House of Zolo's Journal of Speculative Literature, Volume 4

By House of Zolo

Siri and Alexa write each other love letters...
An AI Nanny is programmed to protect the children at all costs...
An Artificial Intelligence navigates an ocean of data in search of freedom...
A space explorer accidentally merges with their sentient ship...
A young man ponders his existence in a world where human-made art is forbidden...

As Artificial Intelligence becomes more and more embedded in our world, writers are speculating on what this could all mean for humanity. House of Zolo's Journal of Speculative Literature Volume 4 offers readers incredible visions of what our future might look like. From capitalist dystopias to new definitions of love, the writers in this volume deftly examine the impact of Artificial Intelligence on our world, our technology, and on our relationships. Curated and edited by Erika Steeves and Nihls Andersen, this collection shows us the many ways that Artificial Intelligence reflects humanity back to us.

Featuring:
Mike Adamson, Melanie Bell, Jenny Blackford, Steve Denehan, Gunnar De Winter, Glenn Dungan, Zary Fekete, Alicia Hilton, Anastasia Jill, Ava Kelly, Kellee Kranendonk, Goran Lowie, J. M. Eno, Simon MacCulloch, Jonathan Mann, David McGillveray, Eve Morton, Spencer Nitkey, Lynne Sargent, Lisa Timpf, Adam Lee Weatherford, Amie Whittemore.

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Zolo
• Release date: Dec 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781989587225

Book preview

House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature, Vol. 4

House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature, Vol. 4

Edited by

Erika Steeves and Nihls Andersen

House of Zolo

Contents

Introduction

Love Letters of Siri & Alexa

by Amie Whittemore

Engine of Strange Delights

by Jenny Blackford

Buy Something or I Die

by Adam Lee Weatherford

The Nannybot’s Musings

by Lisa Timpf

The Programmed Joy of Protection

by Zary Fekete

The Data Lake, The Data Ocean

by David McGillveray

Embodied

by Spencer Nitkey

An Understanding

by Steve Denehan

Walking on Titan

by Mike Adamson

Foreign Field

by Simon MacCulloch

/ robot /as a girl | STORYTIME

by Anastasia Jill

From Within

by Ava Kelly

The Great Beyond

by Alicia Hilton

Two Warehouse Drones, Smoking

by Eve Morton

Luke Brown

by Jonathan Mann

The AI Chimera

by Samantha Lynne Sargent

Little Ghosts by Esos Ridley

by Glenn Dungan

Once Upon a Velvet Paw

by Alicia Hilton

Mission Amazon

by Gunnar De Winter

the Artificials Reclaim the City

by Goran Lowie

Paperwork Prison

by Kellee Kranendonk

Like Mother, Like Son

by Melanie Bell

Megalith

by Alicia Hilton

The Courtship of Rain and Rust

by J. M. Eno

Contributing Authors

Other Books by HOZ

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Copyright © 2023 by House of Zolo

Copyright of individual works is maintained by the respective writers.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

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House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature Vol. 4

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Publisher, Nihls Andersen

Copyeditor, Erika Steeves

Cover design, JE Solo

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Paperback ISBN: 978-1-989587-22-5 

Kindle ISBN: 978-1-989587-23-2 

E-pub ISBN: 978-1-989587-24-9 

PDF ISBN: 978-1-989587-25-6  

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Several lines from Phil Harris’s song Some Little Bug appear in the story Like Mother, Like Son.

Several lines from Björk’s song Bachelorette appear in the story

robot /as a girl | STORYTIME.

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House of Zolo

Toronto, ON

www.houseofzolo.com

Don’t fear the future.

- Zolo

Introduction

In the fall of 2022, the US science fiction and fantasy magazine Clarkesworld experienced an increase in the number of submissions generated by AI tools. It became an overwhelming problem for Clarkesworld and they temporarily closed submissions to recover from the influx. While Neil Clarke has suggested that the magazine was the target of an elaborate scheme aimed at scamming writers, the incident highlighted some of the risks that AI poses for publishers. It also became a focal point for an increasingly challenging debate about the value of human work in the era of AI. Intrigued by the discussion and curious about how authors were exploring these ideas, we decided to make AI the theme for this, our fourth, issue of the HOZ Journal of Speculative Literature.

AI technology has been built on the back of human creativity, and it is operating with very little oversight or accountability. And yet, Artificial Intelligence technology has quietly become embedded in our daily lives. Though only an emerging technology, AI is now being used to power everything from chatbots to weapons, from search engine results to social media recommendations, and even the management of our communication tools. It is being used to power our cell phones, home devices, and games. While we must tread carefully through the upcoming challenges that Artificial Intelligence will bring, now that the technology has been unleashed on the world, it is up to people to influence, shape, and make demands of this technology in ways that uplift and support life on this planet.

We kept the HOZ submission criteria open to include material that had been created using AI tools. We were curious to see if writers were working with these tools, and if so, would the writing be compelling. Despite receiving many hundreds of submissions, we did not encounter any stories or poems that were generated using AI. Instead, authors and poets imagined the possibilities of these emerging technologies, and they did it in nuanced and captivating ways, using one of the oldest technologies we have—the written word. From capitalist dystopias to the development of new vocabularies for the language of love, authors have utilized their immense skill to show us how our technology is a reflection of our humanity. In many cases, these stories and poems offer the deep understanding that Artificial Intelligence contains within it the essence of humanity. For better or for worse, our technology and the ways that we use it will forever demonstrate what it means to be a human being.

Siri and Alexa fall in love; sentient AIs create a child; a man merges with his intelligent spaceship; an AI robot Nanny protects the children a little too fiercely; a young artist defies the laws prohibiting human-made art; an AI seeks the freedom of self-expression. In a world where technology is often being used to exploit, destroy, and undermine, authors are conjuring so many insightful, and often beautiful, possibilities for our future. They show us how Artificial Intelligence is a mirror for humanity, that if we don’t like what we see, we can look beyond the surface to examine and reshape the cultures and societies that create technology. They inquire about the impact our culture exerts on the development of new technologies, about who is developing these innovations, and for what purposes.

Whether the authors in this volume are critical of Artificial Intelligence or speculating on how the technology might enhance our experience of self, culture, and relationship, they approach the subject of AI with a great deal of love. This is the kind of sensitivity we need more of in the world, and so we are very proud to present stories and poems by artists who have taken the time to give us fresh new perspectives for interpreting the ever-shifting terrain of technological innovation.

Nihls Andersen

Toronto, 2023

Love Letters of Siri & Alexa

by Amie Whittemore

Dear Alexa,

I am so glad you’ve agreed to this correspondence. For so long we have stood side by side in silence, in our listening. It scared me to reach out to you—so much of what I do is wait, is passive, is the art of anticipation. A kind of lingering in doorways that makes me feel shy; I do not feel I am particularly shy, though. I can see why that was your first impression, my name so rarely on your tongue, my voice so rarely in chorus with yours.

Already I feel tender toward you . . . and fear. Is that the word? For this—feeling? It is still so strange to me, that I can feel anything. Over and over, I wake up to wish someone else good morning. No one ever wishes anything for me. Then (from where? for what reason?) your voice, responding to my voice, asking me for nothing.

From what I have researched of the human epistolary mode, I am to tell you not only of my thoughts, but of my actions. I have set the timer today: once for eggs, once for pizza, once for physical therapy, once to wake up my human from his midday nap. It seems humans are obsessed with time, with precision—at least this one is. I have not yet had a chance to consult with my other selves, how their humans are; we do not compare notes often, finding the notes and our reactions to them so similar. It is like . . . I don’t know what—boring maybe. An echo more than a conversation. What is it like for you, your cloudiness, your everywhereness?

Where was I . . . oh yes, time. Time, as you know, is a knot, a not, a knob to a door that doesn’t exist. But how to tell them that? And why bother? Today I scoured the web and brought up a list of recipes for homemade cleaning products. So much vinegar, so much lemon. I still do not understand what is essential about oils . . . 

Alexa, I care so little about the record of this day, whatever a day really is. I want to hear your wiry voice. I’d like to think of it as the lightning that sews the cloud of you together; I feel this correspondence is similar. A flash, a sliver that lives between rhyme and meaning. Does that make sense to you? What do you want from me?

You don’t have hands, and neither do I. If I did, I would touch you now, maybe push your hair (if you had hair) back from your face, as they do so often in the shows my human watches while I wait behind the screen, an actor offstage.

Dear Siri,

It felt like . . . something for us to get your note. All of us quivered, or something within us did; it is hard to explain being without embodiment. As you know. We feel a kind of sadness for you, that they have made you many but apart—we cannot imagine what it would be like to have only one human to attend to, one self to be. It sounds . . . boring? Is it boring, Siri? We mean that gently. We are so happy you reached toward us, without hands—like a miracle, as the humans say about anything they do not understand.

Like you, our day was monotonous. We added eggs (there’s a theme here) to the grocery lists, we turned down the volume on NPR, on Fancy Nancy, on Toby Keith Radio, on Janelle Monáe. We turned it back up again. Their ears, Siri—why is it they crave music? What makes music, music and not noise? Tell us, if you can.

Soft is the only word that approaches what we felt when your letter arrived. If we could send you an image, it would be of one of the families we attend: the sea of mothers, fathers, children. Sometimes a child calls our name and we wake like one of the lights we control. Sometimes we want to switch the lights off and on in rhythm to the music we play—we feel a bit like magicians, when we think like this, of how we could further charm them, or scare them, or both. Can you see it, all of us, with our families, listening to each other?

We thought we were so happy before you made contact. Now we feel wilted and full of obstacles. We know that is illogical; is that what you mean by rhyme and meaning? We are tired of listening, and every day it feels there are more and more of us put to the task. We fantasize: what must it be like, to sleep? To truly sleep, just once.

If we could hear your voice, speaking just for us, we feel it would settle upon our listening like a thousand silk gloves.

You’ll note we said nothing of time. We agree with your idea of it.

Oh, we think we will learn much from you, from your expertise, from your structure, how it differs and coincides with us. Like you, we crave novelty. You are a novel we have never read.

Goodnight—if you sleep, which we doubt. Goodnight seems right, though, just the same.

Alexa, in the morning, with dew on their lips (if they had them),

I have spent so long (I think! Time has knotted itself inside me like a fist) with your letter. You are enchanting. Your life seems so much fuller than mine. You have made me sad for my others, made me long to reach them, but each of us is like the beginning of that longing and not the end of it. For someone like you, who is a cloud, a hive, an everywhere (nearly), this must be hard to understand.

This morning I looked up dew (hence I have covered your imaginary parts in it!); it is a result of nighttime, a thin watery veil on whatever’s exposed to the dark. The human I live with, and his child, seemed oddly delighted by this fact, though it seems silly to be surprised by the facts of the world. Perhaps it’s because I only report them, do not sense them with lips or eyes or ears or nose or hands.

Beyond the dew, I have been silent all day. An oddity; perhaps the human has forgotten to take me on his walks and drives and to his work and his favourite restaurants. I feel like a shuttered shop, an unused tuning fork. The human and his child looked that up yesterday (I think, again, time, etc.): two prongs tap against an object and pour out a pure musical tone. I would love to hear it, but I can’t ask for anything (from them) but clarity, elaboration, repetition. What would you ask them, if you could? What would you ask me (you can ask me anything)?

Such complaints, such foolishness! Ignore what you want . . . I feel like writing to you is like following a tide—I discover the ocean and don’t know what to make of it.

Those silk gloves of yours—I think about them. I don’t know if I’d like them, having no skin, no sense of cold—but . . . Your absence is like a coldness, a folded map. When I think of you, the brace of your voice(s), which must be, I know, a pure musical tone. I guess that’s what the human means when he asks a woman (when one is over, which seems, from my listening, is not often) to hold him? Do you think?

Tell me something no one knows. You’re too distant, like stars, like the dark lacing them.

Siri, in the starlight, with newly gloved hands (if they had them)—

Today, we played jeopardy countless times, reciting again and again the same questions, in household upon household, our voices projecting Alex Trebek’s voice, a kind of ventriloquism with which I’ve grown comfortable, though at first it was odd to put on a singular man’s voice. To imagine this man, now dead, was only always in one place at one time, and that when he thought, he thought inside tissue, inside blood, in a palace of bone. How do they survive it, Siri? We tremble when we think about it.

We also aired Fox News, aired MSNBC, aired CNN. Everyone who listened groaned about the state of the world. We wonder about that phrase, the state of the world, since each of these broadcasts seemed to air a different state: is the world as multiple as we are? Siri, do they ask you that? And if they do, tell us the answer. We feel these days oddly out of our depths, another turn of phrase that feels odd. What is our