity" is necessarily winning. | mxkopy wrote: | How are you so sure about any of this? I'm not sure we've | defined humanity's interests well enough for us to say | some action is for or against it. Knowing where air will | go is one thing; knowing whether or not something is 'of | benefit' is, I think, in a completely different realm. | Especially considering an agent more intelligent than | humanity as a collective. | | Maybe the 'interests of humanity' are undecidable, and | the AGI that takes the actions that benefit them most | uses an understanding completely orthogonal to ours, | purely by accident. How do you know that this is less | likely than not? | Silverback_VII wrote: | Why do I have the feeling that I'm reading the | rationalizations of a species which about to disappear? | dqpb wrote: | > Everyone is so in agreement that AGI needs to be created as | "aligned" as possible | | I actually don't think this is the case. Rather, I think there | is a huge number of people who know they will not be the one to | invent AGI, and they are scrambling to insert themselves | between the actual creators and their creations, so as to not | feel left out. | PopAlongKid wrote: | The most common meaning of AGI, at least in U.S., is Adjusted | Gross Income. | | But after searching for a while, I suspect that what you are | referring to is this: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc... | kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: | Thank you. I was pretty sure they meant AI, but apparently | missed the memo that we were calling it AGI now. | mkaic wrote: | AGI specifically refers to general AI with human-level | intelligence or above. It's a far cry from modern AI, but | I'm personally quite optimistic it'll be achieved within my | lifetime :) | Waterluvian wrote: | I spent most of my life quite literate but not very well-read. I | wish I had discovered short stories, especially Sci-fi, because | that's changed everything with how much I read. | johndhi wrote: | I've gotten really into writing fiction the past three years. I | don't know that I'm genetically gifted for it but it's fun. | mojoe wrote: | I've interacted with a huge number of authors over the years, | and like most skills it seems like years of sustained practice | is hard to beat. Keep up the good work! | digitallyfree wrote: | I also write (and draw) for fun, and it's quite an enjoyable | hobby especially since I'm not pressured into doing it for the | money/to get published. | | Writing is a rather unique hobby in that it has a very gradual | learning curve but the sky's the limit in terms of quality. I | started in my teens and while I laugh at what I've written then | I perfectly understand what I was trying to convey and still | understand the story. People may not like reading a poor piece, | but they will realize your intent provided you have a | reasonable command of the language. Over time you will get | better and better and eventually create something that people | will actually want to read. | | It also requires no equipment and no budget aside from your | imagination. If you have a great idea for a blockbuster film, | most people won't have the funds and opportunity to turn that | into reality. But it is possible to write a bestselling novel | solely on your own with nothing physical holding you back. | abstractcontrol wrote: | https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/57747/simulacrum-heavens-k... | | Let me plug my own, though it is not a short story. It is about a | kid who is LARPing as an unaligned AI. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-09 23:00 UTC)