Writing
Recombinizing: Resonances and Tensions
Combine two unrelated things to make something new.
Hit shuffle on my Sublime collection.
Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbirdand A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had. And that is herself, her
... See moreAnna Quindlen • Anna Quindlen's Commencement Address at Villanova
making art
No matter what route you take, if you complete the journey, you will reach the same destination. This destination is a work we feel energized to share. One we look back on and wonder in amazement how it could have come from us.
Rick Rubin • The Creative Act: A Way of Being
The problem is no longer getting to express oneself but finding moments of solitude and silence in which one might eventually find something worth saying. – Gille Deleuze
Whether through imaginative engagement or literal neural synchrony, the psychology of narrative suggests that we crave stories aligning with how we actually think and remember. And how we think is often non-linear: full of associations, symbols, and relational webs. Thus, storytelling that “mirrors the mind” – with its tangents, recursions, and
... See moreCase in point: My best LLM-assisted short story is a straight-up transposition of an H. P. Lovecraft story to a different key. This is basically like buying into the S&P 500 of 20th century fiction. It is also among my best stories, period. For me, beating the S&P 500 of fiction is going to be hard. Doing passive++ investing in it is going to be... See more
A Random Walk Down Meme Street
A Random Walk Down Meme Street: Living in cultural index-fund Mary Sue civilizations Venkatesh Rao May 01, 2025
textual and video extended universes
Last week, in Protocolized, I published a story called The Signal Under Innsmouth.
This has been my best attempt at AI-assisted fiction writing to date, and also one of the easiest. I simply fed the original story (The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a cult classic which Lovecraft wrote in 1937, so it’s in the public domain — not that I’d have hesitated if... See more
This has been my best attempt at AI-assisted fiction writing to date, and also one of the easiest. I simply fed the original story (The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a cult classic which Lovecraft wrote in 1937, so it’s in the public domain — not that I’d have hesitated if... See more
April 2025 Articles
The Ecstasy of Deep Influence Venkatesh Rao 4.15.2025