A story about a writer? Not the first, but this details his rise as an author, and his books into box-office hit movies. It is also about a scientist who believes that he can reproduce human language on a computer, and teach it write and create those same popular novels the author writes. When these two meet…
THE NOVEL MACHINE
by
*****
A Science Fiction short novel
Originally written in *****, the novel was machine-translated into English. Thus, it puts its main topic, machine text generation, into practice and appears in a slightly artificial English that could suggest a literary language created by AI.
I.
Standing at the window of the first floor, barefoot, his shirt over his tweed trousers, he looks over the well-tended garden and Lake Constance. Under a milky sky, the ferry from Friedrichshafen draws thin lines across the bay of Rorschach. At the right end of the lawn terrace, a restored farmhouse with low rows of windows and shingles on the weather side is hidden behind a flowering hedge. Birds are chirping, insects buzzing. Two women, mother and daughter, look up at him, both in airy summer skirts, wanting to get into town quickly. It’s only May, but already over 30 degrees.
“Are you working until six again like yesterday?”
“Yes, I have to see that I get the third chapter on track, do some research for the middle part, if possible, start editing the first chapter.”
“Maybe we’ll be back a little earlier, is that all right?”
“Of course. But you don’t need to leave at all, you won’t bother me!”
“It’s all right. You’ll have your peace by four in any case. Ciao!”
“Bye, you two!”
Inside, it is pleasantly cool. A spacious study, the walls hung with framed drawings, children’s works or modern art, dark wooden beams under the ceiling. In the middle of the room, a long, massive table, natural wood, covered with books of all kinds: paperbacks as well as bound editions, in German, English and Arabic, sci-fi, novels, classics, new releases next to antiquarian books, some open, bookmarks peeping out everywhere. A small writing computer, a full coffee mug. There are also books lining the shelves, piled on the parquet floor. In the corner, a leather reading chair.
One o’clock. So, he has five hours. A little work, one hour at most, and the rest he can do as he pleases. He doesn’t have to write his next novel, but of course, they don’t know that. They leave him alone, now that things are getting back to normal. Yet, he could easily join them, do some shopping, then relax in the garden on a deck chair, watch TV in the evening. The second volume of his new sci-fi trilogy will be sent to him by post in about three months, a digital typescript disguised as an audio book, completely inconspicuous. Then, about half a year later the next one, after that a supplementary volume is planned. This will probably go on as long as the anonymous author needs someone to lend him his name, his face and his voice. Perhaps a personality from politics or the church for whom working as a sci-fi author would be inglorious, or someone so disfigured by accident or illness that he – or she? – cannot face the public, Sven Gabriel does not know. He only knows that the first volume appeared and made it through the merciless censorship of the editing machines at the Deutscher Verlag without a hitch. And this after his last two manuscripts had been ruthlessly rejected, just like the selection of older unpublished texts compiled in desperation. Rejected by the same programs that had rated all his previous books as very promising, which, by the way, they were right about.
Yet, he had changed nothing in his writing style, he had had the same kind of characters perform similar actions in a similar world. And the “list” that the DV issues annually based on market studies and on which the editing machines rely, this list had not undergone any major changes from the previous year: 1 or 2% more suspense, 5% less emphasis on alternative narrative forms, nothing that he had not meticulously considered – like any other professional writer. But the time of personal contact with publishers was over, there was no more begging. A negative verdict from the editing machine was final and irrevocable. After all, the DV owes its monopoly position in the German-speaking world precisely to automation. Sven Gabriel had always been firmly convinced that creativity needed tight guidelines and that the list with its clear specifications greatly simplified the writing of successful novels. Success came to those who were able to implement the criteria most precisely. After being successful with his first science fiction novel, The Water Seeker, in 2011, he threw his previously held ideas of literary writing and art overboard. Since then, he has concentrated exclusively on exploiting the original concept for new books, closely following the list. Each of his books has been a box-office hit:
Funeral Games for Captain Wutzow (2012).
The Candos Chasma Project (2014)
The Epäonnee Farms on Deimos (2014).
The Children’s Train to the Taurus Belt (2015)
Timaeus for Mars III (2017)
No Answer from Sugav Laev (2018)
Sven Gabriel was on television, was interviewed by renowned literary magazines, received honors. He travelled abroad, earned a lot of money. Then came Irene, the house above Lake Constance, Nina.
And then suddenly, rejections. Completely unexpected. The Colonists’ Legacy, No One Hears Misenos, The Graves of Seddin Lie on Gaia – rejected. Two years of writing for nothing. Soon, a noticeable loss of pay, fewer interviews, hardly any more travelling, unpleasant discussions at home, increasing pressure, depressed mood, arguments, quarrels, talk of separation, of divorce, of custody, too much alcohol – a consistent sequence of steps. He had doubts about the anonymous offer, of course, but did he really have a choice? Did he have anything to lose? So he signed and waited, not asking questions, especially not: Who is this person? Why is he doing this for me? What’s in it for him? Why me? Why the whole thing at all? Howsoever, the first typescript was delivered, The Fifth River in Paradise. Colony Volume 1 in 2020.
The fear of a mega-catastrophe keeps the world in war and chaos. As the social order threatens to collapse, a ruthless elite do everything they can to save themselves. Amidst the encircling panic, a small group of scientists fight for those left behind, while the elite’s evacuation hastened the apocalyptic scenario.
Not bad, a little bumpy here and there, not quite the way he would have done it. But generally very similar in style, sometimes even so far that he forgets it wasn’t him who wrote it, but the anonymous contractor who does not want to expose himself and hides his identity behind a notary. He studies the novel – changes to the text are forbidden by contract -, sends it to the publisher without too much hope, and lo and behold: consistently positive assessment, immediate acceptance for publication, forecasts of dizzyingly high sales figures – an open mystery for Sven Gabriel, but one he can live with.
The contract essentially contains three points:
As co-author, as he is referred to, he undertakes to forward all typescripts sent to him by the author or his notary unchanged to the DV within two months, specifying his authorship.
Until the publication of the work in the DV, he must study the novel to such an extent that he can credibly represent it in public as his own. If he gives explicit or implicit indications that question his authorship, this is considered a contractual breach.
As long as at least one manuscript per year is given to him by the author, he may not publish any literary works of his own, except articles on literary criticism.
For his part, the author undertakes to deliver at least one typescript of at least 100,000 words per year, and not question the co-author’s authorship in any way to the outside world.
Then follow several pages of small-print clauses, explanations and exceptions, clarifications on the validity and termination of the contract, as well as on individual points of it. For example, it is stipulated that Gabriel must, within a reasonable framework, which is defined below, take measures to market the book, specifically a) public readings; b) interviews; c) articles for literary and literary-science journals. In another clause, it is specified that parallels between Gabriel’s works and publications in scientific, communication and information science journals do not constitute a questioning of authorship. Sven Gabriel doesn’t really understand this. It’s probably a purely protective clause that allows the anonymous author to do research for his books in scientific publications – as Gabriel has always done, too. It is certain: the contract was drafted by a professional and leaves no room for misunderstanding.
Sven Gabriel’s task is conceivably simple. The same questions are always asked at public readings anyway, so he would hardly need to take a look at the typescript. More tricky are the questions about sources and technical details. Creating science fiction requires research, and that is a large part of his work as a co-author. If astrochickens appear, for example, he has to know that these are intelligent space probes the size and weight of a chicken, designed by the physicist Freeman Dyson at the beginning of the 21st century. That’s the kind of thing he needs to know.
2.20pm. He has locked the contract away again, sat down in the reading chair, legs up, and continues reading the adventures of Martin Beck and Vicky Hansen. Quite in his style, the café with the tattered sofas in run-down, half-evacuated Manhattan, from where Zina Wang follows online how her two friends in the Andes get caught up in an Indian uprising against the illegal land grab by a Euro-American corporation. Quick changes from dusty New York to the embattled mountain world and on to the secret shipyard in Ingsugtusok, Greenland. Really well done!
He studies the text without thinking too much about the anonymous author. After all, Gabriel can claim 80% of the royalties stipulated in the publishing contract, and even 100% for audio books and film adaptations. And no one notices the other 20%, especially not Irene, who has never been interested in office stuff. As long as the money flows, everything is fine. Since it started flowing again. In that sense, the anonymous saved Sven Gabriel’s marriage as well. He never fooled himself into thinking that a talented and attractive woman like Irene would stay with him only because of his fame as a sci-fi writer. Of course, she loves him. However, when the shopping trips are cancelled and the pretty villa on the Rorschacherberg is in question, it is an exceptional situation that love cannot cope with. A family like his, a wife to show off but also domestic idyll, a daughter who loves Papa, all this wonderful conventionality hangs on to income and suffocates when the supply is throttled and eventually dries up.
Now that the first volume is in the bookshops, Irene and Nina are back home. No one talks about separation any more. So, Gabriel gladly gives in to mother and daughter’s wish for Nina to be sent to a private college on the isle of Jersey. Nina will then be away for most of the year, but can you deny a 14-year-old that she wants to break off from home and prepare for a life of her own? Learning English is a must these days, and considering the climatic advantages and the entertainment on offer, the Channel Island is ideal. In addition, it is only a few hours from Switzerland. Admittedly, it’s expensive as hell, but good education has its price. And for him and Irene, it gives them room to cement the relationship they’ve just saved.
Five o’clock. One hour to go. The two came back a few minutes ago. Irene does everything she can so he can work in peace. Nina is not to be loud, and the housekeeper will come the next morning. He spends the last half hour putting together what he has done. Lies down, reads, walks around the room, lies down again, looks out the window.
At 6pm he would come down, tell them how he got on, maybe summarize a scene or two. They would be proud of him. The machine is running, keeping happiness alive. Sometimes, he would read to Irene as they lay on the sofa by the fireplace and she would fall asleep to his stories. They would enjoy such idyllic moments again while their daughter prepared for the life of rich families at “St. Brelade’s College”.
*
In the attic room of the restored farmhouse, an elderly man in a grey cardigan sits bent over his notes. Although there are several high-performance computers with integral speech recognition on the table, he neatly writes on notepads with an expensive fountain pen. The sun penetrates through the low row of windows. Plants stretch for light in five pots on the windowsill. Clemens Pöhner’s eyes are focused on his notes. Actually, at the age of 62, he no longer needed to work; in fact, he could have stopped fifteen years ago when his company, Pöhner BioLinguistics (PBL), began cultivating his linguistic neuro-networks in a greenhouse near Fruthwilen at Lake Überlingen, small biotechnologically produced linguistically gifted brains that, once harvested, are trained for individual applications and sold all over the world: for simultaneous translation, automated reference services, intelligent database queries, creating abstracts, virtual teaching modules and other tasks of modern information management. The fact that the “Pope of Bio-Linguistics” (Science 3/2018) has developed this discipline and turned it into a powerful practical science, and has done so largely single-handedly, is mainly thanks to four qualities:
Firstly, Pöhner has a completely unbiased approach to problems and the ability to make reciprocal use of the most diverse fields of activity; he is interested in art history, horticulture, plays the piano and likes golf, has a weakness for the comics of Hergé and shipping. Secondly, Pöhner is a systematic person to the point of pedantry: every book in his spacious office is catalogued, has its place, the old-fashioned rows of folders on the shelves are sorted by color and arranged alphabetically. Thirdly, even if he appears slow and cumbersome, he is an extraordinarily fast thinker and problem solver. And finally, once he gets stuck in a problem, he can’t tear himself away from it until he has solved it, forgetting, suppressing or putting off many other things, such as the long-held desire to separate from his wife or at least to have her out of the house.
Initial enthusiasm for his first job as a teacher of information science at a Canton school soon died down. A skilled didactician and methodologist with a gift for improvisation and broad knowledge, he was personally offended when his well-prepared lessons failed due to a lack of discipline. More and more often, he tended to keep his classes busy while pursuing his own problems during this time. A conversation with an older colleague planted in him the interest in machine translation that occupied him throughout his life. He immersed himself in computational linguistics textbooks, fiddled around with scripts, and within a year had worked up the state of research. He wrote a small programme that allowed very accurate parsing of German texts, put it on the internet, was recruited by a Munich company shortly afterwards and hung up his teaching job with relief. His speed also allowed him to tinker with his own projects in his other jobs, in addition to the tasks he was given. While he was refining his parsing in Bavaria, it had long been clear to him that the whole field of computational linguistics was on a cybernetic astray. In a later interview, when he presented his first own research projects, he expressed himself as follows:
It is no use trying to reproduce human language on the computer with the help of long scripts and huge databases, as computer linguists have been trying in vain for half a century. We need transmitters that are capable of learning language and dealing with it flexibly, and I see this possibility only in the field of biotechnologically created neuronal networks.
While the scientific world laughed at Pöhner’s ideas, the first small brains grew in a greenhouse in Thurgau, were linked to the big world of information, learned, stored – possible combinations of words, forms, sentences, parts of texts, communication situations – and one day tried, at first still uncoordinated, to communicate with their creator via language generators. The first proto-brains only produced incomprehensible letter combinations because they had found completely different rules and laws than expected. Little by little, the starter kit for the young brains was refined and the results improved. Pöhner was fascinated by the way his neuro-networks found their way into the world of language and communication: One had learned Rhaeto-Romanic in all five dialect variants, including Rumantsch Grischun, after only a few weeks, while another dwelled for a longer time on Dadaist poetry and a third took input from the works of Isaac Asimov. In addition to such universalistic meta-brains, it was also possible, through the targeted selection of inputs, to breed simpler brains that could master only a certain number of selected languages and language functions, which was quite sufficient for certain tasks and made them affordable for larger companies and public institutions.
The PBL experienced a meteoric rise, production facilities were inaugurated in India, Pakistan, and Mongolia, while the research department remained based at Lake Constance. Pöhner was inundated with calls from universities and companies, received honorary professorships and, despite fierce resistance, could not entirely avoid periodic television appearances. Small and large companies around the world are still busy finding creative applications for Pöhner’s neuro-networks and methods for cloning them at low cost.
Despite all this, Clemens Pöhner has remained a simple, modest person. His happiness in life lies not in success, not in money, but – what surprises many – in tranquility! With the patent rights to his neuro-networks, he is probably a multi-billionaire, but he is not interested in that as long as he has the necessary time and space to pursue his interests with pleasure. His biggest expense was the restoration of the pretty farmhouse on the Rorschacherberg. At home, he wears woolen jackets and prefers to work himself with a shovel and a hoe in his spacious garden. Whenever possible, he avoids his wife by taking walks with the dogs; this way, he can concentrate on his thoughts.
In his dreams, he exchanges his dried-up, boring wife for a young, pretty one. He hadn’t had such fantasies for many years, until Sven Gabriel and his wife had built on the neighboring property. Yes, that was a woman! He had met her several times on walks and chatted with her. A smart and pretty and cultured person.
At the moment, however, there was no thought of a walk. Instead, he was sitting in his attic room, working doggedly, almost in meditative contemplation, on a research article that he had to deliver in a few days. Timing was crucial in this matter. He didn’t need it, but it’s another one of those things that won’t let him go, that he’s completely at the mercy of. He puts the pen down, sighs, and looks out the window at the milky sky. The thing has such a grip on him that he has even refused to work on the only project that could have trumped all his biolinguistic research: the networking of human brains and artificial networks!
When he gets up in between to stretch his legs, he looks through the small windows onto the neighboring property. As charming, cosmopolitan, and cultivated as Irene Gabriel is, as cultureless is her husband. In some places, he lets his garden fall into disrepair (the garden gate to the Gabriels’, which Pöhner had repainted, derusted and freed of the rampant branches a few weeks ago, is the only spot that is not uncontrollably overgrown), then again he disturbs Pöhner with the noise of lawnmowers, mini-excavators or tree saws during his lunch break – an impossible person. Pöhner shivers. But then his thoughts return to his notes. That’s terrific, brilliant! He grinned. Actually, he is not such a terrible person after all. At least not as long as no one threatens his peace.
II.
Sven Gabriel is sitting at the wooden table, in jeans, an old college jumper, thick woolen socks. Outside, thick black clouds, sleet. There are a few books lying around, the reading chair has made way for a fully automatic Stressless massage chair. Leaning against the wall is a framed golden certificate, not yet hung up. On the table in front of him the brand-new third volume of the Colony trilogy, Locus Amoenus (2022), still wrapped in transparent foil. Through the open door, Irene can be heard downstairs.
“In Oman, we could do a round trip. Sounds exciting: earthen clay architecture, markets, Portuguese forts, personal guides, stays in 5-star hotels.”
“Is that far from Doha?”
“Not that much.”
Gabriel stretches in his chair. “What do we have already?”
“The first week is Israel and Palestine, a round trip. For one week, the Meridian in Aqaba, then onto Oman and a week’s round trip there, or directly to southern Iran for a week’s round trip and beach holidays. The return flight then goes from Busher via Shiraz to Tel Aviv.”
“Yes, let’s do that then.”
“But isn’t that too much for you? All together, that’s five weeks.”
“No problem.”
“But what about your paperwork?”
“All right. I don’t have to deliver the fourth volume until spring.” He glances outside. “I need to get away from this horrible winter weather.”
“Yeah, me too!” She laughed. “I’m just saying, so far it’s taken you a few months of almost full time work to get a volume done. Are you sure you’ll have enough time?”
“Don’t worry about it. The sequel follows itself from the trilogy, there’s not much work to do. I sort of co-conceived it during the first three volumes. When we get back in mid-March, I can work intensively for a few weeks, and I can proofread the manuscript in Guernsey.”
She seemed to consider it.
“Really, no problem,” he insisted. “Writing comes very easily to me at the moment.”
“Nina’s really excited, too. After all, she’s so proud to be able to supervise the construction of the country house.”
He laughed. “Yes, our daughter is growing up.”
If there is a high point in a writer’s career, Sven Gabriel has reached it with his Colony trilogy: SciFi Author of the Year, golden bookend, enormous additional print runs, contracts for translations into Arabic, English, French, Indonesian, Japanese, and another 24 languages – all this is no longer a problem with the PBL translation tools – film projects, audio books, his own PR manager, who filters out the relevant interviews and articles and keeps intrusive journalists at bay, a new fence with a security system around the property, family happiness, the construction of a weekend residence at one of the most picturesque spots on Guernsey, accessible from Altenrhein in about four hours by airship, by plane even in one and a half hours. A nice idea, besides, that he bought the country house in her name. A proof of love that he admittedly didn’t come up with all by himself. But does it matter? After all, the building costs are paid out of his coffers anyway.
“From Bushehr, there is also the possibility of visiting the garden island of Qushm. I’d love to see that. It has its price, but it looks overwhelming.”
“Easy to get there?”
“You’d probably have to book a private flight.”
“Why not? –”
Who cares if the books aren’t his? On the other hand, somehow they are his. How tensions slowly arise within the Mars colony and the rebellious suddenly face a brutal power apparatus that hides behind the need for discipline and sanctions – ideas he already mapped out for Mars III in Timaeus. How the group around Derek Balmer sits in the biosphere and risks being left entirely to their own by the new rulers on Mars III, with no way to leave the station, facing a slow death – quite his way of building tension. Or, as a contrast, the philosophical brothers circling the Earth in an airship, laughing sublimely at the downfall of human society – that could have been his idea too! And then, of course, the marvelous discoveries of the Sugav Laev crew, the flourishing Epäonnees and their dangerous parasites. Even the cataloguing of extraterrestrial life forms could have sprung from his imagination. Occasionally he encounters characters from his former novels, like old friends. In the supplementary volume, even the old Captain Wutzow is supposed to reappear. If Sven Gabriel were to sit down and write himself, he would produce nothing other than what he gets delivered at regular intervals. There would be no other characters, no other plot lines, no other formulations. No, it is his work, the just published, eagerly awaited, with huge PR campaigns introduced third volume, Locus Amoenus, as well as the second colony volume, Morphomallia on Phobos.
Ideally, he would also like to have Captain Wutzow’s return in hand already. But he will have to wait until spring for that. It’s good that he can travel around the world with Irene until then.
Flight Zurich – Tel Aviv. 1 week round trip with personal guide through Israel and Palestine. Transfer by airship to Aqaba. 1 week stay at the Kepinski *****. Transfer by plane to Sohar. Oman round trip Nizwa, Muscat, Barkha with private guide, overnight stays in ***** hotels. Transfer by plane via Doha (1 night in a ***** hotel) to Bushehr. 1 week round trip South Iran in a small group (Shiraz – Esfahan – Ahvaz – Shiraz, overnight stays in ***** hotels), 1 week stay at Alhambra Resort***** in Bushehr. Return flight via Shiraz and Tel Aviv to Zurich.
He hates winter. He hates the climate here. In spring, there is a short period that is somewhat pleasant, where you can enjoy the garden, then it already gets too hot, a dry heat, unbearable. The rest of the year gray skies, fog, constant rain, interrupted only by a few weeks with slushy snow.
“I will make sure that we travel back from Qushm Island via Dubai. I’d like to see the city, and maybe you could combine it with a public reading. They’ve wanted you for a long time.”
“Yes, you’re right. The Arabic translation of the third volume should be on the market by then.”
That’s a brilliant idea. The Arabs know how to keep writers happy. They love his sci-fi adventures. They translate everything on the market. No wonder. If there is one place where people have their eyes on the future, it is the Arab region. Here, brilliant minds have developed new inputs for knowledge management, concepts of terraforming, and new forms of settlement. The University of Dubai set up the Center for Innovation Research and Idea Management (CIRIM) about ten years ago, in a prime location on Sufouh Rd. right by the sea, where an interdisciplinary research team also works on evaluating fictional texts, especially sci-fi literature. A few years ago, he was interviewed as part of these studies. Later, they offered him a guest professorship, but he turned it down on the advice of his PR manager. The request alone was publicity enough!
Only one more month of slush, storms, fog and zero temperatures! He would bring that around, too. Maybe he could get back in touch with Pöhner, now that they are both celebrities. It was quite a surprise when he realized that he had bought his property next to the farmhouse of his old teacher colleague. Many years ago, they both taught at the Cantonal school, he German, Pöhner Information Science. A kind, quiet guy, Pöhner, albeit somewhat withdrawn.
Irene seems to know him better, has chatted with him several times, and raves about this cultivated and interesting person. Gabriel himself has only seen the biolinguist once or twice in the garden; when the former colleague asked him about his work for the sake of politeness, and he also inquired about Pöhner’s for the sake of politeness.
Well, Pöhner works a lot, has to be constantly on the road at conferences or monitoring new PBL factories. It’s unbelievable what he has achieved! Back then, in the teachers’ room, they always had exciting discussions about the possibilities and limits of computer technology. After several years, Pöhner managed to get out of grueling school life. In the years that followed, Gabriel read about Pöhner’s developments again and again. While he wasn’t particularly interested in programming technology and all that stuff in detail, as a sci-fi writer he couldn’t help but keep up with technological developments. After Pöhner wrote an article about new computer literature, they got in touch again.
There will always be people who take up the pen. But this literature will be joined by another, one generated by powerful computers. This cyber-literature will differ from man-made literature only in that it will be more courageous in breaking the ground and will not hold itself in check by psychological blocks or being trapped in its own socialization. I imagine programs in which different generators, each networked with the others, work together and, drawing on the myriad of existing texts from digital libraries, databases and the Internet, produce new texts, also by drawing on possible combinations of stylistic features, text genre features, etc. It is up to the programmer to decide whether to give the machine complete free rein – whereby it generates both an epic about academic seniors in an Arctic ice desert and a sound poem with the three syllables ba, bo and bi – or whether the programmer enters constraints, specifications or his own ideas at various points via an interface. And should this literature be less literature just because it is machine-generated? Is it not conceivable that it beats conventional literature hands down? I am convinced that only in cyber literature lies a genuine development of literature […].
(Lili. Journal of Literature and Linguistics 5/2014)
Gabriel was so annoyed by the article that he couldn’t help but write a sharp-tongued reply. It was as if he was back in one of the teachers’ room discussions. But it stayed with one article, and the next time he saw Pöhner was after he had moved into the Rorschacherberg house. Pöhner was friendly but distant. Irene wondered why a man with his success lived in a restored farmhouse above Lake Constance and worked in the garden himself, when he could have afforded large country houses in the most prestigious places in the world, with an army of housekeepers, gardeners and landscape architects. Thinking about Irene’s statement, Sven Gabriel envisions his own country house, at Jerbourg Point on the south coast of Guernsey. Yellow sandstone, a large driveway, panoramic windows. In summer, pleasant temperatures around 24 degrees, ideal for studying the next volumes on the terrace by the swimming pool, with a view of the St. Martin’s lighthouse, in the background the island of Jersey and, in fine weather, even the coast of mainland France.
III.
Mrs. Pöhner’s taxi has just left, Clemens Pöhner is alone in his farmhouse. His wife just made a small scene, as if she had been waiting for the moment for a long time, and he wonders why he didn’t do it years ago. He claps his hands – everything is ready on time, everything is working, now it’s just a matter of waiting. The curtains are drawn on the upper floor, now he lowers the shutters on the ground floor and fixes them, the entrances to the cellar are already locked. One cannot be too careful, even if he does not consider an attack in his own house to be very likely. But it would be too annoying on the last evening before he leaves. Whether the house is being watched? Hardly, the last delivery will arrive tomorrow at the earliest, perhaps the day after tomorrow, depending on when his wife will discover the parcel he had placed in her travelling bag, addressed to his neighbor, if by mistake. In her morbid pedantry, separation or not, she would dutifully toss it into the nearest mailbox.
In between, he wonders how it is that he hates this person on the other side of the hedge so abysmally. It’s not just the smoke from the garden barbecues, the constant noise pollution – it started earlier, when he moved in. There were enough spots a successful author could afford, but no, it had to be here. With this fabulous woman he doesn’t deserve at all! But no, it started even earlier, with a replica of his vision of computer-generated literature. Gabriel ridiculed him, portraying him as a callous, megalomaniac destroyer of the culture.
There can hardly be anything more primordial than the need to express oneself, to communicate something, to tell stories, to invent – and to hear, to read, these very narratives. Why should human beings voluntarily deprive themselves of this possibility and instead listen to texts that an unfeeling, thoughtless machine has put together from dead fragments? It must be the idea of a technocrat who believes he can make the world tangible if he can trace it with algorithmic operations. Mr Pöhner, we need books that are axes for the frozen sea within us, as Kafka says, not cybernetic cooling machines […].
As if this small schoolmaster was the master of literature! Then he wrote about cybernetics; had this ignoramus not even noticed that the biotechnological approach is diametrically opposed to the cybernetic one? A schoolmaster, that’s what he is. In fact, that is exactly where it began, at the cantonal school. It started from the very first day, from the very first day when this young preppy entered the teachers’ room and chatted him up over his morning coffee. After almost five years of drinking his coffee in peace every morning at 7.25 a.m. without being disturbed by colleagues – the teachers’ room was spacious enough for people to avoid each other – he now was haunted every goddamn morning by this Gabriel, who ruined his morning routine with his ill-conceived theories about literature and creativity. He constantly wanted confirmation, tried to lure him into argumentative traps, and that at half past seven, when every decent person just wanted to drink his coffee. That’s when this feud began, which increasingly boiled down to a debate between literary genius and the possibilities of information science. This was a polarity that Pöhner himself considered undifferentiated and naïve, but in the end, it was no longer about the matter at hand. At some point, he caught himself researching in order to have good arguments against Gabriel, and he couldn’t shake off the suspicion that the other doing the same. When Gabriel published his first novel and was successful with it, he had to hold this up to him as a victory of human creativity over the machine. Well, in the meantime, Pöhner himself had already dived into the depths of computational linguistics. When he was able to leave the pubescent youth barely a year later, he had caught up to the tie. Sometimes, it seemed to him that his entire professional life was just about getting even with his rival. His article about computer-generated literature was a targeted blow against Gabriel, and the latter promptly reacted, with surprising bite, which he could afford because Pöhner’s vision was convincing in theory, but had not yet been realized in computer terms.
In the meantime, however, it is no longer a theory. Pöhner’s novel machine has produced three volumes of a science fiction trilogy – pure computer-generated literature! – and no one has noticed the difference. The reviewers outdo each other with praise for Sven Gabriel – Pöhner has collected it all.
No one designs more daring future scenarios and no one realizes them as consistently and with melancholy wit as Gabriel. (Die Zeit)
Gabriel has succeeded in doing what seemed impossible: Locus Amoenus is even more original, even more exciting, even more profound than the first volumes of the Colony trilogy. Stunning! (Neue Zürcher Zeitung)
He creates worlds and draws civilizations – cheerfully, ironically, always with a pinch of resignation. (literaturwelt.de)
Can there be democracy on a space station? Why does a deep-sea project fail because of the human psyche? What will the earth look like after being left on its own for a hundred years? In the third volume of his Colony trilogy, Locus Amoenus, Sven Gabriel analyses nothing simpler than – the human being. (Der Spiegel)
In Locus Amoenus, after two volumes, Sven Gabriel brings us back home from a dizzying odyssey through an apocalyptic universe. Home? (Salzburger Nachrichten)
A brilliantly written novel of exuberant imagination. (Die Süddeutsche)
Locus Amoenus, the conclusion of Sven Gabriel’s Colony trilogy, is a magnificent elegy about man’s struggle in an unsparing world, tempered only by pointed philosophical wit. (Die Welt)
Pöhner was amazed that Gabriel fell into the trap so easily. Of course, the rejections must have come as a shock to him! He must have racked his brain trying to figure out why the editors mercilessly rejected him. The idea never occurred to him that the machines of the DV worked on the basis of Pöhner’s neuro-bio networks. And how was he supposed to know that the PBL brains kept an open ear for their producer for life?
Actually, Pöhner could have just left it at rejections, but he wanted more. He wanted Gabriel himself to give him proof of his computer literature! And when the first prototypes of literary brains could be harvested, he knew how. The brains work in a similar manner to what he described in his article: Out of text databases they generate ideas of what a novel, a plot, a motif, a motif linkage, dialogue, etc. should be. Different generators interact with each other, toss the ball back and forth, and thus gradually design a novel. To write a sci-fi novel in Gabriel’s style, it was enough to include Gabriel’s previous works as primary references in addition to the filters for science fiction. Finally, fine adjustments could be made: what percentage of main characters from previous volumes, how many newly created ones, blocking direct quotes from existing books for privacy reasons, and much more.
The fourth volume, Captain Wutzow’s Return, was much more difficult: this text had to provide solid proof that the trilogy was machine-generated, easily verifiable by any averagely intelligent person. This could be determined purely statistically with word frequency measurements and the like. Then there were the script pages, which made up a large part of the text. And all of this had to be placed in a sci-fi novel, which was again designed in the Gabriel style, and in which Captain Wutzow was brought back to life. He laid the theoretical foundations for all this in his last article in the Journal of Cybernetic Linguistics – so there was no breach of contract, as he had secured himself with the clause about parallels to research articles.
The Impact of Neuronal Networks on Text Producing
By Clemens Pöhner
The aim to make biotechnologically generated neuronal networks produce literary texts indistinguishable from human-produced ones is finally achieved. […]
Yet, Pöhner loves reading Gabriel’s novels! However, from now on, he does not have to rely on the author; he can have his next adventures written by one of his literary PBL brains and tell it what he wants for individual characters. Like old Captain Wutzow with his novel machine.
Outside, it has become dark, everything is quiet. Tomorrow morning, he will be in the airship, comfortably having his morning coffee high above the Thurgau brain plantations, heading towards Alsace.
*
Sven Gabriel is sitting on the floor, his shirt open, talking on the phone. He has a sheet of paper in his hand, a pen in the corner of his mouth. He looks worn, pale, his hair standing out in a tangle, sweat on his forehead. Two computers on the wood table, books scattered on the massage chair and above all on the floor, some of them open, the pages folded as if someone had thrown them carelessly.
Cyberlinguistik Einsteigerseminar (Frankfurt 2020);
The Oxford Companion to Computational Linguistics (Oxford University Press 2018);
Handbuch Neuronale Netzwerke und Kommunikationstechnologie (München 2019);
Anwendungen der Biotechnologie (Frankfurt 2019);
Kommunikationstechnologie in PHP11 (Frankfurt 2020);
Studienbuch Cyberlinguistik (Zürich 2020);
Language Biogenetics in 10 Steps (Berlin, New York 2019);
Grundkurs Datenbanken (Hamburg 2015);
String Operations and Regular Expressions (University of California 2016).
The Complete Guide to Biological Communication Technology (2018).
Etc.
Crumpled notepads everywhere. Three empty wine bottles, dirty glasses, a worn T-shirt. The house is empty.
Sven Gabriel makes a pained face as he speaks to the room receiver. “No, he imitated my style exactly, picked up my own characters, carried on plots from my old books. Some biolinguistic wizardry, you know more about that than I do -”
“…”
“You can’t. I published the books under my own name! That’s the whole problem – ”
“…”
“But with this fourth novel, the whole swindle will be exposed. You can imagine what that…” He slides his back down the wall until he is sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out.
“…”
“Stop that, will you?” He clenched his fists so that his knuckles protruded white. “The only thing I want to know from you is: can anything be done at the technical level or not?”
“…”
“Yes, unchanged, it’s a clause. He designs the text to go through the proofreading machine, even though that seems completely impossible. I mean, half the text is program scripts. No proofreading program would ever…”
“…”
“Some of the scripts refer to clearly identifiable passages in the trilogy. The others are tools for word frequency analysis, text comparison and things like that. This clearly proves that the novels are computer generated. I tried it myself.”
“…”
“I have thought about that. But the subject matter is too complex. I’ve been dealing with nothing but this neural network shit for the last few weeks, but I can’t figure it out, I mean, never in a way that –”
“…”
“You mean he manipulates the proofreading machines? – Yes, of course, that makes sense. He must have access through the PBL, definitely.”
“…”
“So nothing can be done from the technical side?” He puts the phone down and crosses out a line on his list.
Ask Hannes: is there not something that can be changed technically about the script or the proofreading machines?
He looks at his notes, the two computers, the books. The situation is hopeless. Hannes is a nice guy and a loyal friend, but in this case, he is no help. And Gabriel is running out of time. Almost 30 days have passed since he got the fourth volume; of which he has wasted a week before he even realized the extent of the matter, only after studying Pöhner’s article, which he found in his letterbox a week earlier and initially put aside. Only then he recognized the fatal link between Captain Wutzow’s Return and the trilogy volumes, after running the many small tests that clearly show that the trilogy cannot be by the same author as his earlier works, and provides clear evidence for the non-human origin. He didn’t tell Irene, but she immediately sensed that something was wrong, and after two weeks, she took off for her country home in Guernsey, by airship from Altenrhein. He could have told her everything, or nothing, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how he gets out of the affair. If he doesn’t find a solution and can no longer offer her the life to which she has become accustomed, he won’t see her again. Neither his daughter, as Irene had already stated clearly at their first separation. Maybe Lisa would ask about her deadbeat father later, come to terms with her past as part of a Matura thesis.
Sven Gabriel is doing the rounds in his study, drinking, chewing his pens, biting his fingernails, leafing aimlessly through the calendar, but nothing meaningful comes out. He has two options: deliver the book and betray himself, or not do it, thus breaking the contract and being betrayed by his old teacher colleague. Unless one of the solutions he spontaneously put together the night before could be implemented:
- Talk to Pöhner and try to appease him.
- If Pöhner is unwilling or unavailable, contact the notary.
- Get Pöhner out of the way or hurt him so badly that he is no longer in his right mind.
- Put pressure on Pöhner, but with what?
- Do nothing, insist on the authorship of the first three volumes.
- Pretend to be a computer author, but this requires a very thorough knowledge of the subject!
- Try to change the book contrary to the clause.
- Ask Hannes: is there not something that can be changed technically about the script or the proofreading machines?
- Come out of the closet and at least profit from the mediahype.
- Let the whole thing wash over me and wait until the hype is over.
- Contest the contract with my own lawyers.
- Leavethe country.
- Prepare to beat theshitout of Pöhner after publication.
- Killmyself.
- Confidein someone, Irene?, who will stand by me.
- Persuade the publisher not to accept the book on his own initiative, bypassing the editing machine.
- Entrustmyself to the contract in the hope that it will not cause scandal and renounce the publication of Wutzow. But why should the publisher want to renounce such publicity?
He crossed out about half the points in the course of the next morning. Pöhner is out of town and cannot be found. Therefore, murder and grievous bodily harm are out of the question, the notary insists that his client doesn’t want any contact, he doesn’t have any leverage, the computer matter is too complicated. According to Hannes, changing the book is impossible; he does not know any other computer tricks. In addition, he has secured himself legally; nothing can be said against the contract. Going abroad would be possible, but then he could also entrench himself here. Irene has left and doesn’t want any contact with him. He has talked to the publishers, but has met with incomprehension: Why would someone want to withdraw a manuscript that has been rated as promising by the editors and on which he has already drawn advances?
He’s not even that bothered that a computer or neural network outsmarted him as a writer. He could have lived with that. It was obvious that something like that would happen: literature, especially the kind he wrote himself, was very schematic, and had become even more schematic since the introduction of the list. No, the problem was that he made his name available for it.
The phone rings: It’s Lina Wang from the Idea Generation Agency, whom he turned to in desperation. In a first meeting two days ago, the diligent employee summed up the whole situation precisely, and asked questions to ensure she understood every point. Presumably, she followed a strict procedure, as the conversation lasted over two hours. He was surprised that she also wanted to know everything about his marriage, his professional career, his habits, financial situation, allergies, preferred music genres, relationship to his parents, cleanliness, and knowledge of famous politicians of the last century, but she patiently assured him that finding creative solutions depended on the broadest possible initial knowledge. He also told the young woman about his list of possible solutions, and now they talk through each point. Gabriel tells her how he was rebuffed by the lawyer and the publishing people, how he made a fool of himself.
“…”
“I see, your legal department found that out, too? I could have saved myself the call.”
“…”
“No, I haven’t told the publisher about the contract yet. I didn’t have the nerve, not yet.”
“…”
“Not every scandal is publicity, I’m sure you’re right.”
“…”
“If you don’t come up with any valid solutions, we’re left with…” – he runs his index finger over his list – “…. four points.”
“…”
“From your point of view … yes, I can see that …”
“…”
“What that means for me psychologically and how I could counteract that…. No, I haven’t thought about that yet.”
“…”
“You’re talking about psychoblockers?”
“…”
“Beat the crap out of people? Yes, what do I mean by that? – I don’t know …”
“…”
“I agree that being a delinquent is to my disadvantage. So, it’s better to take the psychoblockers … But no, forget that, that’s not for me. Getting me high on medication, out of the question!”
“…”
“Then I guess only point 14 remains,” he says somewhat irritably.
“…”
Gabriel has become quite serious. “You are seriously recommending to kill myself?”
“…”
“Evaluating all the data… – I don’t believe it. And for this advice, I pay a few thousand euros?”
“…”
“No other solution! Don’t make me laugh. Just because you don’t find one, it doesn’t mean…”
“…”
“Now stop with suicide, it’s not funny. Are you really so tasteless that you would seriously tell me…”
“…”
“What do you mean, you don’t understand – – ?!”
“…”
He hesitated for a long time. “Are you … a human being?”
“…”
He hung up, white as a sheet. Cooling machines everywhere! Those damn artificial brains! He stares at the wall for a while, then turns back to the list, crosses out something here, adds something there, lost in thought:
- Come out of the closet and at least profit from the media hype.
- Let the whole thing wash over me and wait until the hype is over.
- Prepare to finish offPöhner after the publication. kill
- Kill myself.Irene
Well, it doesn’t matter. If only his house was hit by an astrochicken, like in chapter eight of Morphomallia on Phobos. Maybe he should just spit on the whole thing and wait in his deck chair for the world to go down, and in a giant tsunami like in The Fifth River in Paradise. Or maybe a murder or two after all, if the books were no longer any good as axes…. How many people had he murdered in his books? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Can it be that much more difficult to commit a murder or two in the real world…? And then make an exit like Captain Wutzow during his own funeral games, run off to an outpost of the galaxy somewhere.
*
Seagulls circle screaming around the lighthouse of St. Martin’s. A woman in an airy summer dress brings two drinks to the terrace of the newly built country estate. An elderly gentleman lies on a white lounger, in a polo shirt and cardigan, observing above the margin of a trade magazine two airships passing through the slightly cloudy sky.
“Could you imagine visiting the gardens of Qushm with me someday?” she asks.
“Isn’t that that terraforming project in the Arabian Gulf? Iran?”
She nodded.
He takes one of the drinks and they toast. “Why don’t you book it, assuming they have a decent travel agency over in St-Helier? Or aren’t you going to London with Lisa this weekend?”
“Yes I am – you really don’t want to come along?”
“No, I’m quite happy to stay here for a bit. Maybe I’ll play some golf at the country club, or I’ll go to the shipowner’s to look at the boat I liked so much the other day.”
He’ll probably stay at the country house most of the time, reading about research into human-machine interaction and fretting about the fact that this research project is moving on without him and promises to be successful. Maybe it would be better to read the first volume of the second Colony series, the sequel to Captain Wutzow’s Return. He only has to enter a few parameters and have it generated.
One airship is already over the island, the other disappears behind a cloud towards the mainland.
THE END
