Social media is looking awfully over-the-top now as the 2024 presidential election nears. For example, Elon’s X (formerly known as Twitter) put out a Kamala Harris ad, still with her voice but with all the words changed. I don’t know if this was a scurrilous use of AI (more a scurrilous abuse by Elon?), but I immediately logged on to my account and deactivated it. (Apologies to my loyal 1000+ faithful followers there who might have been surprised by my actions, but they know as well as I do that X has been going downhill ever since Elon walked in with his kitchen sink—not the gold one, of course—and I’d diminished my activity on X correspondingly ever since he took over. I closed my Facebook account even earlier!)

But AI (even the current primitive forms—see my previous post) changes things, doesn’t it? AI takes bad social media to worse levels. As if that “blue screen of death” seen around the world wasn’t enough—that was on CrowdStrike and Microsoft, by the way, not AI. I wasn’t on the internet at the time, and I didn’t return to it until I backed up my laptop and the “all clear” was given. (What occurred with Delta Airlines seems to be an additional problem…caused by their ancient and sickly software?)

I’m not talking about either X or CrowdStrike/Microsoft here. The first is out of my life (so is Elon Musk); the second can be avoided by minimizing my time on the internet (I already do that!). No, I’d like to discuss a report in The NY Times recently that current AIs are bad mathematicians, as if they were students good in the humanities but terrible at math. No surprise, really, although none of this matters much for authors and readers. (Or, better said, it makes it worse for both equally?)

Unlike most fiction writers, I’ve probably forgotten more math than they ever knew or will know. That’s not bragging. It’s just offered as evidence that I can well believe that The Times is partially correct. The type of recent AI that’s been in development has severe limitations; they mostly stem from the fact that current AI versions are just glorified search engines. Sure, the better ones can create stuff by putting what they find in a search (or what’s fed them) together in a more coherent whole. That’s the artificial part. But there’s little actual intelligence, as in human intelligence.

That’s where the math problems originate: How it puts things together is based on probability, more specifically, a calculation of likelihood that its creation is a correct portrait of reality. You’ve seen that with facial recognition software: Some unidentified face is 69% more likely to be some John Doe than someone else. The rest of math, most of it in fact, lies outside the sphere of probability and statistics, and that’s an exact science, not about likelihoods: Normally, an answer is either mathematically correct, or it’s not. Consequently, current AI can’t do math because it can’t handle exactness; everything’s a maybe, not a solid yes or no. Any AI guru who claims otherwise is a con man. (Or woman.)

But maybe superior AIs in the future can do better? More data too might mean better predictions. Sci-fi writers should have an AI give an answer like the following: It’s probable that X event occurs with a probability of 0.99999 with an error of plus or minus 0.00000342. That might not be exact enough to control a starship slipping through multiple quantum states of the Universe, but for general purposes, it’s better than a paltry 0.69. (Actually, likelihoods differ from probabilities, but you get the idea, right? And the statistics being used to make the predictions can give different results too—Bayesian stats are the most common.)

“What about quantum computing?” you might say. Yep, that could change everything. I’ll let you know after I’m able to purchase my first quantum laptop!

***

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“The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.” Futuristic AI plays an important supporting role all through the three novels found in this bargain sci-fi/thriller bundle. The reader can follow human beings flight from a dystopian Earth to first contact on a planet in the 82 Eridani system; an intergalactic war with different and xenophobic ETs; and battles with a deranged human, a psychotic sociopath out to control the galaxy. All the AIs here are artificial (even if partly constructed from living circuitry) and extremely intelligent, unlike current AI software. And man, they can they do math! This three-novel ebook bundle is available wherever quality sci-fi is sold.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Many professors influenced me in various ways as a student; among them: James Hartle, the young physicist who later often worked with Stephen Hawking; the old Jesuit priest who taught Latin American history (I forget his name—like Mr. Biden, this old author can forget a few things, but this priest didn’t avoid the scandals or fail to mention the many leaders who fathered so many illegitimate childdren—and he became the model for Bastiann van Coevorden’s priest involved in that Interpol agent’s marriage to Esther Brookstone, the art detective); and N. Scott Momaday, the Kiowa Native American who taught me to love poetry.

Dr. Momaday is probably best known for House Made of Dawn, his Pulitzer-prize winning novel describing the life of a young Native American who returns to the reservation from the war with what we’d now call PTSD. But he also left us with many poems, short stories, and essays.

I can still see him pacing up there on the stage, book in hand and reading classic poetry in that expressive baritone voice (perhaps you saw him in that PBS special a few years ago?), while I struggled to decipher the content and emotion contained in those journeys through English poetry with this marvelous time-travel guide. As a first-semester freshman, college was new to me, but I needn’t have worried. The lectures took place in a large lecture class with over one-hundred students, so the professor had his group of TAs. Maybe some of them approached Momaday’s competence, but mine didn’t. (I took the experience gained in those first large lecture courses into account when I introduced them in South America, but that’s another tale.) I was still able to ace that first college English course because all I had to do was include a mention of Freud somewhere in the quizzes and reports; the TA loved “Freudian interpretations” and rewarded them in his grading!

Of course, the other thing Professor Momaday taught me was that I am not a poet! While I’ve published a few pathetic attempts (I’m partial to “Ode to St. John” by Esther Brookstone in Son of Thunder and “A Goodbye” by Penelope Castro in Menace from Moscow), I’ve compensated for my lack of skills in writing poetry by creating a few novels instead.

N. Scott Momaday was awarded the Pulitzer after I had him as an English professor. I feel that my experience as his student, though, could beat any obtained in an MFA course. I read House Made of Dawn after that college English course. Only critics can determine how much that influenced my own writing, but Professor Momaday is certainly someone whom I’ll always fondly remember.

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The Collector. This fifth book in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series is special in several ways: Related to the above, the reader might have fun with Rolando Castilblanco’s poem “On Modern Art.” (I originally wrote it for my father, who became a full-time artist in his later years, specializing in landscapes but often expressing sentiments similar to those in the poem.) It also introduces Esther Brookstone for the first time. My two NYPD detectives go after a criminal organization that uses stolen artwork to finance other nefarious activities, something akin to a prequel to Rembrandt’s Angel, and also dealing with real stolen artwork, in this case from Boston’s Stuart Gardner museum. This novel stands alone, though, and can be found everywhere quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon!).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

[Note from Steve: Occasionally an article I create is appropriate for both my writer’s blog and my political one. This article is one of them, and it will also appear at http://pubprogressive.com.]

The reader can consider this article an homage to Harry Belafonte, whose soft but raspy voice made calypso music famous. I was a fan of that man’s music and political activism in civil rights for decades. His inimitable 1956 LP “Calypso” that took the world by storm (only mono, not stereo!), if not the first, was one of the earliest in my music collection that I listened to over and over again (the Beatles’ “White Album” came much later!). He was the quiet man of peaceful yet significant activism who accompanied a grieving Mrs. King and her family during their most troubling time.

Calypso, reggae, and ska moved me; I’m not sure exactly why. While not really Jamaican (Harry was born in Harlem to West Indian immigrants), Harry was very much a representative of that Jamaican diaspora in the UK, US, and elsewhere; he became an icon for that cultural tradition—its suffering, effervescent spirit, food, the rithymic dance and movement, and the successes, from Harry Belafonte to Usain Bolt.

While developing background for my “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, I discovered that Jamaican immigrants might have received better treatment in the US than the UK. After the war, they went to help in the reconstruction of Britain; Teresa May, before she became PM, then tried to score points with her conservative followers by sending them back to Jamaica. This datum led me to create a Jamaican in the Brookstone novels—like the real Harry, Esther’s Harry is a musician who moonlights with his band in a London club playing the music of the Caribbean and his homeland. Now I can consider that character not only an homage to some wonderful music that I love but also an homage to Harry Belafonte.

I’m probably guilty of trying to make the UK more of a “melting pot” than what it really is…or wants to be under Tory rule. Characters like Esther’s Harry; her friend and MI5 tech Ambreesh Singh; and the Brazilian artist Ricardo Silva and the three Chinese artists from Hong Kong, all four featured in her gallery, probably don’t go far enough, though. Steve Morgan’s Kenyan girlfriend Kanzi and his colleague DI Workman (from the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series) add a bit more. For all I know, though, UK readers might opine that I’ve gone too far in transferring my diverse California upbringing to the UK. Yet I still believe Harry Belafonte received love from the UK and many other countries besides that received from US progressives.

Mr. Belafonte passed on April 25 at the young age of 96. He will be missed. I will miss him. The world will miss him. And may he rest in peace while teaching the angels how to play and sing calypso instead of that damnable Gregorian chant!

Even though I know you’re suffering with all the hustle and bustle and blather and twaddle associated with the ubiquitous commercialization of the holidays, I’ll still start this post with some commercials from the sponsors of this blog. (Hey, that’s me!)

Books make good gifts for the readers in your circle of family and friends (assuming they’re readers like you). They’re easy to wrap and send (especially ebooks!), and they’re a far better and less dangerous entertainment than the neighborhood’s lightshows (remember that Chevy Chase movie?), new dog walkers out walking the kid’s new dog without a leash (young dogs have sharp teeth), or neighbors with their AR-style rifles looking to start an argument about how much fire your BBQ produces. In fact, they generally offer better quality entertainment than a streaming video subscription or a new computer game.

All my books are available in ebook format wherever quality ebooks are sold. (The latest ones just aren’t on Amazon, but who says that giant retailer sells anything of quality?) If you want print format, try the mystery-thriller The Midas Bomb or the hard sci-fi thriller yet Game-of-Thrones-like Rogue Planet; or A. B. Carolan’s sci-fi mysteries for young adults (and adults who are young at heart), The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games—all of these are available in both ebook and print formats and reasonably priced. (You’ll spend more at MacDonald’s and have a healthy meal for your mind!)

I can also offer some freebies: Check out the list of free PDF downloads found on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page—two free “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” novels, Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, are even on that list! (One occurs at holiday time in NYC and London!)

Holiday greetings. Now the above commercial messages weren’t all that painful, were they? And we have them out of the way, so there’s still some time for holiday greetings.

Human beings are so damn creative that they’ve created many ways to celebrate the winter solstice and the beginning of winter. (Maybe more to mourn the dying of the light and have a funeral for the old year?) Most of these traditional celebrations have their origins in the northern hemisphere and are a simple consequence of the Earth’s axis tilt. Those origins are interesting if only because that tilt affects the entire globe, of course, yet the same calendar holidays are celebrated at the same time in southern climes when it’s summer! (I suppose there are older cultures in the southern hemisphere that celebrate their coming of winter in July, but I’ll leave it to readers to tell me about them.)

In any case, to all those celebrants around the globe, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

And that’s all I’ll write about this for the rest of 2022! I have my own shopping to do!

***

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Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Some readers visit this author’s blog (https://stevenmmoore.com), others my political one (http://pubproressive.com), and some do both. I thank you all.

You’ve probably come to expect posts here on Wednesdays and Fridays and at the other blog on Thursdays. For various personal reasons, I can’t guarantee that I’ll keep to that schedule in the future. I haven’t run out of topics to write about for either blog, but those reasons mean the posts might be random deliveries in the future.

I hope you’ll look for these posts even though they become somewhat erratic. I know that for many I’m competing against TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, to mention only a few of the most active social media sites. (I use mostly the latter two.) I suppose social media, including podcasts, have evolved to the point where email and blogs, my main media for outreach, have become old-fashioned just as I’ve become older. But if you visit this blog, you’re probably a reader, writer, or someone interested in writing and publishing,  so maybe my regular deliveries of blog posts will be missed. If so, I apologize…and hope you still stop by from time to time to read the most recent ones.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Needless to say, this Yank who’s half-Irish feels a bit strange as I write this post about Queen Elizabeth II. With her death, the era determined by her monarchy ends. Or, did it already end even before? Princess Diana’s untimely death, the many scandals that have rocked the royal family, and the British people and media’s treatment of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex effectively ended that era. The monarchy had already shown its irrelevance in the modern world.

The Realm and Commonwealth will surely continue to suffer as it adjusts to a new prime minister and a new king. Northern Ireland is heating up again, mostly because of the the old PM’s Brexit; and Scotland and Wales also contain strong movements wanting independence, more the first than the second. Many nations in the Commonwealth have republican movements in the true sense of “republicanism,” i.e. that which gave birth to the US and will continue to do so for those who want to free and don’t wish to bow to a monarch.

On the other hand, the UK itself has internally much of the same divisive politics as its old colony, the US. Far-right and far-left extremists foment these divisions, and economic turmoil and failure of leadership is their willing accomplice. Such strife could tear the kingdom apart. Time will tell if democracy survives in the UK, let alone a kingdom.

Of course, Queen Elizabeth wasn’t and won’t be responsible for any of that. (Well, maybe a bit for Diana’s death, although that was more on the new King Charlie and his new Queen Consort.) The queen was everyone’s nana! When one’s nana passes on, one mourns and celebrates her life and the wisdom she offered to others, whether this occurs in a royal family or a working-class one. That’s what we do as human beings.

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth!

[Note from Steve: You can consider this article a follow-up to my 4/22 post. Like my novels, the two articles can be read independently!]

Thank God for books! Even before Covid, I was watching less and less TV. Frankly, it sucks now! Except for PBS and few news programs on CNN (OK, ABC News offers some entertainment value as I count how many times David Muir says “of course”), there’s not much network TV has to offer. Cable is worse and has more ads than the traditional networks, and ads are soon coming to streaming video (Netflix saw its stock plummet after announcing that, and Disney+ soon will too if De Santis doesn’t kill the company first—how’s that lawsuit against that Florida fascist coming along?).

I’ve stopped watching sitcoms completely except for Bob [Hearts] Abishola. At least that one’s funny sometimes; all the others are forgettable drivel or just old. (You can still watch reruns of Mash, All in the Family, and Two and a Half Men. Those episodes are still funny, but really? How many times can you repeat them?)

Sitcoms are still better than game shows or contests. Although classics like Jeopardy and Wheel might have some medical benefit by keeping contestants and elderly people’s minds sharp, none of the first’s aging viewers could ever have the reflexes needed; in fact, most normal people don’t spend their lives remembering trivia that the show’s production team dredges up. (As an author, I often do have to dredge up some historical trivia for my stories, but Google is my friend…sometimes.) And the elderly would be better off doing crossword puzzles instead of watching Wheel. Other game shows are just gimmicky and stupid. Contests have also become drivel, with The Masked Singer probably the worst I’ve ever seen, recently stooping so low to have Giuliani as a contestant. I also would have walked off the stage in disgust along with Dr. Ken but that’s Fox for you, the channel I’ve always boycotted ever since they cancelled that show about time travel and dinosaurs!

In general, dramas have been the most damaged by ads and new and incompetent screenwriters, though, maybe more so than Fox. I’ll admit that an hour of a dramatic episode isn’t enough to develop a good plot, especially when you consider that time’s reduced to forty minutes or less when you account for tine spent on those inane ads. And a series might start out OK—for example, FBI looked promising—but then the new crop of screenwriters quickly run out of ideas and become formulaic (like Big Five authors!)—the plots become unoriginal, trivial, cliched, and irrelevant; and the characters become two-dimensional caricatures of real human beings, just icons and avatars of banality. The directors (do they deserve that name?) often try to solve this problem with “crossover episodes” (three FBI episodes in a row is a bit too much torture, though), a “solution” that turns a drama into a soap opera.

Of course (David Muir, are you smiling?), this is all just a trickle-down effect from Hollywood movies to TV. They’re all embracing the incompetent screenwriting from “blockbuster movies” (that usually means they’re bombs, like Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story) to rom-coms (“rom” all too often translates to unrealistic erotica or even porn, and “com” becomes bawdy behavior and bodily humor which appeals to no one who’s even half sane).

I’ll admit that Hollywood directors and producers, their screenwriters, and their actors are probably just trying to meet public demand, which summarizes a lot of negative things about the viewing public and the flaws of modern society. Huxley was wrong about soma in Brave New World: The public’s drug is TV. (Modern viewers probably don’t even know who Huxley was or why his book is important.) Of course (get out of here, David Muir), they might be watching TV drunk and stoned out of their minds, so it probably doesn’t matter much what they watch as long as it keeps them awake enough for the next drink or the hit.

Read a good book lately? Congratulations! I have too. Lots in fact. (That damned Amazon keeps count on my Kindle…maybe revenge for boycotting them when publishing my books?) Keep reading, my friends. It’s a lot better than what you’ll find on TV!

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Have I convinced you? Are you ready for some binge-reading? People often binge-watch an entire season of sit-coms or dramas. Ugh! It’s much more entertaining to binge-read the entire “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series of novels. Follow Esther’s many dangerous adventures, often driven by her desire to find justice for innocent victims and the exploited, obsessions often putting herself and her Dutchman, Bastiann van Coevorden, in peril. The two are twenty-first century versions of Christie’s Marple and Poirot, with Esther a bit more active and agile than the former and Bastiann just as cerebral but less pretentious than the latter. In Rembrandt’s Angel, Esther pursues a painting stolen by the Nazis in World War II; in Son of Thunder, she’s in a race to find the tomb of St. John the Divine; in Death on the Danube, she helps Bastiann run a murder investigation on their honeymoon cruise; in Palettes, Patriots, and Pillocks, she defends an American artist; in Leonardo and the Quantum Code, she struggles to protect an old friend whose code for quantum computers is pursued by three major powers; Defanging the Red Dragon is about China’s desire to steal software and hardware upgrades for nuclear subs; Intolerance begins a fight against right-wing terrorists whose mission is to purge migrants and refugees from Britain; and The Klimt Connection continues that battle against extremists after the couple’s flat is bombed. To binge-read this exciting series, you’ll have to do a bit of sleuthing of your own: The ebook versions are available wherever quality ebooks are solid (the above link takes you to them on B&N), but Dragon and Intolerance are only available in PDF format as free downloads on this website. The first three novels have print versions (seen in the illustration) brought to you by Penmore Press and Carrick Publishing. Numbers four, five, and eight are published by Draft2Digital and not available on Amazon. Enjoy!

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

…because it’s the day that everyone becomes Irish! Whether Erin is in your blood or not, that island with a history that includes Viking invasions, monks who saved classic literature, and more recent oppression from the English (not just from the Crown but from the likes of megalomaniac Cromwell), shares its celebration of their patron saint around the world, although that old boy might have frowned on the excesses many indulge in during their celebrations.

Not to detract from St. Paddy’s accomplishment of bringing Christianity to pagan Celtic tribes and the remaining Viking invaders who mixed pagan gods and rituals with those approved by ancient Rome, we need to remember that the saint wasn’t even Irish. He was a Briton, kidnapped from ancient England as a wee lad and then escaping to go home to become a priest. When he returned to Eire, he didn’t drive out the snakes—the Oireachtas’s politicians can be as hissing and biting as those in any other western democracies.

Faeries, leprechauns, and other legendary creatures add to the mystery surrounding Eire and their patron saint. Modern fans of the Irish Republic like me can enjoy it all while imbibing Irish ale or whiskey at our favorite local Irish pubs.

Slainte!

Surprise, surprise! Regular readers of this blog might be expecting to find a politically oriented op-ed here this Monday morn. You will now find these at Pub Progressive (for example, my Afghan series continues there). Future articles posted here will now be restricted to those dealing with reading, writing, and publishing. I hope that’s not an inconvenience.

I’m not doing this to appease some disgruntled readers or to follow the advice of writing gurus who tell authors “Don’t be political.” The world is very political now, and I’ve been political since the Gipper set out to destroy the UC system and wanted to go after all those pink-o commies protesting against the Vietnam War. (I was neither pink-o—lots of California sunshine back then—nor a commie, just a progressive and a pacifist.) I was a progressive long before the members of “The Squad” were born, but I was, and always will be, one led by logic and reason and very aware that exuberance can lead to unintended and negative consequences.

Readers of my novels know that I don’t shy away from political or controversial themes in my writing. My stories are complex; I don’t like to read fluff, and I won’t write it. But today that’s not enough. So I created the narrowly focused website Pub Progressive in order to do the same for my blog posts.

The major reason I did that, though, was to bring a bit of order into my writing life. Articles appearing at Pub Progressive are my political opinions, not rants, reasoned spiels about what’s going on in our nation and the world. Articles appearing here in this blog are also opinions, but ones about reading, writing, and publishing (I might rant about Amazon). It’s like having your winter clothes in one closet, summer ones in the other. (That might not make too much sense for those back in my home state, California.)

Pub Progressive is still a work-in-progress, a DIY project where I’m doing a deep dive into the murky software waters associated with WordPress blogging. I plan to keep it simple; I have to do so, because I’m no website guru. (I hire the people at Monkey C Media to keep this older website going.) I can use your comments and suggestions about improving Pub Progressive if they’re free and you are a website guru. (You can contact me via steve@stevenmmoore.com. Both sites’ contact pages use that email address.) Scientists usually like to tinker and experiment; I’m an ex-scientist, so that’s what I’m doing with Pub Progressive. Bear with me.

And again, I hope this causes no one inconvenience. For some, the separation will cause a sigh of relief. For others, they’ll say, “Way to go!” I hope you’re one of the others.

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Comments are always welcome.

A. B. Carolan’s Origins. You can’t say A. B.’s novels are British-style mysteries; he’s Irish, and he writes sci-fi mysteries for young adults. In this one, Kayla Jones has dreams she can’t understand. Her future seems determined as the brilliant STEM student who looks forward to a research career, but her past gets in the way. As if the chaos afflicting the world and leading to her adopted father’s death wasn’t enough, killers begin to pursue her. With some friends who come to her aid, she’s on her way to discover a conspiracy that can be traced to prehistoric battles waged by hominins bent on conquest of a primitive Earth.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Starting 8/24/2021 (today), op-eds with a political orientation will exclusively be posted on my second blog, Pub Progressive. The same rules of engagement apply (see the ROEs on the “Join the Conversation” web page), but this site’s blog will now focus on reading, writing, and publishing topics. This might upset some readers and authors; others might breathe a sigh of relief.

Authors do have opinions. Maybe it’s better that they just creep into their prose as important themes? I don’t know. I certainly don’t do fluff, and my characters often express opinions contrary to my own. Editors and publishers certainly prefer that fiction authors aren’t opiniated, so that biases modern prose toward fluff.

In any case, this is an experiment. At the very least, it will help me keep things organized.

So…reading, writing, and reading topics are found at this site’s blog, and politically oriented op-eds at Pub Progressive.

Note: Yesterday’s post about Afghanistan is definitely a political op-ed. It will be repeated on the new website. (That will be the last time.)