The Future of Storytelling: AI and the Art of Flash Fiction


Book Description

Can AI truly fathom literary artistry or emotion? Is there space for machine-human partnership expanding creative frontiers? As artificial intelligence permeates our world, intriguing questions arise around its role in the arts. In The Future of Storytelling: AI and the Art of Flash Fiction, writer Charles Eugene Anderson chronicles his adventures on the frontier of AI-assisted fiction. With warmth and wit, Anderson welcomes you along his journey pioneering techniques for wedding AI’s tireless productivity with human inspiration. Together you’ll craft micro tales brimming with life that no unaided algorithm could conjure. Blending AI’s idea generation with authors’ imaginations, Anderson reveals flash fiction’s ideal fit for testing this union’s potential. For our rushed era, flash fiction already provides a refuge through bite-sized yet transportive tales. Perhaps AI will further push emotional resonance within tightly-constrained words. Yet as creative AI advances, Anderson shares guidance in preventing artistic surrender. Join lively experiments unveiling surprises and delights where carbon and silicon minds intertwine! Both caution and curiosity guide this expedition into the possible future of authorship. So strap in for an illuminating voyage navigating the opportunities and pitfalls where human creativity collides with artificial, as we shape the literary landscape. Onward to adventure!




Grammar Matters


Book Description

If you are a teacher of grades K-6, you might be asking, "Shoud I teach grammar in my class on a daily basis? How would I go about doing this? And how can I teach grammar so it isn't boring to my kids?" In Grammar Matters, Lynne Dofman and Diane Dougherty answer these questions and more. Using mentor texts as the cornerstone for how best to teach grammar, this book provides teachers with almost everything they need to get kids not only engaged but excited about learning grammar. Divided into four parts--Narrative Writing, Informational Writing, Opinion Writing, and Grammar Conversations--this hand reference provides practical teaching tips, assessment ideas, grammar definitions, and specific mentor texts to help students learn about parts of speech, idoms, usage issues, and punctuation. Through "Your Turn Lessons," conversations, conferences, and drafting, revising, and editing exercies, students will learn not only specific concepts but also how to reflect upon and transfer what they have learned to other writing tasks, no matter the subject. The "Treasure Chest of Children's Books" provides an extensive list of both fiction and nonfiction books that fit naturally into grammar instruction. Eight appendices provide even more resources, including information on homophones, using mentor texts to teach grammar and conventions, checklists, comma rules, help for ELL students, and a glossary of ramar terms. Grammar Matters links instruction to the Common Core State Standards and features quality, classroom-tested tools that help teachers provide their students with the gifts of grammar and literacy.




Imagining AI


Book Description

AI is now a global phenomenon. Yet Hollywood narratives dominate perceptions of AI in the English-speaking West and beyond, and much of the technology itself is shaped by a disproportionately white, male, US-based elite. However, different cultures have been imagining intelligent machines since long before we could build them, in visions that vary greatly across religious, philosophical, literary and cinematic traditions. This book aims to spotlight these alternative visions. Imagining AI draws attention to the range and variety of visions of a future with intelligent machines and their potential significance for the research, regulation, and implementation of AI. The book is structured geographically, with each chapter presenting insights into how a specific region or culture imagines intelligent machines. The contributors, leading experts from academia and the arts, explore how the encounters between local narratives, digital technologies, and mainstream Western narratives create new imaginaries and insights in different contexts across the globe. The narratives they analyse range from ancient philosophy to contemporary science fiction, and visual art to policy discourse. The book sheds new light on some of the most important themes in AI ethics, from the differences between Chinese and American visions of AI, to digital neo-colonialism. It is an essential work for anyone wishing to understand how different cultural contexts interplay with the most significant technology of our time.




Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction


Book Description

Literary Nonfiction. Literary Criticism and History. Reference. With its unprecedented gathering of 25 brief essays by experts in the field, THE ROSE METAL PRESS FIELD GUIDE TO WRITING FLASH FICTION meets the growing need for a concise yet creative exploration of the re-emerging genre popularly known as flash fiction. The book's introduction provides, for the first time, a comprehensive history of the short short story, from its early roots and hitherto unknown early publications and appearances, to its current state and practice. This guide is a must for anyone in the field of short fiction who teaches, writes, and is interested in its genesis and practice.




How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy


Book Description

Learn to write science fiction and fantasy from a master You've always dreamed of writing science fiction and fantasy tales that pull readers into extraordinary new worlds and fantastic conflicts. Best-selling author Orson Scott Card shows you how it's done, distilling years of writing experience and publishing success into concise, no-nonsense advice. You'll learn how to: • utilize story elements that define the science fiction and fantasy genres • build, populate, and dramatize a credible, inviting world your readers will want to explore • develop the "rules" of time, space and magic that affect your world and its inhabitants • construct a compelling story by developing ideas, characters, and events that keep readers turning pages • find the markets for speculative fiction, reach them, and get published • submit queries, write cover letters, find an agent, and live the life of a writer The boundaries of your imagination are infinite. Explore them with Orson Scott Card and create fiction that casts a spell over agents, publishers, and readers from every world.




A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms


Book Description

The First How-To Strategy Guide to Transmedia Storytelling “Phillips’s book is a powerful tool for anyone who wants to make a career for him- or herself within the world of transmedia. Through her guidance, the reader is able to understand the fundamentals of transmedia and the power it can have when used with a compelling and strong story." —David Gale, Executive Vice President, MTV Cross Media “Transmedia storytelling is a bold and exciting new arena for creativity and innovation. . . . Andrea Phillips provides a compelling, thoughtful, and clear guide to a next generation of creators in this medium. She demystifies the process and proves that you, too, can push the envelope and be part of the future of storytelling.” —Michelle Satter, Founding Director, Sundance Institute Feature Film Program “An excellent and fair-minded primer and survey of the underpinnings and fast-evolving techniques behind multiplatform narrative. Andrea Phillips is one of a small handful of writers capable of both practicing and clearly conveying the principles of transmedia storytelling. Highly recommended!” —Jeff Gomez, CEO, Starlight Runner Entertainment “A no-nonsense guide for the fun-filled and strangely awesome world of transmedia storytelling.” —C. C. Chapman, coauthor of Content Rules and Amazing Things Will Happen Includes Q&A sessions with the world’s leading experts in transmedia storytelling About the Book: What is transmedia storytelling and what can it do for you? It’s the buzzword for a new generation—a revolutionary technique for telling stories across multiple media platforms and formats—and it’s rapidly becoming the go-to strategy for a wide variety of businesses. If you work in marketing, entertaining, or advertising, transmedia storytelling is a must-have tool for pulling people into your world. Why do you need A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling? If you want to attract, engage, and captivate your audience, you need this book. Written by an award-winning transmedia creator and renowned games designer, this book shows you how to utilize the same marketing tools used by heavy-hitters such as HBO, Disney, Ford, and Sony Pictures—at a fraction of the cost. You’ll learn how to: Choose the right platforms for your story Decide whether to DIY or outsource work Find and keep a strong core production team Make your audience a character in your story Get the funding you need—and even make a profit Forge your own successful transmedia career With these proven media-ready strategies, you’ll learn how to generate must-read content, must-see videos, and must-visit websites that will only grow bigger as viewers respond, contribute, and spread the word. You’ll create major buzz with structures such as alternate reality games and fictional character sites—or even “old-fashioned” platforms such as email and phone calls. The more you connect to your audience and the more you get them involved in the storytelling process, the more successful you will be. This isn’t the future. This is now. This is how you tell your story, touch your audience, and take your game to the next level—through transmedia storytelling.




The Ministry for the Future


Book Description

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR “The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem "If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox) The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis. "One hopes that this book is read widely—that Robinson’s audience, already large, grows by an order of magnitude. Because the point of his books is to fire the imagination."―New York Review of Books "If there’s any book that hit me hard this year, it was Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, a sweeping epic about climate change and humanity’s efforts to try and turn the tide before it’s too late." ―Polygon (Best of the Year) "Masterly." —New Yorker "[The Ministry for the Future] struck like a mallet hitting a gong, reverberating through the year ... it’s terrifying, unrelenting, but ultimately hopeful. Robinson is the SF writer of my lifetime, and this stands as some of his best work. It’s my book of the year." —Locus "Science-fiction visionary Kim Stanley Robinson makes the case for quantitative easing our way out of planetary doom." ―Bloomberg Green







The Age of Erring


Book Description

A female android named Saylor, also a psychiatric patient, struggles to escape an agonizing cycle of destruction and rebirth. One day—for no clear reason—all of the writers in the world just...disappear. A lady purchases a robotic twin of herself, leading to haunting self-discoveries. These are descriptions of just a few of the stories in The Age of Erring. In her third and most eclectic story collection yet, fantasy and science fiction author L.E. Henderson explores the twilit realms between dream and reality where anything is possible. Here she seeks to identify what is common about good story-telling of all genres, especially the quest of humans to understand their place in the universe, regardless of the planet, solar system, dream realm, or age. The Age of Erring is a fantasy and sci-fi anthology. If you like fast-paced stories that wake you up or haunting stories that transcend the boundaries of time and space, you will love this riveting book by L.E. Henderson. Download this book today.




Scorpion


Book Description

“An exceptional, fast-paced thriller featuring a tech-empowered assassin whose pattern and objective you’ve never seen before, chased by a heroine with tenacious grit.”—David Brin, author of The Postman and Existence Quinn Mitchell is a nine-to-five spy—an intelligence analyst for the CIA during the day, and a suburban wife and mother on evenings and weekends. After her young daughter is killed in a tragic accident, sending her life into a tailspin, Quinn hopes to find a new start in her latest assignment: investigating a series of bizarre international assassinations whose victims have been found with numeric codes tattooed, burned, or carved into their flesh. As Quinn follows the killer’s trail across the globe, always one body behind, she begins uncovering disturbing connections between the murders—and herself. Every lead she tracks down in pursuit of the assassin brings Quinn one step closer to the Epoch Index, a mysterious encrypted message discovered in the archives of the Large Hadron Collider. Its origins are unknown and decrypting it is beyond even the CIA. Yet nothing else can possibly link together a slew of unsolvable murders, an enigmatic and sophisticated serial killer who always seems to be three steps ahead, a quirky young physics prodigy whose knowledge extends well beyond her years, and, underlying everything, the inescapable tragedy of Quinn’s own past. Discovering the meaning of the Epoch Index leads Quinn to a shocking twist that shatters everything she thought she knew about the past, the future, and the delicate balance of right and wrong that she must now fight to preserve.