This is the title of a short story prompt that I offered the author David Varela way back in 2012.
David was doing a mad project where he took a monkish vow of silence, sat in a live-streamed cell and wrote short stories based on publicly-sourced prompts for 100 hours straight.
David took my prompt 95 hours into the project so he was understandably suffering from reality hallucinations, but I loved what he did with the title, transmuting it into a sci-fi parody about an interstellar civilisation that ‘went wild with the credit card’ on Finusian Champagne.
Another story about debt, with some sort of space bank on the tail of the Glaxon High Command:
“They’re repossessing everything. The bases, the ships… even Deckard. Apparently galactic law still regards him as a thing not a person.”
(The 100 Hours project is now offline, but you can catch up with David on his website and read the rest of his Glaxon short story on my website.)
So when Stephen Reid announced that he’d created a prompt engine for ChatGPT-4 that would use the AI to generate a blog post in his style based on user-suggested titles, I knew exactly what to do.
ChatGPT-4 is supposed to be better at unravelling fact from fiction than its language model predecessors , but the blog post the Reid-AI Cyborg spaffed out introduces Goldeous thusly:
Goldeous Kline and the Borrowful Glaxons by Aelius Blythe is a treasure trove of profound insights and mind-bending ideas that challenge our understanding of reality and reveal the intertwined nature of science and spirituality.
If you say so.
It’s worth noting too that, where David Varela’s Goldeous Kline was a daring woman space badass, ChatGPT’s is a male scientist.
In fairness, Aelius Blythe’s novel does sound pretty cool:
Through the interwoven stories of Goldeous Kline, a human scientist, and the Borrowful Glaxons, Blythe draws upon the profound insights of quantum physics to explore the connections between science and spirituality, illuminating the subtle and intricate dance between matter, energy, and consciousness that lies at the heart of existence.
Well, actually, it sounds like exactly the sort of book that former complexity scientist and founder of The Psychedelic Society Stephen Reid would love to read.
In lieu of any source material, ChatGPT will fulfil fantasies.
A lot of pixels have been spilt over the threat and promise of AI — and you’ll be glad to hear that I’m not interested in stuffing your brain with any more of that speculation.
But what David Varela and ChatGPT have reminded me is that every moment is a prompt and that we can choose to write and rewrite from an infinite, imaginative supply of stories everytime we answer that call to adventure.
In the end, Goldeous Kline and the Borrowful Glaxons is not only a thrilling adventure filled with scientific intrigue, but also a testament to the unifying power of curiosity, wonder, and trust in the face of uncertainty.