Author: StevenDBrewer

Author of speculative fiction and poetry in English and Esperanto. Teacher of scientific writing. Lover of natural history. (he/his)

I was excited to be offered a place on the program at Worldcon in Seattle, but recent events about Worldcon have left me in a quandary. I will probably still attend, but I’m dismayed and discouraged by what’s happening.

I first attended Worldcon in 2023. I applied to be a participant with little expectation of getting on the program, and was very surprised when I ended up with eight appearances. I applied again in 2024 and, expecting to be selected, made all of my arrangements to travel internationally to Glasgow. When I was not selected, I decided — at significant expense — to cancel all of my arrangements. So, when I applied for this year in Seattle, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I filled out the interest form to be a participant in October. In January, I was very excited to be invited to be a participant. And, in early April, I had the opportunity to fill out the panel selection survey, to propose myself for particular roles. And then, just before May, the Worldcon Chair issued a statement, followed by an apology, and then a clarifying statement, about the use of ChatGPT, a generative AI Large Language Model (LLM) in the participant selection process, that included the actual ChatGPT prompt they used to investigate participants.

Basically, they tried to use ChatGPT to assess potential participants (who were identified by name to the system) for disqualifying attitudes, statements, and behaviors. The system collected information and provided it for review, along with an assessment of the suitability of each name.

The reaction of the speculative fiction community was swift and almost universally negative. A few people have tried to speak up for the organizers, but most expressed outrage. A number of prominent people have withdrawn as volunteers and participants. Or even pulled their works from consideration for awards.

Large Language Models are reviled in the writing community for many reasons: they have been unethically developed, frequently exhibit bias, and are known to “hallucinate” false information. Moreover, they represent an existential threat to the writing community if their corporate masters are allowed to profit from the unethical use of the source materials that were used to train them.

Others, with more expertise, have written about the shortcomings of using Generative AI in general, and ChatGPT in particular, for this purpose. Both the choice of tool and the nature of the prompt meant that the results would be potentially biased and untrustworthy.

Many people ran the prompt on their own name to see what their report looked like. Out of curiosity, I finally decided to do that too, to see what they would have found when they investigated me. The report about me was banal with no wildly incorrect information. (I could speculate at length about why, but the reasons aren’t really germane to this discussion.)

I have written about my grave concerns about the use of generative AI and that fact that I do not personally use “AI” for anything. I had previously never used ChatGPT. And I regret having given into my curiosity to use it now.

My overall reaction has been dismay. Worldcon was already going to be thinly attended due to the unsafe conditions traveling to — or even within — the United States for many people. Now, even more people are canceling their plans to attend for this unforced error.

My initial hope was that they would reject the work done by AI — the fruit of the poison tree — and redo the participant selection process — even it meant I risked being denied a spot on the program. But, unfortunately, they seem to have doubled-down on retaining the work done to date.

So, I’m left with a quandary. I don’t plan to take any immediate action. I don’t even know if I’ve been selected to appear on any panels. And I have other obligations to fulfill at Worldcon: My publisher has applied to sell books there — presumably including my forthcoming book. Furthermore, as Secretary of SFWA, I would like the opportunity to meet with and coordinate with my colleagues. But I’m left dismayed and discouraged. And deeply unsettled.

For a couple of years, I’ve been, off and on, working on a new book: The Ground Never Lies. It’s about a geomancer with an anger problem who has come to believe she is unloveable, but discovers a capacity for love she didn’t know she had.

As I wrote the story, I realized that I couldn’t tell the story with a single time line. I wrote the “present day” timeline first, and then went back and started writing an earlier timeline that explains how she has come to the conclusion that she is unloveable — and explains how she developed her other abilities and skills.

Now that these are both (mostly) written, I need to somehow marry them together. As a first step, I’ve begun to carefully separate the two narratives into individual scenes. As I’ve done this, I’ve had a surprising realization: I suck at writing “scenes.” I have a tendency to just write the story. Maybe if I had ever had any instruction in writing, someone might have explained that stories can have “structure” and you can use it “intentionally.” Oh, well. Live and learn.

Now that I’m doing it, it’s giving me new insight into how to organize each scene and give each a dramatic arc that leads naturally from one to the next. Fascinating! What an idea!

Better late than never, I guess.

During the winter, I do all of my writing in my chilly, basement office. It’s a nice place to work. It’s brightly lit. I have a laptop and a portrait display. I have posters of my book covers surrounding me. It’s a great place to write! But all winter I can’t wait for spring to arrive, so I can emerge from my cave, set up my tent, and write out in my yard.

One of the first things we bought after we moved into our house was a picnic table. We put it in our front yard so it was convenient to the kitchen (there was no door into the backyard when we bought the house). And we also liked hanging out near the street so we could chat with neighbors as they walked by. Or use the table to meet with guests when they arrived.

It took on new importance during the pandemic when we could no longer invite people into our home. The table became the de facto place where I would meet with friends and colleagues to have a beer and talk. And, while for many people the pandemic is “over,” my chronic health issues mean that I still can’t meet with friends indoors or at restaurants or cafes (except outside).

Pretty soon after getting the table, however, we discovered a shortcoming: mosquitos. During the daytime, mosquitos were not too bad but, once the sun started to go down, the mosquitos made the table almost unusable. And, of course, even a light rainstorm was enough to chase us inside and leave the table too wet to sit on for hours.

One other hazard was our delightful sakura tree. Not the tree, itself, of course, but the flock of cedar waxwings that comes to gorge on its tiny, bitter cherries every year. After the birds “process” the cherries, they leave droppings everywhere and the table would be covered with them.

Our solution was to buy a tent for the yard that we could erect over the table. We tried several models that didn’t last very long but, eventually found a frame that was sturdy enough that we’ve had it for years. We have to replace the canopy and mosquito net every two or three years due to UV damage.

Last year, after a quarter century, the picnic table finally gave up the ghost. My wife and I discussed what to replace it with and I said I wanted to get a patio sectional sofa. She was skeptical. She said that we would need to get a patio to put it on! And I said, “Let’s do it!” So we hired our local handyman to do the work. He dug out a hole, packed sand at the bottom, and laid the patio blocks inside. Then I purchased the sectional sofa to sit on top. Boy, is it a wonderful place to work — when the weather’s nice.

I purchased the red izakaya lantern years ago. My innovation this winter was to buy a string of 75% off holiday lights after Christmas to clip around the frame. They really light up the tent and gives it a very festive atmosphere inside. My sister-in-law who saw the pictures said it looks like “glamping.”

Does it improve my productivity? Probably not. But it makes writing a whole lot more fun. And it’s an even better place to meet with small groups of friends and colleagues for a beer.

Writing takes both patience and persistence. Unfortunately, I’m rather lacking in both.

I want to be patient, but I am constantly chafing at the bit. But so much of writing is a waiting game. No matter how much you want to move quickly, there are limits all along the way, in writing, revising, and publishing.

I can only write so much at a time. I’ve known for a long time that my creative output is uneven. Some days, I can only write a few hundred words. Frequently, I find I need to find my way through a story by taking a break to turn things over in my mind before I can write productively again. But it’s hard to wait.

Revising requires leaving some time after writing before coming to look at the text again. If I try to revise something too soon, I can’t see the problems: I remember too clearly what I was trying to say and so I can’t see what I’m actually saying. But it’s hard to wait.

Publishing requires the most patience of all. Submitting work and waiting for a reply. Submitting work over and over again through rejections. And, when something is finally accepted, waiting while the work is edited, edited again, proofed, and then scheduled for release. It’s so hard to wait.

Through all the ups and downs you just have to keep going. The writing life is filled with disappointment. You constantly have to put yourself out there and, more often than not, there’s simply no reaction. Or you get get rejected. You submit manuscripts and they’re rejected. You offer a reading and nobody comes. You apply to appear at a convention and aren’t scheduled. You apply for a writing retreat and are passed over. The worst is when you just don’t hear anything. Sigh…

That said, now and then, all of the work really pays off. Recently, I took a few minutes to look at my very first book of haiku, Poŝtmarkoj el Esperantujo. Published in 2010, it’s fifteen years old now and it still holds up pretty well. All of the work it took to produce it has paid off for me in terms of having something that stands the test of time. I’m similarly proud of all of my books. If anything, they’ve just gotten better. Now if other people would just notice…

No matter. I can wait. I’ll just keep to my path writing and publishing books when I can.

One thing most people probably haven’t thought much about is the autonomy of so-called AIs. (Note: Large Language Models are not actually “intelligent” in the way people think of intelligence and people tend to project intelligence onto their behavior. But for the sake of convenience, I’ll call them AI anyway). Who actually controls AIs?

People assume that AIs are “trained” on “data” and then behave autonomously in response to the prompts they’re given. That’s sometimes true. But in many ways, their behavior is often secretly constrained. When Google’s photo recognition software mistakenly identified an African American as a gorilla, the company simply put in a hard limit so that the AI would never report recognizing anything as a gorilla. But none of this is visible to the end user. Most of the current AIs are probably full of hacks like these to prevent the AI from making common sense blunders that would get the company in trouble. But what other kinds of hacks might be in place?

If you’re a company producing an AI, there are all kinds of things you might wish your AI would do if used in particular circumstances. Or by particular people: your opponents, say. Or politicians. How irresistible will it be to corporations that make AIs to make them act in ways that benefit the corporation when given the opportunity? Anyone who knows corporations will know that it will be totally irresistible.

More importantly, when was the last time you heard of a corporation getting it’s network compromised. Yesterday? This morning? Ten minutes ago? It happens all the time. What happens when one of these AIs get compromised? How do you know the AIs you’ve been using up until now haven’t already been compromised?

Humans sometimes get compromised too. If someone gets kompromat on a person, like a pee tape for example, they might be able to get them to do nearly anything: even become a traitor to their country. And, of course, people are notoriously susceptible to inducements: e.g. money, sex, drugs. Or to become a mole or traitor for revenge. There are a bunch of huge differences between human treachery and a compromised AI. But one difference should give you pause.

We have deep experience with human treachery. We all know hundreds or thousands of examples of it throughout recorded history. There is legal precedent and volumes of case law for how to handle it. We have no experience with what happens when an AI gets compromised and begins to systematically undermine the agenda of the user. Who is responsible? Who decides? What’s the liability? Nobody knows.

Personally, I don’t use AI for anything. Not for important things. Not for unimportant things. Not for anything. That may seem like an extreme position. But I think that once many people begin to use AI, they’ll quickly become dependent on it and will find it much harder to recognize the subtle ways that AI — or whoever is actually controlling it — may be using them.

As was predicted, the Trump administration has targeted higher education and, putting the “bully” in bully pulpit, has begun to menace universities with funding cuts and other punitive measures if they do not undermine academic freedom. Some institutions, like Columbia, sought to comply and found themselves both reviled by other higher ed institutions and singled out by the administration for yet more humiliation and sanctions. But some have begun to fight back.

When Harvard was served with a letter with illegal demands, they refused to comply. The Trump administration has called for a variety of further, probably illegal, sanctions. The idea that I would see a president use the power of the US government to persecute political enemies would have been nearly unthinkable to me prior to this election. But the brakes are gone and who knows how deep this rabbit hole will go.

The faculty of my university, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, have been at the forefront of resistance. At the April Faculty Senate meeting, we passed a resolution calling for mutual academic defense compacts. This has attracted interest among other universities across the region and nationally. On April 25th, we will hold a General Meeting of the Faculty to consider endorsing a Statement in Support of the Core Mission and Shared Values of Higher Education in the United States of America.

As I suggested previously, there are some things we can do. We need to dedicate ourselves to public advocacy in support of higher education. Making statements of principles is a good start. But, of course, it’s not enough. We need to be visible writing articles, editorials, social media posts, and appearing in public. And we need to turn out in support of one another.

At UMass Amherst, the faculty have primary responsibility for academic affairs. That means that we can hold the line on our academic programs and there is very little likelihood that the outside political influence will be successful in undermining our commitment to our principles. There are certainly dark times ahead as the Trump administration seeks to undermine science and choke off the enlightment. But if we stand together, we can present a united front and push back against the fascist agenda.

On April 5, 2025, the Town of Amherst, as part of their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programming, celebrated the first Global Village Festival. It was scheduled to be outside, on the Town Common. I signed up to be a vendor in the name of my publisher.

It was my first bookselling event since last summer. Normally, we would have had a table at either Arisia or Boskone. And, a couple of years ago, I had a table in November at the Mill District holiday arts and crafts festival. But, for various reasons, none of those panned out this year. I felt a little rusty as I prepared this year, to get ready to stand up the table.

I thought a bit about which books to take. I wasn’t sure whether this would be primarily a kids’ event or have more adult interest. I wanted to take a nice selection of books from my publisher. I requested suggestions from the publisher, but didn’t get any. I ended up selecting twenty short, novelette length books that are $5 each and a couple of middle-grade books.

I took my own books, of course. I had hardback and trade paper editions of Revin’s Heart and Better Angels: Tour de Force. I had my books of haiku, Poŝtmarkoj el Esperantujo, Premitaj Floroj, and senokulvitre. I also brought some of the original novelette-length editions and some stand-alone copies of The Third Time’s the Charm.

As the date approached, it became clear that the weather wouldn’t support an outdoor event. A cold rain was predicted to fall, beginning in the morning and not ending until the next day. They changed the venue to the middle school cafeteria. This raised a conundrum. I have avoided doing indoor events where people are unmasked. In the end, we decided to go ahead with the event. We both wore masks (as did perhaps 2-5% of the other attendees).

My wife was of immeasurable support. She used her connections ahead of time to try to get people to come to the event and promoted my table as part of it. She helped me load in and load out, which saved me a lot of time. She went to the dollar store and got some candy to give away — and a few little knick-knacks to dress up the table (some little magical wands and some balloons.) And then, she simply wandered around the event looking for people she knew to remind that I had a table. When my state representative took a turn through the room and missed me, she tracked her down and forced her to come back and say hello to me. She’s the best.

It’s fun to run a dealer table. One of the organizers, who is a philatelist, expressed interested in Poŝtmarkoj el Esperantujo (though she didn’t buy one.) I sold a copy of The Third Time’s a Charm to a grandmother shopping for a book for her grandson. One bibliophile bought a copy of Premitaj Floroj. A couple of science fiction fans bought books. Lots of friends stopped by. One friend hadn’t realized I had hardbacks out and bought copies of Revin’s Heart and Better Angels: Tour de Force.

A daughter of a friend came by the table with a friend and another younger girl (probably the other girl’s sister). I did my annoying-uncle shtick when I gave them packets of gummi candies (purchased by my wife). There were “happy chicks” and “happy hoppers.” The younger expressed curiosity about the hoppers and I told her they were grasshoppers. The older girl gave me a withering stare and explained to the girl that they were rabbits. But the little girl had a hard time choosing which to take. Eventually, she did an eenie-meanie-miney-moe routine that went far beyond any reasonable length and, finally, ultimately, she chose the hoppers. As she walked away, I told her to enjoy her grasshoppers. She grinned happily, now in on the joke.

We had to load out in the rain. We staged things carefully to get everything efficiently into the car in the correct order. (Where everything still is, since its still raining the next day). When I got home, I fixed a bite to eat (because I couldn’t really eat anything during the event due to needing to stay masked). And then, exhausted, I went to bed early.

Steven D. Brewer
Steven D. Brewer at Poet’s Seat in Greenfield

I am extremely gratified to have been re-elected as Secretary of SFWA. Since the special election in the fall, I have enjoyed getting to know the organization better and making a contribution to strengthen it. Working with the other officers, board members, and staff — who are all interesting and dedicated people — has been a great pleasure. I look forward to a new, full, two-year term as Secretary beginning July 1.

In my platform statement, I said my highest priority was to communicate the decisions of the Board clearly and in good time. I further proposed to focus on (1) restoring normal functioning, (2) undertaking a bylaws review, and (3) engaging in long-range planning. I also affirmed my commitment to transparency and service. I stand by those statements and am proud of the progress we have made toward them already.

I know there are some people have been frustrated with the pace of change or a seeming lack of response by staff or leadership in the past. I hope those people will give us another chance. Almost everyone here is new. And there is a genuine commitment on my part — that I believe is shared with the rest of the Board — to work effectively in the best interests of the organization.

First, some great news! On March 28, 2025, I learned that I have received one of the inaugural Delphi Awards from the University of Massachusetts Amherst for non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty. (Update: UMass Amherst Announcement and OFD Announcement.)

The UMass Amherst Delphi Leadership Award honors NTT faculty who have provided exceptional leadership and made innovative contributions in support of their non-tenure-track peers at UMass Amherst.

It comes with a modest monetary award, but I genuinely value the recognition more. Over my 30-year career, I spent a vast amount of time advocating for and working to improve working conditions for NTT faculty: I helped bargain the first promotional increment for NTT faculty, so-called “continuing appointment” which eliminated the need for fixed-term contracts after a probationary period, and the Professional Improvement Fellowship, which offers a sabbatical-like leave for NTT to work on a significant academic project. It’s nice when the quiet, patient work behind the scenes is recognized.

On April 5, 2025, I’m scheduled to sell books at the Amherst Global Village Festival on the Common in Amherst Massachusetts. I’ll bring my books of Esperanto haiku with English translation and my books of fiction, including Revin’s Heart and Better Angels: Tour de Force. I will also bring a selection of other books from Water Dragon Publishing.

The next day, on April 6, 2025, I’m hosting Michelle Trim via Zoom who will present Faking it and Breaking it: Generative AI and its Implications for Straw Writers Guild. Michelle co-chaired the UMass committee studying generative AI. I think she’ll have a lot of interesting insights to share.

On May 10, 2025, I will again be selling books, this time for Small Publishing in a Big Universe, at the Watch City Steampunk Festival. I had a great time last year doing this and I’m looking forward to going back again this year. There’s amazing cosplay and a lot of other really interesting vendors. If you’re anywhere near Waltham, it is definitely worth a visit.

In early June, I have signed up to attend the SFWA Nebula Conference. I have attended the Nebulas virtually before, but never in person. I’m looking forward to getting to know a lot of the people I’ve been working with as Secretary. And to give them a face to put with a name. I’ve proposed a few panels and maybe I’ll get to participate on one more panels during the conference. I’m also combining with the trip with some travel with my son and brother, so that will be nice too.

My next book, A Familiar Problem, is now scheduled to be released in June. Originally, it had been scheduled for January, but needed to be delayed by the publisher for several reasons. I’m looking forward to sharing it with everyone!

After that, there are a variety of other events coming up: Readercon, the Lambda Literary Writing Retreat, and Worldcon. But I’ll write about those next time.

Authors should take backups seriously. And not just depend on free corporate solutions. I’ve read about people who trusted “the cloud” to keep their data safe only to have some faceless corporation invalidate their account and cause them lose everything overnight with no recourse.

Just like how, if you see “the economy” in a news article you should mentally replace it with “rich people’s yacht money”, when you see “the cloud” in a sentence, you should replace it with “someone else’s computer.” You shouldn’t trust someone else’s computer with your backups.

I’ve never been particularly strategic about backups. At least not since I was a doctoral student. While I was working on my dissertation, I became paranoid about losing my doctoral work. To reduce my anxiety, I got two Syquest EZ-135 drives and three cartridges that I rotated between my home and office, so I was well protected against data loss.

Since I’ve started working exclusively from home, I’ve been using syncthing to mirror my working files among all my devices and using a backup drive to make periodic backups. But I’ve become a bit concerned about not having an off-site backup.

For several years, I’d considered building a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device but I hadn’t found a straightforward recipe that didn’t look like a lot of work. I like maker projects, but I decided in the end that I wanted a solution more robust than something I hacked together from a recipe.

After discussion and some research, Philip and I decided to purchase identical Synology DS224+ devices and configure them to offer reciprocal off-site backups for each other. They have two spinning 12TB hard-drives in RAID1, so each can have one drive fail without data loss. That gives each of us about 5TB of backup, which I think will be ample for our needs for the foreseeable future.

So far, I’ve been quite pleased with the device. It only took a few minutes to figure out how to set up all of our computers to use rsync via public-key ssh connections and I’ve set up crontab entries to run daily backups. I can easily set it up to do backups more frequently if that seems warranted. Currently it’s just syncing, but I think I could get fancy and have it do periodic snapshots to protect against accidentally deleted files.

It does have high-level tools that are more accessible for less technical people. But I was pleased to be able to use the familiar low-level tools at the command line. Hopefully, once everything is set up, it will just sit there chattering quietly and give me peace of mind that a drive failure won’t be a catastrophe.