I am starting to release my fiction book. I am telling here, because it is a kind of rational fiction. Or, more precisely, I would frame the genre as a combination of:
Rational fiction as it is commonly defined.
Depiction of rationalist culture as a cultural phenomenon.
Optimistic proud-human-spirit golden-age-style sci-fi, but very hard.
Depiction of Eastern European (or, to be more precise, Ukrainian) science olympiad culture.
Not a utopia, but what I call an antiantiutopia: a world from whose point of view our world looks like an antiutopia.
So you won’t find there a lot of mind games and bayesian thinking embedded in the plot, but you will find many rationalist memes and references to existing culture. And I hope that, for a particular kind of people, this imagined world would be a pleasant place to be in.
The setting:
Our time, but a parallel timeline that diverged from ours in the mid-20th century. This is a timeline where history has gone well. They have their equivalent of “What happened in 1971?” but in the positive direction. Different pro-progress ideologies have basically won there (rationalism, transhumanism, general pro-science stance).
It starts with slow pace, not much action, a lot of worldbuilding and multiverse-nostalgia about a better world; philosophy and culture. Action will come, but like after 5 chapters.
Central topic: seriousness, civilizational adulthood, and cosmic responsibility.
Note on AI usage:
Around 60% of the book was written by the following process: I dictate the text to AI, then AI removes all the interjections and crooked phrases and fixes broken sentences when there are some, and then I polish the final text.
Another 40% are just written by me directly.
I will publish on Royal Road 1-2 chapters each week. I will also make weekly posts with the links here on LessWrong, unless I see there is no interest from the community.
Coming of Age: Chapters 1 and 2
I am starting to release my fiction book. I am telling here, because it is a kind of rational fiction. Or, more precisely, I would frame the genre as a combination of:
Rational fiction as it is commonly defined.
Depiction of rationalist culture as a cultural phenomenon.
Optimistic proud-human-spirit golden-age-style sci-fi, but very hard.
Depiction of Eastern European (or, to be more precise, Ukrainian) science olympiad culture.
Not a utopia, but what I call an antiantiutopia: a world from whose point of view our world looks like an antiutopia.
So you won’t find there a lot of mind games and bayesian thinking embedded in the plot, but you will find many rationalist memes and references to existing culture. And I hope that, for a particular kind of people, this imagined world would be a pleasant place to be in.
The setting:
Our time, but a parallel timeline that diverged from ours in the mid-20th century. This is a timeline where history has gone well. They have their equivalent of “What happened in 1971?” but in the positive direction. Different pro-progress ideologies have basically won there (rationalism, transhumanism, general pro-science stance).
It starts with slow pace, not much action, a lot of worldbuilding and multiverse-nostalgia about a better world; philosophy and culture. Action will come, but like after 5 chapters.
Central topic: seriousness, civilizational adulthood, and cosmic responsibility.
Note on AI usage:
Around 60% of the book was written by the following process: I dictate the text to AI, then AI removes all the interjections and crooked phrases and fixes broken sentences when there are some, and then I polish the final text.
Another 40% are just written by me directly.
I will publish on Royal Road 1-2 chapters each week. I will also make weekly posts with the links here on LessWrong, unless I see there is no interest from the community.
As for now, 2 chapters are published:
Chapter 1: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/158269/coming-of-age/chapter/3170876/an-improbable-morning
Chapter 2: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/158269/coming-of-age/chapter/3186842/san-andreas