Sci-fi authors Scalzi and Stross decry AI's dystopian impact on their craft

Monday 3rd August 2026 11:28 GMT Bebu sa Ware

"having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"

He would require a whole bookcase and bolted to the wall if he didn't want meet Howards End.

I once visited the Uni library to consult the OED to look up a peculiar word Lawrence Durrell used in a documentary which wasn't in my SOD — literally a whole top to bottom of a bookcase uniquely attached to the wall.

The word which I can't remember was a disappointment and convinced me the Durrells were arguably a bit attached to themselves.

Interesting how many writers in the past handed over serious hard·earned to own the OED — T H White was one. Useful if you have to change a lot of light bulbs I suppose.

9 0 Reply
1. Monday 3rd August 2026 12:22 GMT ICL1900-G3
  
  Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
  
  I bought it when it came out on cd in the late 80s..it was still pricey, but just about affordable.
  
  1 0 Reply
2. Monday 3rd August 2026 12:51 GMT Jellied Eel
  
  Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
  
  Interesting how many writers in the past handed over serious hard·earned to own the OED — T H White was one. Useful if you have to change a lot of light bulbs I suppose.
  
  I picked up a nice leather bound copy of the 2nd edition in an estate sale. It's 'only' 20 volumes, but as a kid, my parents got the good'ol Readers Digest that had a section 'It pays to enrich your word power'. The OED is that, but on a much larger scale, so I often get distracted looking up a word, and finding all sorts of other interesting ones. Plus realizing there's a scholarly debate about 'Americanisng' the semi-official big book of English. But other versions are available.
  
  I also subscribe to their online dictionary, which is fine if I know the word I want, but less fun for finding new ones. Plus the search engines are replacing that, ie just go to Google and ask it 'Define Manglement' and see what it spits out. But that's also an example of machines displacing lexicographers. But shelf space is also a bit of a social issue, ie people not buying physical books.. Which is also something I'm a bit guilty of. I have over 500 books in my Kindle, and sometimes amuse myself figuring out how many linear feet of shelf space they'd need for the physical versions. Plus a lot have been long out of print, and often out of copyright. I like folklore, so Andrew Lang's collections are fun to read.
  
  But I also agree with LLMs being a pox on civilisation, and also blatant copyright theft. There's far too much AI slop online, and it's getting worse. I've also been offered AI editing services, for a fee of course but much prefer to stick with humans. I've also seen services that claim to be able to convert books or stories into screenplays, but the rights around those get interesting. One I looked at briefly asserted rights to works, if they got put into development. But copyright is complicated and not entirely convinced an AI-converted screenplay could defend those rights. I also agree about not using AI for cover art. Sure, it's cheap and convenient, but I'd rather support real, living, breathing artists.
  
  11 1 Reply
3. Monday 3rd August 2026 13:01 GMT Paul Herber
  
  Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
  
  "The word which I can't remember was a disappointment "
  
  I hope you will not object if I offer you my most enthusiastic contrafribularities.
  
  Here's hoping you were not too anaspeptic.
  
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4. Monday 3rd August 2026 13:03 GMT that one in the corner
  
  Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
  
  > I once visited the Uni library to consult the OED
  
  And I bet that copy didn't even list "cromulent".
  
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  1. Monday 3rd August 2026 16:58 GMT Throg
    
    Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
    
    As long as it had entries for “sausage” and “aardvark” it was a proper dictionary.
    
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    1. Monday 3rd August 2026 17:29 GMT Paul Herber
      
      Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
      
      “sausage” and “aardvark” it was a proper dictionary
      
      but perhaps not in that order
      
      11 0 Reply
    2. Tuesday 4th August 2026 08:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
      
      It should also contain the words Marmalade and Herring...
      
      1 0 Reply
      1. Tuesday 4th August 2026 10:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
        
        it was hockey and mangrove in the version i made.
        
        0 0 Reply
5. Monday 3rd August 2026 13:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
  
  "The word which I can't remember was a disappointment and convinced me the Durrells were arguably a bit attached to themselves."
  
  Careful of tarring everyone with the same brush. Reading Gerald's books, Lawrence was considered a bit up himself by the rest of the family.
  
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6. Monday 3rd August 2026 19:55 GMT Richard Tobin
  
  Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
  
  They used to sell a two-volume edition of OED, photographically reduced, which came with a powerful magnifying glass. These days you may be able to access it free online through your public library.
  
  Edit: I see they sell a single-volume edition now.
  
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  1. Monday 3rd August 2026 21:40 GMT David 132
    
    Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
    
    ...with a more-powerful magnifying glass, or with an electron microscope?
    
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  2. Tuesday 4th August 2026 07:45 GMT midgepad
    
    Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"
    
    Different book, that's the Concise OED. Useful in itself. Also holds doors open and works as a little podium for photography.
    
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Monday 3rd August 2026 11:32 GMT Anonymous Coward

slop or chop - tech docs, anybody?

I write military-grade technical documents for a living (S1000D and all that bag). My employer has now deployed Copilot and is exhorting us to fill the business with slop or face the chop. So I just had to give Crapalot a workout. Surprisingly, given a text it can produce better Simplified Technical English (STE) than the average tech author can. That is to say, it rates mediocre but at least proofreadable. On the other hand, it's ability to drop Internet memes, copyright breaches and hallucinations into the content is - well, just what you'd expect. Not on my watch, mate. But oooh, yes! Just what to email on to the pointy-haired brigade with a proud bright red AI GENERATED! header.

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1. Monday 3rd August 2026 13:16 GMT keithpeter
  
  Re: slop or chop - tech docs, anybody?
  
  https://www.asd-ste100.org/
  
  This looks most interesting and I'm glad that I read your post mentioning Simplified Standard English. See icon.
  
  Back vaguely on topic: it strikes me (not having yet read the standards document) that a system with defined rules and a look-up dictionary might lend itself to an 'expert system' approach (blast from the past there). I'm thinking of something like maxima or reduce in the computer algebra domain.
  
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  1. Monday 3rd August 2026 13:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Re: slop or chop - tech docs, anybody?
    
    The problem I face is that most engineered stuff has lots of product-specific terms and acronyms that engineers throw about gaily, but must be left in the text and collected in a glossary of terms for the reader to reference. Cue lousy "what's bad wording and what's a technical keep?" algorithms.
    
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    1. Monday 3rd August 2026 17:01 GMT Jellied Eel
      
      Re: The colour out of space!
      
      Cue lousy "what's bad wording and what's a technical keep?" algorithms.
      
      I once had some fun as a bit of a technical author. Job was to write tests so the client could confirm that every function was working as expected or advertised. Click this button, this should happen. Then one function would let the user pick a colour for a symbol. So it had RGB sliders. So far, so good. Set sliders to 6,6,6 and err.. you should get <this> colour. Simple task, not so simple to write the expected results. So ended up referring to a section on monitor calibration, and then using their calibration hardware to confirm.
      
      An interesting sojourn in my technical career, but wasn't something I fancied doing full time. Fortunately the Internet came along and saved me! Made me better appreciate the challenges technical authors face, and made me a bit more tolerant when reading manuals.
      
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Monday 3rd August 2026 11:33 GMT Bebu sa Ware
"we used to hang people like that and Sam Altman"
"Back in the 18th century we used to hang people like that and Sam Altman makes me question the wisdom of having stopped."

I would be happy to supply the rope and hold the other end should the occasion ever arise.
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1. Monday 3rd August 2026 11:40 GMT Aladdin Sane
  
  Re: "we used to hang people like that and Sam Altman"
  
  That'll likely take your arms out of their sockets if done properly. Unless you're looking to cause death by asphyxiation, in which case nailing them to a tree means you wouldn't have to wait around.
  
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  1. Monday 3rd August 2026 13:13 GMT that one in the corner
    
    Re: "we used to hang people like that and Sam Altman"
    
    > That'll likely take your arms out of their sockets if done properly.
    
    Hey, no problem; there are going to be a LOT of people willing to help hold onto the rope and take the strain.
    
    The issue is more likely to be, how to stop everyone yanking the long end and pulling Altman bodily through the pulley block: spaghetti, anyone?
    
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    1. Tuesday 4th August 2026 00:56 GMT steelpillow
      
      Re: "we used to hang people like that and Sam Altman"
      
      spaghetti, anyone?
      
      No no nooooo!! The last thing we want to do is to deify him as the Son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
      
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      1. Tuesday 4th August 2026 08:46 GMT Aladdin Sane
        
        Re: "we used to hang people like that and Sam Altman"
        
        You're saying we should boil him as well?
        
        1 0 Reply
        
        Tuesday 4th August 2026 11:40 GMT steelpillow
        
        Re: "we used to hang people like that and Sam Altman"
        
        Boil him in oil if you must, but avoid any hint of ~~communion wine~~tomato sauce.
        
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Monday 3rd August 2026 11:38 GMT Rich 11

George R R Martin ... writes on a PC that has no internet connection and runs DOS plus the ancient WordStar word processor.

Back at the very start of my career I used to support users of MS-DOS 3.1 and WordStar 3. I'd come out of retirement to help Mr Martin if it got him to finish that bloody series any sooner.

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Monday 3rd August 2026 12:09 GMT Bebu sa Ware

no internet connection and runs DOS plus the ancient WordStar word processor.

Possibly the optimal distraction free creative writing environment. Just enough improvement on the electric typewriter and correction fluid.

Perhaps there is a niche for paper only publishing for the market that want slop free reading and are as ready to part with their cash as the vinyl LP crowd.

With the right inks, watermarks imbedded in the paper that document scanners capture but invisible to human eyes you could serious poison the model or at least prove the copyright violations.

Most books have something like this in their copyright notice:

"No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher."

Patently obvious that OpenAI etc have breached those terms. Even if a "fair dealing" defence could be raised in a few cases the uncontrolled ingestion of humungous quantities of copyright material invalidates any spurious claims to apply that defence universally.

While I have problems with copyright, patents etc especially as they have been extended and embellished by largely US interests, I have vastly greater antipathy towards the Big AI inflicting wholesale destruction of human creativity on all of us.

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1. Monday 3rd August 2026 13:28 GMT keithpeter
  
  Re: no internet connection and runs DOS plus the ancient WordStar word processor.
  
  "Perhaps there is a niche for paper only publishing for the market that want slop free reading and are as ready to part with their cash as the vinyl LP crowd."
  
  There are small presses around, and chapbooks are still a thing.
  
  https://www.analogsea.com/
  
  How's that for a landing page?
  
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Monday 3rd August 2026 12:53 GMT wangi

LocalLLM

> "I'd quite like a tool (running entirely locally on my own hardware, with no cloud service and no copyright-thieving grifters making bank on it via subscription fees) that digests a manuscript and derives a scene-by-scene timeline, that I could then query interactively and use to plan my next round of edits," he wrote.

Charlie can set himself up with a 24 or 32GB GPU and self-host one of the Open Source LLMs, such as Qwen, using llama.cpp, vLLM, Lemonaid or whatever... As a bonus could run Hermes against that Local LLM and use it to actively mitigate massively distributed LLM scraping on his blog site.

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1. Monday 3rd August 2026 15:08 GMT Korev
  
  Re: LocalLLM
  
  The introduction to AI series in this august organ are superb for this
  
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Monday 3rd August 2026 13:01 GMT that one in the corner

Frequency distribution heat map of names in the manuscript

Very doable for years now, without an iota of AI, LLM or ML.

If only Stross'd spoken up earlier, say at an EasterCon, he might have caught the ear of someone happy to have a go at it. The only interesting part of that would be the UI.

Now, if he wanted to delve into the Natural Language side of it, such as having the data feeding into the heat-map automagically connect the appearance of "the figure dissolved* into the shadows" in chapter two with the "newly introduced" named character in chapter seven because they are both revealed to be CODE NIGHTMARE PUCE in chapter thirteen, now that would be interesting. NL tools that aim for that (and TELL YOU WHY they came to that conclusion) pre-date** mass-market LLMs, but, sigh, go on, use Clod or Gammyni if you can't be bothered to add a drop-down labelled "known aliases".

Love your work, Charles, but your fans are a resource, you know.

* probably quite literally, given the way of the Laundry Files

** but sadly do not predate upon

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1. Tuesday 4th August 2026 07:53 GMT midgepad
  
  Re: Frequency distribution heat map of names in the manuscript
  
  ...and was precipitated into the next chapter.
  
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Monday 3rd August 2026 14:10 GMT Sunset

I was with him until this part...

> Stross, however, admitted he "can see some circumstances where being able to train a local model on my work could be useful to me."

> "I'd quite like a tool (running entirely locally on my own hardware, with no cloud service and no copyright-thieving grifters making bank on it via subscription fees) that digests a manuscript and derives a scene-by-scene timeline, that I could then query interactively and use to plan my next round of edits," he wrote.

Sigh. You were doing so well.

(And by the way, even open weights models are generally doing mass theft. The amounts of data that are required for training an LLM can't really be sourced on public-domain content alone, and certainly couldn't be trained entirely on Stross's own work while still being remotely usable.)

1 6 Reply
1. Monday 3rd August 2026 17:28 GMT doublelayer
  
  Re: I was with him until this part...
  
  Do you have a reason? It being difficult to build is not a reason, because he never said that that would be simple to build or that he was willing to sacrifice others' copyrights to make it. So do you object to the idea of trying to automate timeline extraction itself? Without knowing your objection, it's hard to determine whether there's any validity to it.
  
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Monday 3rd August 2026 14:11 GMT Sproggit

It's worth thank we think...

I'm an avid reader of science fiction... and one of the things I've noticed with Anthropic Claude [Opus] is the quite remarkable knowledge that it has of an incredibly wide range of science fiction authors.

Opus has deep, detailed knowledge of e.g. E.E. Smith's "Lensman" series, written in the 1940s; as well as work by Alan Dean Foster, Nivens and Pournelle, Mike Resnick, Peter Hamilton, on and on.

And when I say "detailed knowledge", that probably warrants a bit of context... The "Lensman" series served as the inspiration for "Babylon 5", the 1990s TV Series show-run and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. Claude not only knew that, not only knew that the reference in the TV show to the planet "Arisia" is a call-back to the novels, but had a deep understanding of the protagonists and antagonists... right down to knowing that a race of ancient, super-intelligent and war-like creatures, the Eddorians, were described as coming to our space-time from "another dimension"...

The only way that Claude could have this level of knowledge would be if Anthropic had trained the models on the actual source content of the books themselves.

The only possible explanation that shows how these models have acquired this level of detailed knowledge is because the people who built the models trained them on the works of these authors.

Charlie Stross is 100% correct - his work is being plagiarised and used without attribution.

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1. Monday 3rd August 2026 17:14 GMT doublelayer
  
  Re: It's worth thank we think...
  
  They probably did train on the texts for those, as they did so on any pirated book they could find. I think you'll find that there are also very voluminous discussions of a lot of science fiction that discusses all of that on a bunch of websites. Not just science fiction, but in my experience it's one of the more common genres to have that much online analysis and debate. That means the model doesn't have to read the book and some transcripts of the TV series and make the connections itself when it can paraphrase the many pages that already say this.
  
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Monday 3rd August 2026 14:23 GMT Spazturtle

Love the hypocrisy

So he is perfectly fine with LLMs taking away the jobs of translators, but doesn't like it when they do the same to his job.

If he is so against AI in art then why not put his money where his mouth is and pay for translators to translate his book?

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1. Monday 3rd August 2026 15:36 GMT scruss
  
  Re: Love the hypocrisy
  
  Read it again: neither author advocates for machine translation.
  
  “Stross has also found one use of LLMs he thinks is valid: as a device in his work.”
  
  a literary device, as in something Stross came up with to pretend that his current work had been translated from an alien language.
  
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2. Monday 3rd August 2026 16:34 GMT that one in the corner
  
  Re: Love the hypocrisy
  
  Stross has been translating his own works for some time now. If you read the Laundry Files in order, you'll easily notice that they use more and more Americanisms as time passes, all done to save on translation fees. Eating your fish and chip "take out" whilst walking down the "sidewalk" in London!
  
  OTOH, it all adds to the sense of existential dread, the mind-warping effects of the King In Yellow, so maybe it serves a purpose to the reader.
  
  3 0 Reply
3. Monday 3rd August 2026 17:09 GMT Charlie Stross
  
  Re: Love the hypocrisy
  
  I am only translated by human translators.
  
  If anyone tries to license my works for machine translation, I'll turn them down.
  
  22 0 Reply
4. Tuesday 4th August 2026 08:02 GMT midgepad
  
  stross is probably right
  
  in remarking that that prefatory remark, a solution to the Thoats of Barsoom problem (call them horses) will cause trouble with people who ignore it's context - it is in a work of fiction, not outside it.
  
  I suspect asides to the reader will increasingly be accused of being prompts to Eustace or whatever a future gadget is called.
  
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5. Tuesday 4th August 2026 13:06 GMT You aint sin me, roit
  
  Read his blog...
  
  "unfortunately may have to be omitted because of the risk of confusing the people who can't read to the end of the paragraph"
  
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Monday 3rd August 2026 15:55 GMT Dan 55

Sounds familiar to programmers

"I do not want or need a large language model to write my fiction for me. I write fiction compulsively – before I was published I wrote for many years as a hobbyist – so why on earth would I pay someone else to take my fun away?"

I do not want or need a large language model to write my software for me. I write software compulsively* – before I worked I wrote for many years as a hobbyist – so why on earth would I pay someone else to take my fun away?

* Although not so much lately even before LLMs came along, such is modern IT.

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Monday 3rd August 2026 17:07 GMT Charlie Stross

Hi, I'm Charlie Stross

I'm one of the two authors quoted at length in this article -- but incompletely!

You can find my original essay/rant right here.

(As The Reg know where to contact me and I'm not averse to offering republication rights I'm kind of at a loss as to why they took this approach, especially adding a last quote out of context that makes me sound as if I'm walking it back.)

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1. Monday 3rd August 2026 17:24 GMT doublelayer
  
  Re: Hi, I'm Charlie Stross
  
  Since they were covering and combining multiple opinions, I'm not surprised they chose to quote rather than asking to republish your post verbatim. I also don't see the out of context quote, even after reading your original post. If it was about the possible local LLM-style tool that you would find useful, I don't have any objection to you wanting it, though some in the comments decide they do, and I don't see the article's context as any different than your own. If you were referring to the LLM explanation for translation, I think almost all of us understood what you were getting at from the article and one comment's comprehension issues when they thought it was actual translation is their problem, not a lack of context.
  
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2. Monday 3rd August 2026 17:39 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
  
  Re: Hi, I'm Charlie Stross
  
  El Reg is not what it used to be.
  
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  1. Monday 3rd August 2026 21:49 GMT David 132
    
    Re: Hi, I'm Charlie Stross
    
    What is, in this entropic world of ours?
    
    But yes, I agree. Been reading since the Mike Magee days, may he rest in peace (sidenote: I am, I believe, possibly the only person ever to get a correction in print from Mike, after he twisted my words in an interview and one of our senior VPs shamed him over a pint into admitting that he'd done so, but that's not important right now...) and, with the greatest respect to Drew & the team, I do feel that it's lost a certain je ne sais quoi. Perhaps we're all so inured to online cynicism now, that El Reg's organic flavour of it just can't compete with the hyper-processed, monosodium glutamate-enhanced stuff that's published everywhere else?
    
    6 0 Reply
    1. Monday 3rd August 2026 22:26 GMT Dan 55
      
      Re: Hi, I'm Charlie Stross
      
      It seems to switch between the two writers and deal with sections of their articles out of order like the TV would do to try and keep the viewers' attention. I don't think it's an El Reg-specific thing, it seems that jumping around a subject or different subjects is expected in other media now that everyone has been reprogrammed by social media to have ADD.
      
      1 0 Reply
3. Monday 3rd August 2026 23:26 GMT BoHu
  
  Re: Hi, I'm Charlie Stross
  
  Always good to hear from the horse's mouth! FWIW, I didn't get the feel you were walking anything back from TFA; maybe "as a device in his work" could have been written as "as a plot device in his work" for extra clarity, but that part of the piece would then have been much less of a cliffhanger of journalistic suspense than it is ATM, imho! ;)
  
  Also, I have to think there are some non-LLM NLP softwares for analyzing the plotlines of novels somewhere out there. Commenting above on 'heat map', for example, 'that one in the corner' suggests such tools "pre-date** mass-market LLMs" but doesn't give names unfortunately. ISTM the marketing of LLMs has been so forceful that it's blinded us to much saner alternatives for a great many purposes, akin to being repeatedly poked in the eyes. Kinda like how crafty ads for a fancy shmancy vegetable chopper-slicer can make us all forget that a simple kitchen knife can be used just equally well, as quickly, and is way easier to wash (no disassembly required) ...
  
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4. Tuesday 4th August 2026 10:47 GMT Evil Scot
  
  Re: Hi, I'm Charlie Stross
  
  John linked to this article an I was a little surprised by what was attributed to you.
  
  I Tooted a warning to you about the accuracy of AI being as reliable as a fanboi for author guidance.
  
  The fact that this story stems from a Redit post attributing Accelerando to John just proves me correct.
  
  1 0 Reply
Tuesday 4th August 2026 02:30 GMT Bitsminer

Wordstar etc

Pull out some old paperbacks of Arthur C. Clarke short stories. Read them in chronological order.

After the mid 1970s as I recall he was gifted various writing machines (not quite computers but smarter than a calculator). You (or at least I) could see a trend in his writing with longer sentences and paragraphs as his adopted technologies changed.

Apparently he got a copy of Wordstar for his work on the 2010: Odyssey Two novel, apparently in the early 1980s. With a full screen (of perhaps 80x24 characters) his writing would change again.

Source: Google AI for some background info, so therefore you may freely abuse this non-copyrighted posting....

1 0 Reply
Tuesday 4th August 2026 08:13 GMT TheFyver

I have a better title for you: "old established artists whines about new creative practices".

1 14 Reply
1. Tuesday 4th August 2026 09:06 GMT Dan 55
  
  It's impossible for a LLM to be creative, it only extrudes stolen content.
  
  13 1 Reply
  1. Tuesday 4th August 2026 17:26 GMT David 132
    
    "We have built this new machine that ravenously devours all marine life from krill to whales, then extrudes out mashed mangled fish paste in the shapes of entirely new hitherto-non-existent species of fish! It's so creative! And it only consumes a reservoir of water and enough electricity to power Manhattan every hour!"
    
    1 0 Reply
    1. Tuesday 4th August 2026 18:51 GMT Paul Herber
      
      A new definition of cut and paste.
      
      1 0 Reply