Episode 5

Ep. 5: Fiction in the age of AI / Time travel to 1989

The whole reason for my podcast and my substack is to once more explore writing: both fiction and non-fiction. However, since I left high school, and until last year, I had put creative writing to the side unless it was to create campaigns for Dungeons and Dragons.

When I was in highschool I was always writing, both in school and outside school. Sadly, in my family's many moves, most of that writing has been lost. When I was 8 and living in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, I distinctly remember writing a 20-chapter Famous Five novel of my own. I was very much into Enid Blyton and especially the Famous Five.

During a visit to my now 85-year-old mother last year, she handed me several file folders. They contained, to my horror, all of my report cards from every class along with some other curiousities. In 1989, when I was 14, the South China Morning Post in Hongkong where we were then living, ran a Short Story Competition. I sincerely have no recollection of entering it, but somehow my entry came third and was published.

I had forgotten this until I saw the printed entry tucked into the file folders. Today, I'm actually going to read that out in this podcast. I can absolutely understand how cringy this will be. There's nothing like reading teenage fiction.

But before making your ears bleed I want to delve into the topic of fiction in the age of generative AI. In Episodes 2 and 3 I discussed how AI was changing the face of coding and technology creation, but what about the other creative arts?

Fiction in the age of AI

Read the written version of “Fiction in the age of AI

The Nervous Nineties: Voyage through darkness into the black whirlpool

Read the written version of my short story: “The Nervous Nineties: Voyage through darkness into the black whirlpool

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About the Podcast

Show artwork for Tales under the cat tree: Conversations on Imagination, Tech & Human Adventure
Tales under the cat tree: Conversations on Imagination, Tech & Human Adventure
Hosted by tech leader and storyteller Duleepa Wijayawardhana, this podcast explores the intersections of technology, fiction, and human adventure. Words create the worlds we live in—join us for weekly conversations that spark your imagination.

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About your host

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Duleepa Wijayawardhana

It started with late nights, glue sticks, and a university newspaper / radio.

That early obsession with how words reach people took me from student journalism to a career spanning the globe. I’ve gone from designing newspapers and having radio shows to building systems at BioWare (yes, the RPG legends), managing data at MySQL, and now leading tech at Supermetrics in Helsinki.

But at my core, I’m still that geek who believes writing is just code for the human mind.

While a computer chip executes code exactly, your imagination runs stories based on your own unique wiring. Tales under the cat tree is where we run those programs together. Whether we're exploring the fiction that inspires us or the tech that defines us, my goal is to spark your imagination and—most importantly—never make you go "meh."

Words create the worlds we live in. Let's explore them.