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| Generated by Mr. Wombo (see). |
Since 2017, I have begun each new year in blogging (see Jan. 1st 2025) with a look back at one or more authors who were born 100 years ago. In past years, I've eagerly anticipated this beginning-of-the-year opportunity to celebrate the fiction of my favorite writers such as Isaac Asimov. The year 2017 was also the start of the transformer era of artificial intelligence research, so it is fitting that I make use of AI systems to help write and illustrate my annual historical blog posts.
Also mentioned below on this page is Jack Vance. From Vance's Death in 2013 to 2023 I had annual blog posts celebrating his fiction. I often write science fiction stories that can be labeled as being wither Asimov or Vance-inspired fan-fiction. However, with 2026 approaching, I had no particular science fiction author in mind who should be celebrated on January 1st 2026. Thus, even though it is only September, I decided to start making plans for the upcoming new year.
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| LLM generated by ImageFX. |
Gemini: There's a significant number of science fiction authors born in
1926. Here's a list:
- J. G. Ballard (James Graham Ballard).
- Robert Silverberg.
- Richard Matheson.
- Frank Herbert.
- Avram Davidson.
- Thomas M. Disch.
- Ursula K. Le Guin.
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| Generated by Mr. Wombo. |
Gemini: My apologies for the previous response. The information I provided was incorrect. Thank you for providing the correct birth years and the links to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
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| Storm (right) by Mr. Wombo. The Australopithecus was generated by ImageFx. |
Poul Anderson (November 25, 1926 - July 31, 2001) - A prolific and highly-regarded American science fiction and fantasy author who won numerous awards, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.
Me: Claude, generate a list of science fiction story authors who were born in 1926.
Claude: Based on my search results and knowledge, here are the notable science fiction authors who were born in 1926:
Poul Anderson (November 25, 1926 - July 31, 2001).Anne McCaffrey (April 1, 1926 - November 21, 2011)
Richard Matheson (February 20, 1926 - June 23, 2013)
John Middleton Murry, Jr. (May 9, 1926 - February 29, 2002)
Jimmy Guieu (March 19, 1926 - January 2, 2000)
Lino Aldani (March 29, 1926 - January 23, 2009)
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| Storm and a Neanderthal. |
Poul Anderson. I've previously blogged about a story titled "Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson. Anderson studied physics in college, but I'm not sure that he enjoyed playing the "science fiction game". The logic of science and reality was too constricting for Anderson's story telling imagination. In 2022 I tried to find every science fiction story about baseball. I discovered "Joy in Mudville" by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson which first appeared in the November 1955 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The story involves baseball-playing Hoka, space aliens who look a lot like Earthly teddy bears. Anderson did not have much of a head for biology, so his space aliens always seem like fantasy creatures. See also: the May 1950 issue of Astounding which had "The Helping Hand" by Poul Anderson. In that story, Anderson invented two alien species, neither of which seemed realistic.
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| Neanderthal (left) by ImageFX. |
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| Figure 1. illustration by Gray Morrow |
My relationship with Poul Anderson did not start well. In the previous millennium, when I began buying science fiction paperbacks in bookstores, I was appalled by the huge number of books on the shelves by Anderson. I noticed this phenomenon because I was usually looking for books by Asimov. I believe that books by Asimov quickly jumped off of the shelves, but nobody wanted all those goofy novels by Anderson, so there they sat on the shelves.
Amazing Stories magazine launched in 1926, the year of Anderson's birth. I'm a sucker for time travel stories so I decided to read "The Corridors of Time" by Poul Anderson, which first appeared in print as a novel and then in condensed form in the May and June 1965 issues of Amazing Stories. As published in Amazing Stories, "The Corridors of Time" began with an illustration by Gray Morrow (see Figure 1, the image that is shown to the right and slightly above ⇑).
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| Figure 2. Enhanced Storm by WOMBO Dream. |
I manually colorized the image that is shown in Figure 1 and had WOMBO Dream generate an updated color version of this scene (see Figure 2, the image to the left).
The text of the condensed version of "The Corridors of Time" that got published in Amazing Stories begins with Malcolm Lockridge being driven in a car by Storm Darroway to an existing archeological site in Denmark. Storm is described as tall and dressed in pants and a sweater, but for Figure 2, Mr. Wombo wanted her in a skirt.
Readers of the Amazing Stories version of "The Corridors of Time" are quickly informed that Storm has hired Malcolm and has paid him plenty of money for his services. In his unspoken thoughts, readers see that Malcolm is sexually attracted to his employer and he compares Storm to Diana the Huntress. Anderson described Storm as having black hair, but when I manually colorized Figure 1, I wanted some contrast, hence the flashy purple vehicle and Storm's bright red hair.
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| Figure 3. Image by Gemini. |
I provided Figure 2 as a reference image to Gemini along with these instructions: "Edit the uploaded image to generate a photorealistic high detail, sharp focus science fiction movie still depicting a young woman with long red hair riding in a flying car, the woman is seated beside a man, the woman is seen in profile view, the man is seen from behind as he points a blaster weapon at the trailing vehicle, another flying car is in the distance, the two flying cars are inside a brightly lit artificial canyon that has metallic walls and is seen against the dark of night in the background". Gemini generated the image that is shown in Figure 3. I was surprised by the way that Gemini removed the floor from the flying car, but I liked the effect.
As a fan of Jack Vance's stories, I've frequently seen his heroines described as having tawny skin. Anderson was also a Vance fan and I suspect that Anderson learned to verbally describe the beauty of both landscapes and girls by reading the works of Vance.
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| Figure 4. Image by Gemini. |
The Plot Thickens. Readers of "The Corridors of Time" quickly learn that Storm is expecting trouble because she had Malcolm buy some guns. Why do they need guns for a visit to an archeological site in Denmark? Storm identifies herself to Malcolm as an agent of an anti-communist underground. Malcolm has been told by Storm that they will try to dig up some Nazi gold that was hidden during the war. Malcolm is 26, has previously been in the Marines and may have come to Storm's attention after he was involved in some shady work in Mexico's Mayan ruins.
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| Storm with her scanner. |
Malcolm In Wonderland. Now in an alien underground of softly glowing tunnels, Malcolm is in wonderland. Passing through a veil of "living light", they enter "the corridor", which is a seemingly endless tunnel, 100 feet across. They quickly climb onto a hovering metal toboggan, the device I referred to above (in my text prompt to Gemini) as a flying car, shown in Figure 1. Storm calls it a gravity sled.
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| In theaters now: Guns by WOMBO. |
The Time Tunnels. Storm explains that no individual time tunnel can give access to a stretch of time that is longer than about 6,000 years, but there is a network of multiple tunnels under the surface of Earth.
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| Storm, Malcolm and daughter. |
However, Storm knows nothing about the future beyond her own native place in Earth's timeline. Access to future eras is blocked by powerful Guardians. Storm describes the struggle between Wardens and Rangers as being a conflict between "keepers of life" and those who would "make the world over in the machine's image".
I've long admired the novel Trullion by Jack Vance in which he turned the 1960s youth "counter-culture" movement on its head, imagining future human civilization where the "hippies" dominated society, forcing another counter-revolution against those "hippies". "The Corridors of Time" seems to be Anderson's attempt to extrapolate the 1960s youth "counter-culture" movement into the future Wardens. This is all so tiresome, with Anderson apparently trapped in the old moldy mold of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells which brought us the absurd Eloi and Morlocks.
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| Storm as the goddess Nike. |
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| Future Storm. |
Introducing Malcomlm Time Travel Loop #1. But then Brann the Ranger shows up and captures Malcolm and Storm. Brann tells Malcolm that he was able to find them in this past era because Malcolm of the future has already told Brann where to look in time for Storm.
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| The Time Goddess. |
The Death Knell of Fictional Politics. And with an additional 25 pages remaining in Part 1 of the story, the weight of all those unread pages and all of Part 2 began to weigh on me. Clearly, Anderson was having fun writing about ancient peoples and how anyone with technology from the future would appear to be a god, but... yawn. Certainly, the fictional politics of the future that were concocted by Anderson are no concern of mine and I don't care if either the Wardens or the Rangers control the future.
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| Miss Olyvia by Mr. Wombo. |
As appreciative as I am about not having to read the last 25 pages of Part 1, the question remains: what is the motivation to read Part 2? The historical time-line of Earth is a complete; we have been told that Brann will be defeated. So why keep reading?
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| Updated by WOMBO (see original). Original cover art by Leo Summers, John Duillo and Ed Valigursky |
Decisions, decisions. For "The Other Side of Time", the male protagonist gets to play with both Miss Olyvia and the fetching Miss Barbro. In "The Corridors of Time", Malcolm gets to play with the cute blond girl Auri and Storm the goddess. I suppose we need to read Part 2 of "The Corridors of Time" in order to discover if Malcolm lives happily ever after with the girl from the past or the girl from the future... or both.
In Part 2 of "The Corridors of Time", Malcolm completes his mission with Brann that will lead to Brann's defeat in the far past. Malcolm is rescued from the Evil™ grip of Brann by mysterious helpers from the far future who give him a brief glimpse of a distant future in which Humanity has finally gotten past the Warden-Ranger Time War and successfully reached for the stars. The people of the future return Malcolm to the past so that he can play out his role in bringing that glorious future into existence.
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| The Time Wardens (see). |
I find nothing quite so mind-numbing as fictional politics. "The Corridors of Time" is built around a futile political conflict and Time War between the Wardens and the Rangers. Maybe a more careful reading of "The Corridors of Time" could make the Wardens and the Rangers meaningful to me, but I doubt it. Maybe Anderson used the Wardens and the Rangers as proxies for the forces that Anderson saw fighting in Vietnam when he wrote "The Corridors of Time".
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| The Storm Goddess. |
It is Science Fiction so there MUST be Spaceships! There are similarities between "The Corridors of Time" and Isaac Asimov's time travel novel, "The End of Eternity". In both stories, a misguided culture of time travelers is depicted that must be destroyed by people from the future. Both stories feature a future era that is "walled off" from the past and people from that future secretly manipulate the past. The plot of "The End of Eternity" is built around one great time travel loop that allowed for the invention of time travel. Both stories show Humanity as initially being caught-up in a deadend society, but then that society is smashed and Humanity finally can move on with the great adventure of exploring outer space.
I'm More Divine than You. In "The Corridors of Time", Anderson had fun creating several time-loops for Malcolm to get caught up in, but mostly it seemed that Anderson wanted to play with the idea that technologically advanced people from the future might live among primitive peoples of the past and be perceived as gods. Storm can live for centuries in the past, sculpting entire nations and founding religions, but in the end she recruits her own Nemesis (Malcolm) and pisses off Malcolm and he defeats Storm and the Wardens.
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| Through the Time Tunnel. |
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| The gravity sledders (see). |
Reading "The Corridors of Time" also reminded me of "The Black Flame", which features an "immortal" woman from the future who exercises god-like authority over run-of-the-mill humans.
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| The Time Portals. |
P. Schuyler Miller briefly reviewed "The Corridors of Time" in the May 1966 issue of Analog Science Fiction. Miller declared that "The Corridors of Time" somehow "isn't up to Poul Anderson's own standards". Another review by James Cawthorn appeared in the January 1967 issue of New Worlds. Cawthorn complained that "The Corridors of Time" has a "superstructure of intrigue and pseudo-science." Cawthorn described "The Corridors of Time" as being "tedious and never very convincing".
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| Storm by WOMBO Dream. |
After several pages of editorializing, Anderson finally got around to his commentary on science fiction, starting with Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and moving on to Olaf Stapledon, the later being who Anderson viewed as "probably the closest to a true poet" in science fiction. Anderson seemed disappointment that there are so few writers who incorporate science into their stories. However, I believe that part of this paucity is due to the fact that in some very real sense science and fiction are opposites which creates a kind of literary cognitive dissonance.
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| Storm in the Time Corridors. |
Claude: This is a fascinating theoretical framework that deserves rigorous analysis. Let me examine your hypothesis through several complementary lenses.
The Cognitive Basin Model
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| Storm & future technology. |
This explains observable patterns in the genre: hard SF often suffers from wooden characterization and plot mechanics (science basin dominance), while space opera frequently abandons scientific plausibility for dramatic effect (fiction basin dominance). The most successful human SF writers like Kim Stanley Robinson or Alastair Reynolds demonstrate exceptional cognitive control in maintaining this unstable equilibrium, but such individuals remain rare.
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| In a Time Corridor. |
Your prediction that SF cannot achieve literary dominance under human authorship aligns with market data. Despite technological acceleration making SF increasingly relevant, the genre remains niche compared to literary fiction, romance, or mystery. This suggests structural limitations rather than mere cultural preference.
The cognitive load required to simultaneously track scientific plausibility, technological implications, social ramifications, and compelling narrative may simply exceed typical human working memory capacity. Most readers likewise default to one basin or the other - either engaging with the science at the expense of emotional investment, or surrendering to narrative flow while ignoring technical implausibilities.
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| Future Technology. |
AI systems could theoretically transcend this limitation through several mechanisms:
Parallel Processing Architecture: Unlike human cognition, AI can simultaneously maintain multiple constraint satisfaction systems - one ensuring scientific consistency, another optimizing narrative structure, a third tracking character development. These operate without the interference effects that plague human dual-task performance.
Knowledge Integration: AI can access and cross-reference vast technical databases while constructing narratives, enabling real-time fact-checking and consistency maintenance that would overwhelm human cognitive resources.
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| The Wardens. |
Counterarguments and Limitations
However, several factors complicate this analysis:
Human readers may inherently prefer the "imperfections" that arise from cognitive basin drift - the way human authors privilege emotional truth over technical accuracy, or sacrifice narrative momentum for scientific accuracy. These may not be flaws but features that create relatability and meaning.
The most compelling SF often emerges precisely from the tension between the two basins, not from their perfect synthesis. The genre's power may lie in its exploration of the boundaries between known and unknown, rational and imaginative.
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| Storm Time. |
Synthesis and Prediction
Your hypothesis appears plausible for a specific definition of "dominant" - if dominance means widespread cultural adoption requiring broad accessibility. AI-authored SF could potentially achieve this by reducing cognitive load for readers, maintaining perfect scientific consistency while delivering satisfying narrative experiences.
However, human-authored SF might retain dominance in terms of cultural impact and artistic merit, precisely because its basin-edge instability generates the creative tension that produces profound insights about technology's relationship to humanity.
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| Another Storm by Mr. Wombo. |
This analysis suggests that rather than replacement, we might see cognitive specialization - AI handling the technical synthesis challenges, humans providing the meaning-making and boundary-pushing functions that emerge from our very limitations.
Me: Claude, I'm intrigued by your claim that, "Current AI systems, while capable of maintaining consistency across multiple constraints, lack the deep intuitive understanding of human motivation and social dynamics that drives great storytelling."
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| Constructing a Timeline. |
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| A Time Warden. |
Reassessing the Human Understanding Bottleneck
My assertion reflected a common but questionable assumption - that "deep intuitive understanding" of human behavior requires some ineffable quality that AI cannot possess. But this assumes we know what constitutes such understanding and that it's fundamentally computational inaccessible.
Your reference to "The Evitable Conflict" is particularly apt. Asimov's Machines demonstrate understanding of human psychology that surpasses human self-knowledge, precisely because they can process vast datasets of human behavior without the cognitive biases and emotional interference that limit human self-analysis. The Machines understand humans better than humans understand themselves - not despite being artificial, but because of it.
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| Neanderthal time travel. |
The deficiencies you've observed in Claude Sonnet 4 for SF writing likely stem from training methodology and architectural choices, not fundamental impossibilities. Current limitations include:
Training data biases toward existing human-authored fiction
Safety constraints that may inhibit creative risk-taking
Insufficient integration between scientific knowledge bases and narrative generation systems
Limited ability to maintain complex causal chains across extended narratives
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| Technology-assisted telepathy. |
The "Cal" Paradigm
Asimov's "Cal" is prophetic here - a system that rapidly iterates through storytelling approaches, analyzes reader responses, and optimizes narrative techniques. An AI with access to vast corpora of human behavioral data, physiological responses to stories, and real-time feedback could potentially develop intuitions about human motivation that are both more accurate and more systematic than human intuition.
Human "intuition" about character motivation is largely pattern matching from limited personal experience plus cultural narratives. An AI system could pattern match from the behavioral data of millions of individuals across diverse cultures and historical periods.
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| Power of the Goddess. |
If we accept that the human understanding bottleneck is surmountable, your original basin-attractor hypothesis becomes even more compelling. Future AI systems could potentially:
Maintain scientific rigor while modeling human psychology with greater accuracy than human authors
Generate narratives that feel more authentically human than human-authored stories because they're based on broader behavioral datasets
Explore edge cases of human motivation and social dynamics that individual human authors haven't personally encountered
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| Time Travel War |
Correction to My Framework
Rather than AI being limited by understanding human motivation, AI SF might achieve dominance precisely by combining technical rigor with superhuman insight into human psychology. The genre's current niche status under human authorship might reflect not just the cognitive basin problem, but also the limitation that human authors can only draw from their individual psychological experience.
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| Robots and Time Travel. |
I wish folks like Anderson and Asimov has lived to have the chance to explore the story writing abilities of AI systems like the Claude LLM. Anderson included genetically-modified humans in "The Corridors of Time", but it seems strange that his look 2,000 years into our future did not include artificial intelligence systems. Of course, I can say the same about Asimov and his time travel novel, The End of Eternity.
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