Charles Gillingham

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I’m in the process of putting together a bunch of things that I’ve written. I’ve never really figured out what to do with them, so I’m posting them here for now.

The Latitude of Falling Sparks

I wrote a science fiction novel in three parts back in the 1990s. Each part is in a different genre and has a very different narrator.

I’m a fan of Ted Chiang, Milan Kundera and Luis Borges and I love the way they illustrate ideas with heartfelt fiction. These stories contain heretical ideas about progress, the limits of science, human desire, the failures of AI, the nature of science and scientists, and the connections between time and quantum mechanics and human lives.

Part 1, The Latitude of Falling Sparks is set in a time after the singularity, when the world has reliable superintelligence, a time that most people find difficult to imagine. They tend to talk about it in terms that are, frankly, religious. I think my way of looking at it is much more plausible. However, just to make it weird, I begin with a patently ridiculous premise and work my way out of it. It’s kind of a cyberpunk story, with the aggressive surrealism of Thomas Pynchon or Tom Robbins. If it’s too weird for you, just start with the second part.

Part 2, Prometheus is set back in the 90s and tells the story of how superintelligence was invented. It’s a scientist’s memoir of regret and nostalgia and wishes, and as such, it isn’t really science fiction. However, it eventually becomes something like a spy novel.

Part 3 Excerpts from The Amazing Adventures of Colonel Eratosthenes Smith. I never finished this and I don’t think I need to. It’s in the form of excerpts from a classic fantasy/science fiction pulp novel.

PHILOSOPHY OF AI

I am writing several essays about the philosophy of artificial intelligence.

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