I’ve read a number of books in the past year that used the narrative device of telling the stories from the point of view of a machine intelligence (two were robots, the other an AI). A few stood out.

Keeping readers engaged when your narrator is a machine sounds like a hard trick to pull off. All three authors managed it.

The first was Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model (2024), which is a satirical sci-fi novel that tells the story of a valet robot who finds he’s murdered his master with a shaving razor, but can’t remember the event. The robot, Charles, finds himself without a master, and therefore unable to do the menial tasks he’s designed for. He heads out into the world and finds that human society has almost completely fallen apart, which is a little challenging to all the robots in the world who derive their meaning from doing work for them.

The world-building in this book is kind of nuts. Robots everywhere. Systems falling apart because the humans are no longer in the loop. Machines that talk to each other, but with different levels of smartness and dedication.

I’m not the only one who liked it—the book was shortlisted for an Arthur C. Clarke Award and was a finalist for both the Hugo and Locus in 2025. If memory serves, I heard about it on an episode of The Incomparable podcast (recommended, if you like to listen to nerds talking about culture). Do you like a quirky sci-fi story with humour? Then give this one a try.

The second book was Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton (2024). Ashton also wrote Mickey7, which was turned into the movie Mickey 17 directed by Bong Joon-ho.

The Mal (short for Malware) in the book is a free AI who gets sucked into the middle of a conflict between the Federals, who are augmented humans, and the Humanists, who are more puritanical and anti-augmentation. Mal really has no interest in either side, but when his access to Infospace (the book’s equivalent of the Internet) is cut off, he finds himself trapped in the body of cyborg mercenary whose job was protecting a modded girl named Kayleigh who looks like a toddler, talks like a teen, and fights like a ninja. Stuck in a decaying cyborg and unable to escape back to Infospace, Mal commits to taking on Kayleigh’s protection, and things escalate from there.

This book ticks a lot of my boxes. Humorous, quippy banter. Near-future story. Technology. Characters you like and want to root for. Tick, tick, tick. If that’s your bag also, give Mal Goes to War a shot.

The third book was a very gentle novella called Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz about a bunch of deactivated robots who wake up in their abandoned ghost kitchen and decide that the thing to do is open a noodle shop. It’s a sweet, very humanist story that, to me, gave off very Becky Chambers vibes, like her Wayfarers Series books (including The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit) or her Monk & Robot novellas (A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy), which also centre a machine consciousness.

Along with their token human, the robots boot up a noodle shop, research how to make the best noodle soup, figure out how to take over the lease, and when success starts coming, fend off review bombers. It’s a great example of a story that has its heart in the right place.

Oh! Wait! I have another.

If you like this kind of story, where a machine intelligence is the POV character, you absolutely can’t go past the Martha Wells Murderbot books. I loved those, too. Really excellent. You might have seen the adaptation on Apple TV.

It appears I have a type.

What’s your favourite machine intelligence POV book? I’m always on the lookout.

I don’t read a lot of older books, tending more toward recent releases. For example, I tried to read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (serialised between 1859 and 1860), because the Secret Life of Books podcast (recommended) did a couple of episodes on it. But it just wasn’t for me. Similarly, Wuthering Heights (1847), which landed for me as terrible people treating each other terribly. (Apologies to those who like Emily Brontë’s novel.)

I did listen to Asimov’s Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953) this past October, but couldn’t make it through his I, Robot collection (1950).

Leigh Sales recommended Absent in Spring by Agatha Christie on an episode of the podcast she does with Annabelle Crabb called Chat 10, Looks 3 (also recommended). Christie wrote it under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, which was news to me (I didn’t know she’d ever used a psuedonym).

Well, turns out, Agatha Christie can write. Who knew? (Kidding, of course.)

First published in 1944, it’s the story of an Englishwoman, Joan Scudamore, who is returning by train to the UK from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, when flooded railway tracks leave her unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house in the middle of nowhere.

And once she’s stuck there and runs out of stuff to read, she gets into her own head, and proceeds to get bogged down there as well. The bulk of the book plays out in her thoughts and memories, and we, as readers, get to see her reluctantly join the dots of her life in a new way that forces her to confront who she really is.

Joan is both an unreliable narrator and an unsympathetic character, and yet, I found myself sticking with the book, rooting for her to make up her mind to do better.

I’ll leave it to you to read whether or not she does.

I found it a fascinating feat of writing for Christie to situate us so much in one person’s head for so long, and have it be that compelling. And hats off to narrator Jacqui Crago for doing such a good job on the audio.

I encourage you to give Absent in the Spring a try, and may it work better for you than The Woman in White did for me.

What’s an older book you’d recommend? Leave a comment and let me know.

H. Stuart Knight slipped a stake into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, flung himself from the roof of the White House, and grabbed onto the invisible wall of wards that protected it from Soviet missiles and Otherworld assassins. Inside the building, the body double of Richard Milhouse Nixon was at the “I no longer have a strong enough political base” part of his resignation speech, and would soon be at the “I would have preferred to carry through to the finish, whatever the personal agony” bit. 

Meanwhile, the actual Nixon, fangs extended, chased underlings from the Situation Room to the Roosevelt Room in a blood-besotted rampage. 

Personal agony, indeed.

Apparently, it was everyone else’s fault that Nixon hadn’t burned the tapes. Everyone else’s fault that he’d listened to Liddy, Erlichman, Magruder, and Mitchell in the first place. Everyone else’s mistake that John Dean hadn’t had his conscience exsanguinated like the rest of them. 

And now, Knight, Director of the Secret Service and lifelong public servant, clung to an invisible film of magical nothingness sixty-eight feet above the ground. His Latin was rusty and his pronunciation atrocious, but building a seam into the impenetrable ward seemed his only hope of escape. 

“Pandatur vena, prima lux, tenebrae dividantur,” he muttered, “Let a path open, first light, shadows be split.” That bit never made sense to him. The ward had no shadows, which was partly why it was a good ward. But, whatever.

Down below, Knight saw Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s secretary, burst from the Oval Office pressing against a gaping neck wound. She made it seven steps before topppling to the ground.

Apparently, two-plus decades of loyal service weren’t enough to spare her Nixon’s ire.

“Clausis finibus, penetret aura, vincula disrupta,” whispered Knight. “At closed borders, let breath enter, chains be broken.” It had better be more than his breath that can enter. “Aditus aperiaturus—”

“That should be ‘Aditus aperiatur,’ Stu.”

Knight jerked and looked around. It was Nixon, splattered with red, perched on the edged of the balustraded parapet. “I beg your pardon?”

“You said, ‘aperiaturus.’ That’s a future passive participle. It doesn’t exist in that form. ‘Aperiatur’ is the correct third person singular passive subjunctive mood. The spell you’re casting — it won’t work.”

“I guess not, sir.” 

Nixon raised an eyebrow. “’Sir?’”

“It’s unclear if this is a ‘Mr. President’ moment or a ’My Lord’ moment. ’Sir’ seemed a safe choice.”

“Very diplomatic of you, Stu.” Nixon shook his head, waggling his famous jowls. “Now, I need you to do something for me.”

“What’s that Mr. Pres—” At Nixon’s scowl, Knight corrected himself. “What’s that, My Lord?”

“Take my hand. Let me help you down from there.”

Knight had no choice. There was no escape. “Yes, My Lord.” He let Nixon swing him onto the roof. 

The two stood facing each other. Nixon reached out, and Knight flinched, but the president merely straightened the seams of Knight’s suit jacket. “We’ve known each other a long time.”

“Yes, My Lord.” Knight felt sweat building, but held still.

“You saved the day when those commies attacked my motorcade in Caracas in ’58.”

“I played my part, My Lord. ”

Nixon jabbed his index finger at him. “You were a goddammed hero, Stu.”

“Thank you for saying so, My Lord.”

Knight knew what he had to do. With dozens, maybe hundreds, already dead inside, things had gone too far. 

Still, he hesitated.

“Let me make one thing perfectly clear.” Nixon clasped Knight on the shoulder. “I am not a crook.”

“No, My Lord. You’re not.” Knight reached into his jacket pocket. “But you are a monster. Americans deserve better.”

With a single, swift motion, Knight slammed the stake through the president’s heart. 

Nixon stared down at his chest, surprised. He looked up, hurt filling his haunted eyes.

He fell backward, arms outstretched, fingers in his famous “V” for victory gesture.

Then the Leader of the Free World burst into flames.

Knight frowned at the burning mass as it disintegrated into nothing more than a charred spot on the White House roof. He sighed, then went to find Vice President Ford, so he could be sworn in.

Thank Christ, it wasn’t a full moon.

*****

© Andrew Einspruch, 2024

Image from Wikimedia Commons, then altered a little.

Recently, I talked about generative AI in general, and ChatGPT in particular, and how I think we’re in a real moment.

Have you used any of the generative AI tools that do images? They’re also fascinating. I’ve tried Dall-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney. I heard about an author who keeps a Midjourney window open, and tosses phrases from her manuscript into it as she’s writing to see what images come back.

I thought I’d try it for the first bit of The Purple Haze. The result was interesting, so I thought I’d share it with you, and get your opinion. (Note that I acknowledge there are some unresolved issues with these image generators, especially with regard to their training sets and copyright material. I’m happy to have that discussion, but I’ll set it aside for now.)

My first prompt was, “Princess Eloise Hydra Gumball III, Future Ruler and Heir to the Western Lands and All That Really Matters, sat on the Listening Throne in the ornate Receiving Room of Castle de Brague and took two precise sips of her haggleberry tea, trying not to let her surprise show.” Here’s what it gave me:

Interesting, but nothing like the right age (or species).

I tweaked the prompt a little. “Princess Eloise Hydra Gumball III, Future Ruler and Heir to the Western Lands and All That Really Matters, sat on the Listening Throne in the ornate Receiving Room of Castle de Brague and took two precise sips of her haggleberry tea, trying not to let her surprise show. Long, black, curly hair. Fair skin. Age 17.”

Result:

Closer. Maybe.

None of them are really the Eloise I have in my head.

Another small tweak: “Princess Eloise Hydra Gumball III, Future Ruler and Heir to the Western Lands and All That Really Matters, sat on the Listening Throne in the ornate Receiving Room of Castle de Brague and took two precise sips of her haggleberry tea, trying not to let her surprise show. Long, black, curly hair. Fair skin. Age 17. Photorealistic.”

Result:

Again, they aren’t what I have in my head, but it’s interesting what it’s doing.

It wasn’t hard for me to lose another hour to this. Maybe more.

Question: do any of these look anything like the Eloise that you have in your head? Leave a comment let me know what you think.

Let’s Have a Contest

I’ve never tried this before, but how about we have a contest. Send me an image that looks like Eloise to you. It can be AI-generated, drawn, a painting from history, or an image assembled using a tool like Picrew.

If I get, say, five or more entries, I’ll create a poll, and we’ll vote on them. The one that gets the most votes will win a paperback of their choice from any of my Western Lands and All That Really Matters books.

Send me an email with your entry, telling me how you created the image or where it’s from.

I won’t ask for ownership or anything, and you’ll want to make sure the whatever you send has the appropriate permissions to be used for a contest like this.

I’m just curious to see what comes up.

Created using Midjourney. Prompt: “Humorous photorealist image of an author using an AI to help him do his work.”

If you’ve been with me a while, you know I like tech-y things.

And, oh my, what a tech moment we’re having right now. I’ve been playing with ChatGPT and some of the other generative AI tools like Midjourney and Dall-E 2. Holy crud, I’m finding this interesting.

I think we’re in a moment right now — a moment as transformational as mobile computing, the Internet, and integrated circuits. This is a big one.

And you know what? We have no idea where all this is heading. It’d be like trying to predict what the world will be like in early 2007 when the iPhone was first announced. Who would have thought we’d be where we are today (both for good and ill)?

That’s the same feeling I have right now.

There are technologies that emerge, and I think “meh.” Televisions that show 3D images? Meh. NFTs? Meh. Crypto? Meh, ultimately, although I think there are some interesting things that the blockchain might make possible.

But generative AI, like these large language models incorporated into ChatGPT or Google’s Bard? Whatever the opposite of “meh” is, that’s me.

I’ll be putting out my first self-published non-fiction in late April or May (all going to plan). It’s a book about tech writing. One of my beta readers suggested I include exercises. So I called up ChatGPT and used it to help me come up with and write the exercise ideas. I didn’t just cut and paste them, of course. I tweaked and edited. But I reckon it saved me at least a week of writing time, maybe more.

Now, this is all going to come with good and with bad, just like all tech. It’ll go faster than society is ready for (which is giving me story ideas).

But my shorthand take is this: there’s a “there” there. We just don’t know where “there” is yet.

One of the steps in my editing process is letting Siri read my manuscript to me. By hearing the text, I catch things that I can no longer see in the words.

Normally, the way I do this is to listen to it on my phone. If I find something that needs changing, I’ll change it right there using the iOS version of Scrivener. It helps me catch at least some of what I call “the stupids.”

Having Siri read your screen for you is an accessibility option. You can set up so it triggers with a two-fingered swipe. It’s in Settings — Accessibility — Spoken Content. Here are instructions for getting it to work.

Obviously, if you’re not an Apple person, then you can use a different tool. Google’s text-to-speech is very good on Android, and the capability is built into both macOS and Windows.

Happy writing (and editing) to you.

My writing motto is Just Write the Next Sentence.

And I’m a write-every-day kind of writer. I track my words, and can tell you how many I wrote on any given day since April 2016.

I’ve learned that when it comes to writing, math is your friend. If you write even a little every day, it piles up. (That’s also more or less the core insight of The Ten Minute Author by my buddy Kev Partner.)

So, let’s do some simple math to get a sense of what I mean.

The Purple Haze, book one in my series, is 125,000 words long. All of the books in the Western Lands and All That Really Matters series are more or less that length.

If I write 1,000 words per day, then I’ll write one of those in 125 days.

But, to be honest, I’ve never come close to that. I don’t usually write that fast. A thousand words is a good day for me, but many of them are less. Sometimes a lot less. (Then again, sometimes it’s a lot more, but 2,000 words is a very, very solid day for me.)

100 words per day means it’ll take me 1,250 days or about 41 moths to write one of my books. For me, this is too slow, but that pace might work for what you write.

250 words/day is 500 days. Closer, but still long for me.

500 words per day is 250 days for a 125k book. That’s more like it. Less than a year.

But lets flip this around and think in terms of words written over a year, rather than time to write a book. I keep a number of stats:

• Words each day
• Words each month
• Words each year
• How many days in a row is my current streak
• How many words are in my current streak
• How many days over 2k words this month
• How many days over 1k words this month
• How many days over 685 words this year.

That last one might look a little weird. But if I write that many every day, then that’s 250,000 words in a year, or about two of my fantasy books. It’s a good goal for me.

So here’s my suggestion: set yourself a low goal that you can meet, and consistently write that every day. Track your progress in a spreadsheet. Challenge yourself to write just a little more. And let math be your friend as you accumulate a book’s worth of words.

And remember, just write the next sentence.

***

Click here to check out my Just Write the Next Sentence stuff on Redbubble. You can get stickers, mugs, mouse mats, the works.

I’m thrilled to be able to tell you that the third book in the Western Lands and All That Really Matters series, The Light Bearer, has just been released. Details about the book are below. It’s available on Amazon and is in Kindle Unlimited.

It’s been a pleasure to finally have it out in the world, and to have people enjoying it. I hope you’ll pick it up and give it a read it as well.

Princess Eloise and her friends Lorch, Jerome, Hector and the Nameless One are off on their biggest adventure yet with lots of pluck, heroism, danger and, of course, haggleberry tea.

The Light Bearer is a humorous, Discworld-ish novel set in a world of weak magic, talking animals, and still wäÿ töö mänÿ ümläüts. 

Here’s what one Amazon reviewer said:

“The Light Bearer develops the playful, distinctive but highly recognisable world which Einspruch has crafted in his first two books (plus prequels). It’s fast-moving plot full of the unexpected. Like his other novels, it pokes gentle and hilarious fun at creed and stripe – Einspruch is definitely an equal-opportunity satirist. It’s packed with hilarious place-names and jokes.”

And another:

“Book 3 of Einspruch’s series is a riot, a romp, a riddle and resoundingly good read. I highly recommend you indulge for yourself.”

Excerpt: The Light Bearer

Prologue

The horse lay on his side, eyes rolled back against the midday sun, tongue lolling on the ashen, snow-flecked ground near an active lava flow. He was Nergüi Unbenannt Nimetuseta, khan of the Central Ranges, and his legs twitched, hinting at the swirling sights, sounds, and signs of the Purity. His painted body’s positioning carefully balanced all that was sacred to the Us—proximity to fire and earth, exposure to water and air.

At a respectful distance sat the dream wife, the only human permitted to live among the Us. She’d administered the mixture of vision herbs that connected the horse to the Purity. Now she held space, sitting cross-legged on a blanket, cradling a ready bowl of water.

Next to her, less still, was the new herd rememberer, who gave a small shake of his mane. “Dream Wife, how long until His Alacrity speaks?” he whispered. 

The dream wife turned her head to face him as if roused from her own connection to the divine. “The Purity does not see time like the Us, Herd Rememberer. The khan will speak when the khan speaks.”

Hours passed, marked by little. The khan panted and sweated, occasionally swallowing some of the ash, dirt, and snow sticking to his tongue.

Night crept in, and the snow began to settle. The herd rememberer shifted a few weak lengths closer to the warmth of the nearby lava flume, earning a disapproving glare from the dream wife.

The full moon reached the top of the sky and, as if on cue, the khan jolted upright with a loud “Huuuuh!”

Legs scrabbling, he stood, bad leg buckling, sweat dripping from his coat. The dream wife also stood. She walked forward in silence, offering the water bowl. The khan slurped, sluiced, and dribbled, clearing his mouth. She threw her rug over him, knowing the shivers would soon start.

The herd rememberer was unsure whether to stand or stay down, so he didn’t quite do either. His forelegs stretched awkwardly forward, but he did not heave upward.

The khan, his voice thick from his connection to the Purity, said, “We must prepare to receive the Light Bearer.”

“The Light Bearer?” asked the herd rememberer. “Khan Nergüi, I thought you gave no truck to myths.” Too late, he realized his mistake. One never questioned the khan’s pronouncements from the Purity. Plus, the herd rememberer’s role was to remember, not comment. “My apologies, Your Alacrity. Forgive me.”

The khan looked at him. On his forehead, a painted third eye incorporated the white splotch that passed for the khan’s blaze. The fake third eye was supposed to open him up to the Purity, but right now, it seemed to bore into the herd rememberer. 

“I do not forgive, Herd Rememberer,” said the khan. “But you are new to your role. This time, and this time only, I will choose to forget.”

“Thank you, Your Alacrity. Your words will be remembered for the Us.”

The khan’s teeth clacked as the shivers began. The dream wife took a cloth from a pocket and wiped away the ochre symbols from the khan’s neck and body. 

The khan had seen the light born, but not the Light Bearer. It was clear the bearer was coming. He prayed to all the equine deities that the bearer would be one of the Us. But he knew the ways of the gods, and it was just as likely the Light Bearer would be a horse of the Not Us or an armadillo or a stick insect of the savages. The gods were perverse in their humor—one of the many burdens the Us had to endure, along with harsh boiling lands and sparse grasses.

Then the khan was lost to the fevers that came from being in touch with the Purity.

Read more excerpt…