Iskander: Blog

In my other life, I am a high school maths and physics teacher. There, we are struggling to deal with AI in student assessments. We have tools that give us an indication that the text we are reading is AI-generated, but they are not 100% accurate and false positives occur. What most concerns teachers is cognitive offloading; students who use AI are not exercising the higher-order skills of cognition: data analysis, problem-solving, critical analysis and such that are required in today's complex world. I have also given AI problems from the hardest grade 12 maths program to solve. Despite answers sounding convincing, AI gets some of these wrong.

But AI is useful. We show students how it helps scope out a research task and provide links to relevant research (with the warning that some of these might not be real - AI hallucinates), but we warn that using AI beyond this is not permitted.

Here on SOL, I see authors tagging their stories as “AI-assisted” and “AI-generated” - and that gives me pause for thought about my own writing.

Looking back, in a way I have always used “AI” in my writing. Before AI existed in its current form, there were dictionaries, thesauri and countless books on writing skills, story outlines etc., ad infinitum. Every author used at least some of these. Then, with the advent of personal computers back in the 1980s, dictionaries and thesauri became instantly available - and authors used them without a qualm. Soon, software added grammar checking to the toolkit.

Microsoft Word - the ubiquitous word-processing software - has dictionary, thesaurus and grammar support built in. There’s also the “Editor” tool that provides deeper textual analysis and advice. I found this ‘support’ less than helpful. I rapidly disabled the grammar support; it consistently failed to analyse correctly more complex and stylistic text. One of the unwritten rules of grammar is that you can break any rule - if you are consciously doing so.

Online AI text analysis tools such as Marlowe appeared that offer critical analysis of complete novels in great detail.

There have been software tools that go beyond this for a while. I tried Grammarly, but discarded it when it regularly pinged British (and Australian) English as incorrectly spelled - despite setting the language. So I switched to ProWriting Aid. This provides more advanced support. It analyses text and warns about complex sentences and offers rephrasing. Its latest incarnation is providing detailed textual analysis and story critique.

I have also written an outline of a story and fed it to ChatGPT, asking it to flesh the story out. Which it did, but I have not used that capability for any published work.

I am not a professional writer. I enjoy the art of storytelling and I write for my own pleasure and amusement in part. Using AI to create the story from my outline removes that aspect.

So for me, my use of AI will stay at the minimal ‘support’ level that is deemed permissible in creative writing circles.

Other writers make their own choices.

I have re-edited and reposted After - again. It will appear shortly.

This repost is because the story is continuing. I will be posting Chapter 2 in a couple of days. This is my first explicit sex story and that's a major departure for me. Despite the sex, it is a story. I know (approximately) where it's headed and the sex is not the main game - the story is.

However, don't hang out for regular chapters as this is not my major work in progress. That is a Science Fiction novella (a precursor to the SF novel on hold).

I will write continuation chapters of After from time to time as the muse and opportunity strike, so watch this space.

I have uploaded a repost of Through my Eyes. Again. This was my first writing attempt and needed some attention, despite running through the hands of an editor.

It has been re-edited - losing 10,000 words in the process. The story remains the same - except for a few subtle nuances.

The current version on Bookapy is the same as this re-edited version.

I hope you find this reads better than the original.

Things have been pretty quiet recently, but I will soon start posting snippets from stories set in my new SF universe.
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A human colony ship jumping to the Gleise star system goes seriously awry - arriving 1000 light years beyond the galactic central black hole. Unable to return to earth and with no other survival option, the crew and colonists settle a habitable planet.

Their struggle for survival on an alien world becomes more acute when giant naturally star-faring insectoid worms arrive.

This is one of their breeding planets and humans are not welcome. 

It's been a while since I posted a new story, so I thought I'd update the current writing progress. I have two works in progress - Myr and Mossie Girl.

Myr is Science Fiction, set on a world close to the galactic core where stars average about 0.5 light years apart. A human colony ship suffers a malfunction and ends up at one of these stars, thousands of light years from earth. Unable to get home, they settle on a planet. But the planet is 'owned' by naturally star travelling insectoids, called Wyrms by the humans. Unable to communicate, the two species fight until a girl communicates telepathically with the Wyrms. She becomes the first Mediator.

Myr is a village girl who becomes the Mediator several hundred years after this. Some humans are looking to amend the treaty to give them access to new lands and a Wyrm faction wants the humans off their planet.

I am four chapters into Myr with much world building and planning complete. I'm hoping to have a draft of this ready by Christmas... but life keeps interrupting writing.

Mossie Girl is set in England in WW2 and tells the story of a girl growing up and becoming a draftsperson at de Havilland, working on the DH98 Mosquito. This is an aircraft that has always fascinated me; not as famous as the Spitfire, but the most versatile aircraft in the RAF - one version carried a Molins "6-pounder Class M" cannon fitted in its bomb bay!

This book is on hold as I need to complete quite a bit of research - and that means obtaining quite a few out-of-print books.

I have several other ideas on the back burner (including a much expanded story based on my SoL story After).

Thank you for reading my stories and take care of you and yours,

Iskander
(Robert Hart)