It is told among the Elves that after Eärendil had departed, seeking Elwing his wife, Mandos spoke concerning his fate; and he said: ‘Shall mortal Man step living upon the undying lands, and yet live?’ But Ulmo said: ‘For this he was born into the world. And say unto me: whether is he Eärendil Tuor’s son of the line of Hador, or the son of Idril, Turgon’s daughter, of the Elven-house of Finwë?’ And Mandos answered: ‘Equally the Noldor, who went wilfully into exile, may not return hither.’ But when all was spoken, Manwë gave judgement, and he said: ‘In…
I do not think that even Power or Domination is the real centre of my story. It provides the theme of a War, about something dark and threatening enough to seem at that time of supreme importance, but that is mainly ‘a setting’ for characters to show themselves. The real theme for me is about something much more permanent and difficult: Death and Immortality: the mystery of the love of the world in the hearts of a race ‘doomed’ to leave and seemingly lose it; the anguish in the hearts of a race ‘doomed’ not to leave it, until its…
Sadness is, perhaps, not an emotion that is often associated with the myriad feelings surrounding generative AI. Anger, despair, fear, suspicion — these will likely be familiar to some. I must confess, I do not as of yet truly understand the more positive emotions some seem to have toward AI LLMs, and so I will not speak to them. Sadness, though, is perhaps not the most obvious emotion — and yet I think it is the one that best describes how I feel about generative AI, and how I have felt for some time. Or, rather better, how I feel…
There once was a great war, and ere its end did many meet Death before their time. But the war ended, as such things must, and the great armies disbanded and the soldiers left the blood-soaked fields of battle and they returned to their homes. Three such soldiers travelled a long road together, for they hailed from the same small distant town, and so for many days did they journey in the company of each other. Yet through an ill chance, though they had long avoided the spectre of death through all that terrible war, Death nevertheless met them on…
I have written a book. There’s really no good way to say that, so I think I’m just going to have to say it again — for my own sake as much as for anything else. I have written a book. It is written. It is a book. I have written it. The book that I wrote has been written. By me. You may observe that this statement says something quite big — that I have written a book. And that it also doesn’t say quite a lot of other big things. I have not edited, finished, or published a…
