Lee Schneider === Don Bishop: Welcome to the Grand Hill Chronicles podcast. My name is Don Bishop, and I write as T. S. Pedramont. Today on the show with me, I have, uh, science fiction author Lee Schneider. You can find Lee Schneider's website at futurex. studio. And, uh, I feel bad to him that I, uh, I am publishing this episode at such a delay. Uh, I had a lot of things come at me, and it's been a few months. We recorded this on August 2nd of this year, and today is December 6th. So, yeah, you know, a solid four months and four days. Um, I've been kind of out of it, and I think I've published one time since then, maybe, maybe a little more, but things have been pretty busy in, uh, in my court, and I am now getting back to the podcast. I hope to publish weekly, uh, steadily on Thursday, starting yester whoops, starting yesterday, except I missed yesterday. Uh, hopefully I'll be able to edit next week's episode ahead of time, and, uh, and we'll keep it up from there. I already have a few more episodes already. So it's just a question of, uh, of getting them edited and published. And I know I've, I've teased the, the one, um, with Moon and Mist with the, um, what's it called? LARPing. Uh, hopefully I'll get that to you next week. That one takes a little bit more editing. But, um, anyway, yeah, so I had a great conversation with Lee Schneider. I think you'll appreciate it. He's obviously an intelligent and well read, uh, individual. And, um, yeah. Again, you can check out his website. I'll have, and we give his social media handles at the end of the episode. Those will also be in the show notes, so you can look them up. And, um, yeah, I think this is my first episode releasing after the launch of my second book, if my memory serves me, which it likely does not. But, um, Nightshade Unicorn Book 2 Guardian has been out for over a month, and you can find that, uh, just go to my website, pedramon. com, and you'll find links there. You can always search for it on Amazon as well. But, um, Yeah, let's jump into the interview with Lee Schneider and to everyone. I'll see you next week and Enjoy the interview and Yeah, I think his trilogy sounds interesting Uh, book two recently came out now, uh, Lee, why don't we get to know you a little bit? How did you come into writing and how did you, uh, what's, what's your journey? Lee Schneider: Well I started really wanting to do what I'm doing now when I was about 19 or so I was writing short stories just because I was that kind of kid and I read a lot and uh, I was interested in media and tape recorders and things like that, but it got serious when I realized that. I could actually make some money with writing. Uh, it was my skill. You know, we all come to this point, especially in our late teens, early twenties, where maybe you figure out what you're good at. And for me, at that point, it was just writing. Uh, now I do a lot of production stuff, and things aside from writing, and I don't make a lot of money with novel writing, but the skill of writing is what really propelled me through so many things. Uh, I've, uh, Written plays and produced plays in New York, and I came out here to California. Quite a long time ago, uh, to write movies and television and did a lot of that. And, um, uh, after a couple of kids and getting, getting married and a couple of kids, I decided to make some real money because that's what you have to do at that point. Uh, just to be a responsible dad and human. So I started writing. Television news and documentaries, and I work for Dateline NBC and for various cable networks doing cable television stuff as an executive producer, writer, director. But all through that, I was writing, you know, writing sometimes whole novels. that are in a drawer right now, because, you know, if you're going to be honest with yourself, not every novel, at least that I wrote, worked. I could, I recently threw out a thousand page monster of a novel that I had started over and gone back over and tried it again, and I had, you know, a stack like that, and I said, you know, I'm not opening this monster again, and I actually I threw it out, which sounds shocking, but it's actually rather freeing. I have a few other novels, too, that, you know, I liked, but no one else quite connected with. Uh, so I put them aside, and I found, uh, this, a theme of climate change just through life. I'd always been interested in science fiction. Uh, I love, um, Ursula Le Guin books and Isaac Asimov books, and I'd always read those. Uh, and science fiction adjacent kind of books, but, um, you know, this started to work. I started, you know, books come out of me in a way that I almost sounds strange to say that I can't control them, but. They, they just start coming out of me, you know, I start writing notes, the characters start talking to me, uh, the characters ask for bigger roles, they want this scene to happen, I start making diagrams and charts and mind maps, and the next thing I know, you know, I can't stop thinking about it, and I write diaries of the characters in their voice, so if, if anyone ever looked in. One of my notebooks and saw all this weird stuff. You know, it's not me. It's I'm writing in the voice of the character. So the first book, uh, was really hard to write. And so is the second book, you know, for for different reasons. But I found. The thing about these long form writing tasks is that you're going to live with that for a very long time. You know, you're going to, you're going to need years with that. So you better find a lot in it. Uh, so find a lot to connect. Yeah. So go ahead. Don Bishop: You're, you're referencing your books. Uh, is, is this a trilogy? And I'm looking for the name of it again. Um, Lee Schneider: the first is called surrender and the second is called resist. And Don Bishop: sorry, there is a little bit of delay, so we have awkward moments. It's fine. Um, and the name of the series then is, is what? The Utopia Engine Trilogy. Lee Schneider: It's actually, you know, when you write science fiction, you're lucky as a fantasy writer, you don't have to be depressing. But when you write science fiction, sometimes it's kind of depressing, and there's this dystopian, Haze over the whole thing and I'm trying not to do that. I'm trying to find characters and Scenarios that are not depressing, you know, they may be Tension filled and they may be dramatic but uh, I'm aiming for utopia Don Bishop: Okay, that's uh, I have a lot of thoughts just from from what you just said. Um, so yeah your your trilogy Uh, when did the first book come out? Lee Schneider: The first book came out, uh last year And then book two Don Bishop: was in June, Lee Schneider: book two was in June, correct. Don Bishop: Okay. Are we looking for book three in summer of next year in 25? Lee Schneider: If all goes well, yeah, I'm about, I'm about 30, 000 words into 120, 000 word tasks. So I'll probably, I was about Don Bishop: to ask also how long, how long your books are. Lee Schneider: Well, I'm trying, you know, I, the second one, Tracked out to be more well more than 300 pages and my editor said you have to cut this and I said no and but she was right, of course, so I Cut out some pretty big chunks and there's sections of it that you know aren't even maybe we'll never see the light of day or Maybe we'll be short stories or something because although I'm a meticulous Outliner, you know, there's a, the schools of being an outliner or a pants or I'm, I'm certainly not a seat of the pants guy. I outline, but there are parts that just go off track or it feels good writing it in the moment and it's not going to make it. You know, it doesn't, it's not on message for the book or the character. This happens occasionally. I don't know if you've had this, but Characters occasionally pull the story off track and then they sort of have to be fired or Given a good good talking to Well, Don Bishop: I have yeah, I have a character or two in in my nightshade unicorn series. Oh, which I did not Make sure to frame carefully in the in the image. No, so, um in book one I needed this little group of characters and and now a couple of them are definitely coming back in book two And there were five of them, a group of five, and maybe all five don't need to come back, but I think three of them do. And that's just because of things that happened, things that interactions they had with the main character, uh, mean that there is a story that the reader's going to want to know, like what happens with this character or what hap, what do they do anything? And I'm going to have to tell that. So yeah, like I, I was not intending them to be significant, but they're. We'll see. We'll see. Lee Schneider: Yeah. The we'll see is a very important part of this, I find. You know, there, there are times where I say, I've got a great idea for a scene or this is the opening scene in the book. This is it. And then a year later, I look at that scene and say, no, actually, that was a good idea, but it's not so great for the opening scene of this book, or it might not even make it in the book. So the ground shifts a lot. The, the themes don't shift, you know, If you look back at your notebooks, if I look back at my notebooks and the things that I've highlighted, it's the same stuff that I've been highlighting for the past 20 years. Like the things that I think are interesting, it's all, you know, it doesn't, that doesn't change that much. Creating scenes in a book that work, that can change, I think, quite a lot. You know, that, you can, it's, there's a lot of room there, because some things, that I think are really cool. You know, a reader, an early beta reader will say, I didn't get this scene, or I don't know why this is in here. Which is, you know, hard, but good to know. Don Bishop: And, um, something you said, I want to pull out some strings and see where it takes us. And kind of just kind of explore this, this idea, uh, cause you said that science fiction almost has to be kind of depressing. And I, I think there are bounds to that statement. I think there are flavors or, or, or varieties of science fiction where it may necessarily be. So, and, uh, I, I, I don't know, I'd have to explore that, but I think also there are. Ways that you can do sci fi that, that would not be depressing. Um, and I say that from a position of, I have a sci fi series in mind. Uh, I have my nightshade unicorn series and hopefully next up will be the grand Hill chronicles. Um, maybe, maybe not. And then I have a sci fi series planned and I do not have that in mind to be depressing, but it's. It's, um, it's not at all like Star Trek, but you can put it in a category where, like Star Trek, humanity is reaching other solar systems. And I'll just stop there. But, um, yeah, why don't you tell us more about how you see sci fi as, at least for some varieties, where it's Where almost has to be depressing Lee Schneider: Well, we live in troubling times, you know, what's the the uh old expression may you live in interesting times? Uh, and sci fi can certainly run the gamut from star trek to alien now What happens I think with a lot of Don Bishop: I never saw alien by the way, it's Lee Schneider: very scary Don't don't if you don't have to stay away read Read read something else do something else Uh I think that what happens is in, when you want to grab an audience, one of the first knee jerk ways to do it is to scare the heck out of them. Uh, it started with a book called Frankenstein, and which many say is the first, uh, Science fiction book and, you know, Lovecraft, who's the guy who kind of came up with Alien, but they don't credit H. P. Lovecraft with that, you know, wrote a lot of very scary, dark situations. So it's an audience grabber and that can't be ignored. But at the same time, one thing that I really like about, say, Ursula Le Guin is she's imagining these. Crazy planets and new worlds and different ways of being and it's scary and difficult and hard And people die But there's an underlying Tone, let's call it in the chord. I see a piano behind you. So i'll make a musical reference. Yeah, there's you know, the root chord is Optimism that these people are going to work it out Don Bishop: Yeah, and actually that kind of surprised me because horror isn't really my thing. But um, You Steve diamond on the writer dojo podcast. He talked about how horror has this theme of hope. Uh, and that kind of surprised me because like I said, horror isn't really my thing. So I haven't consumed a lot of horror and I did not know that I did not catch up, uh, pick up on, on that underlying theme of, of a lot of horror, you know, like my, my enjoyment of horror goes as far as. Rain of fire because to me that's that's sci fi that that's what I liked about it was was sci fi um, and so it was a lot scarier than I like, um, at least when I first saw it when I was 18 or 19 18. Um, this is not my thing, you know but that thing of hope is You know, i'm talking too much about nothing. So What was she saying Lee Schneider: the the you know, the note of hope is interesting because You I would say that any book that you finish has a note of hope, because you probably wouldn't finish it if it didn't have hope at the end. Even the roughest What about, Don Bishop: what about Planet of the Apes, the original Charlton Heston? Lee Schneider: Well, okay, um, but still, or even 2001, you know, the, the Kubrick, the Kubrick movie. I think there has to be a note of life goes on, on the, on the very most basic level. But I think that Even in the most, um, elite child's novel or the John Wick series or something that's, you know, quite brutal, you still root for John Wick to win, to live at the end. There's a note of hope that the good guys, even if they're compromised or even if they have their problems, the good guys are somehow going to come out on top and have another adventure. And that's kind of the underlying thing of any series. Basically, when you commit as a reader to a series, be it 10 parts, you know, Harry Potter or three parts, you're committing to liking the characters and you're committing to some note that they're going to make it like if Harry Potter died in book two, I don't think we'd have that great book. Series on our hands, you know, there's no way to come back from that Uh huh, and if you killed even james bond or john wick or somebody like that in book two or three You know, ian fleming was smart enough not to do that even though The bond character is a rather compromised morally character, so I think that Optimism and hope is basically the, the, um, the fuel of the story, uh, in a, in a kind of a root tone way. Uh, when you're writing about the future, you know, there's a lot of ways to approach that. You're writing about a future that we hope will happen or hope won't happen. But either way, if you're writing about a future we hope won't happen, it's a model. The interesting thing that I'm finding about writing near future or speculative fiction is that it's modeling. It's modeling the behaviors of your characters in a situation that we may be in or we may not be in. Hopefully not, but let's say we are. We get to see these heroic characters. Model successful behavior so they survive, so they solve the problems. And I think even in the scariest alien movie, there is that no, if, if, if that alien movie ended with everybody on the ship dead, and the alien, you know, cracking open a brewski and saying, I won. I don't think you'd have a lot of alien movies being made. You know, I mean, you, you need to have your heroic characters modeling. Successful behavior. That's what people show up for and that's what they're reading for. Don Bishop: Okay. Um, why don't you tell us more about about, uh, your utopian, utopian engine, uh, trilogy. What is the. The basis, or the um, synopsis, whatever, the blurb. Lee Schneider: The blurb. By the way, blurbs are the hardest things ever to write. I don't know if you've, it's, I, I sweated more over the blurb. Don Bishop: You have to catch attention quickly and, and tell what the book is about, about, and somehow, somehow do it justice. And like, 40, 80, whatever the case may be, however much room you have. Yeah, it's pretty square. So a few words. Lee Schneider: Yeah, definitely. Well, let me try that here, uh, ad libbing it. Uh, I wanted to look at a world where an AI, a company that had controlled AI, like an open AI, but not really, you know, a few generations beyond that, was controlling the climate, controlling banking, controlling education, where humans had decided, you know, this AI thing, it's probably smarter than we are, let's let it run things. And what did that really look like? You know, not so good, but. Uh, and yeah, so there's that, uh, a large corporation called mind and there's a group of rebels who are mostly women led, who are trying to create a life that mind doesn't oppress them, you know, doesn't control everything. And the people who run mind, of course, find out about that and, and try to get rid of those rebels and the rebels battle back. That's the simplest explanation. There's a, there's an interesting, um, Side story and that living with a I became a theme in this. Where, you know, I started to ask these questions like, um, what if your boss were an AI, like you didn't even have a human boss or what if you lost a husband or wife and you could get an AI to impersonate that person enough to convince you that they might even be still around. And what if you weren't sure whether people were real or not, or they were avatars or creations. And I started thinking about like the. Not only the what if, but it will be here. So how would we deal with all that on an everyday level? On a, you know, without worrying about how it worked. You know, you were talking to Alexa a moment ago and, you know, we just, Yeah. We just assume that we're going to start talking to something and it's going to give us some answers. And we don't really know how that works. We don't know how the algorithms work. The people who make the algorithms don't always know how they work, but we just accept it. So I started thinking about that on a day to day level in an environment where the climate has gone off the charts. You know, everything has gotten too hot, or there's, or the water levels are rising. I did a lot of research into how much the water levels would really rise or not. Uh, would places get really hot or not? And the research is, it, you, you have to look at two or three or four sources of research to start to get something that I could actually use because some of it is just crazy speculation and some of it is absolutely true. So, Don Bishop: yeah, like you have to look at, at, um, how they, Took their measurements and and came to the conclusion. They did. Lee Schneider: Yeah, and and people will um, it's so it's such a big problem Climate change and for that matter AI but let's talk about climate change for a sec Climate change is such a big problem that I think people just blank out. It's like I can't even think about that. I can't even think about, uh, a planetary catastrophe. So that becomes a really difficult problem to write about because you don't want someone to pick up the book and go, Uh, planetary catastrophe. Where's my beach read? I'm not going to read this book. So there are other challenges in that, you know, writing it in a dystopian world, but with optimistic people in that world, which is likely how things are anyway. Uh, and. Writing with people who are fighting against, uh, oppressive AI or a difficult climate or a government that could It kind of breaks up and doesn't become a government anymore. And how do those people model, you know, they're figuring it out right in the book as we go. So that's to me became interesting. You know, that's the motor really that's driving all three books is the first book is called Surrender. It's about surrendering to an AI. That the AI wants you to surrender to it, but a few people say, no, I'm not going to surrender. The middle book is called Resist, which is their journey to resisting that and working that all out. And the third book is Liberation. That's the title, the one I'm working on now, which is about how are we going to live in a world with all these constraints? They're not magically going away. You know, climate change issues, they're not going away. AI, not going away. You know, centralized power of corporations, not going away. But how do we find liberation in those? That's the utopian part. Now, how are, how do we do that? On a, on a day to day in our own communities. Don Bishop: Well, I think, um, some people just aren't keyed into what's going on. Um, and so there's, there's oblivion, uh, being oblivious about a certain area of, of things, uh, there are people who, um, who just, you know, things are so politicized, they might be on the other camp, uh, where they just don't worry about that, um, And then there there's, Oh, what was I thinking? Um, right. There are people who, who shall we say touch grass more often? Um, I, I actually find like when I, uh, when I am in a situation where I just can't do anything productive because of this or that, And so I like, I, I doom scroll on my phone, happiness goes down Lee Schneider: and it's Don Bishop: not like I've, I've learned anything great or, or become more aware of anything important, but I, my mind is more stuck into arguments because I see people arguing and happiness goes down. I can go outside and, and touch grass as they say, and, um, you know, like I, I go and I mow the lawn and I get happier because my heart is beating, uh, my, my blood is flowing and I'm, I'm somewhat detached from all the arguments that I see. Um, so there is that, I think that's another fact. So what, um, were you going to share any, um, any take that people. Any view that people take in your books, or you just kind of exploring? Lee Schneider: Well, I could talk about one thing that I learned writing them, and that I, I have the character's voice. Which was, I got this, a real appreciation for nature. That the nature that we have now, uh, we, what started that was in California, you know, we're used to it in Southern California where I am. It's always 70 degrees. It's, you know, the weather's very pleasant, but we've had these fires a couple of years ago and they're starting up again now. Well, you couldn't go outside where the sky was kind of yellow gray, and that took away a big part of what California is about for me. You know, I'm a runner. I play tennis. We are outdoor people here a lot. So I started thinking, well, what if the characters who live mostly in cities, Started to think about, well, what if there were no grass to touch or what if it was really hard to get to that grass and what would we be like as people if we didn't have nature? And this Don Bishop: assumption, we're talking about proverbial grass, right? So like, uh, cause I, I spent a couple of years in Phoenix and being outside in and of itself, even if, if the nature is cactus and rocks, is better than not going outside. Lee Schneider: Right, right. It's, so I found that really fascinating that We take for granted so much about the, the beauty of nature, the nourishing aspect of nature. We're just kind of, you know, walking around in, outside in the world without really thinking about it. And without really being grateful for it. trying to figure out how we fit in it. So I have the characters think a lot and they try to work this out. How do they fit in nature? Because we as humans, you know, we've always basically figured we were the rulers of this planet and everybody else get out of the way and we're at the, we're the apex predator and sorry, sorry, everybody else. It's not quite working like that, uh, anymore, you know, where the, the planet is in a sense is fighting back. The planet is saying, no, you can't do that anymore. And that's kind of a weird thing to think about for an apex predator. You know, you're, you're not used to that kind of thing as a, as someone who thinks they're in charge, but maybe we're not as in charge as we believe as a species. Don Bishop: And I'll, um, I'm gonna, I guess, uh, address the The elephant in the room, because maybe not all listeners are, uh, are, are in agreement with, with climate change, you know? Um, and so I, I myself, I don't. I am not a climatologist. I have not done all the research. Uh, also, I have bills to pay, and so I don't apprise myself of all the information that is out there. Um, what I do know is that both sides of the argument have something of value to offer. Um, I do know that there are, there are people who, um, are sensationalistic in both directions. And there are, there are sometimes wild predictions, and some of those are not intended to be sensationalistic, I believe. Some of them, they're, they're just, um, based on this measurement, this will happen. Um, and I think some of those are wrong because they fail to consider some other aspect that, that tempers the expectation from that result. And this is evidenced by past predictions that have not come true. So obviously there are some predictions that are not accurate, but, but at the same time, um, why should we not care? Like, why should we not try to take care of the planet? Right. Um, so I, I don't fully subscribe to one camp or the other. Um, and I, uh, so I'm, I'm in Virginia and we have mosquitoes and ticks. And we want to let our kids play outside. And we worry about the mosquitoes and the ticks. Uh, and so we looked into having our yard treated and asked what they would use. And like, Oh, you mean that thing, that thing is also tough on bees? No, thank you. I, I, I don't want to hurt the bees. Um, so you have to be careful. And, and if we even go at this from a religious perspective, where I'm, I'm of a faith where. Where God told Joseph Smith, the earth is full and to spare, uh, basically there are enough resources for us, but that doesn't mean that we're not supposed to be good stewards. Like we've been given this gift. We've been given this gift and whether it's ownership or placement, we've been placed here and, um, we should take good care of it because we can ruin it. Um, as yeah. Lee Schneider: Yeah, definitely. Don Bishop: I think no matter, no matter. Which side you're coming at it from there is value in, uh, climatological, uh, in, in, in, um, global warming cautionary tales, because even if, even if you don't think that humanity is causing, uh, global warming, why should you not consider the possibility? Why should you not try to hedge against that possibility? If, if there are greenhouse effects, um, enacted by raised levels of CO2, why not go ahead and control your CO2 emissions if, if possible. And I understand that like in long human history, we've been emitting a little bit and now we're emitting a lot. Um, And for anybody who, Oh my goodness, I should try to back off from, from, from all of this. But you know, there are people who say, trust the science, the science is settled. And some people say science isn't about saying that it's settled. This is about questioning. Uh, well, all right, then let's, let's realize that we don't fully know what's going to happen with all of these emissions. So if, if you don't think the science is settled, then. Maybe exercise caution. Um, Lee Schneider: yeah, I mean, all of that makes sense to me. Really. We should be taking care of the earth. Someone gave me a ticket to Mars right now. I'd say I don't think so. I mean, it doesn't Earth is a pretty exceptional planet as far as we know, and I don't think I really want to go live on a planet like Mars or some other planet to speak in science fiction terms. And. I think of the example of the Olympics right now, Paris is super hot, hotter than, you know, we're having a very hot summer, the hottest one on record, in recorded history, it's not great for the athletes, but the sort of tragic comic aspect of it is that we're going to send all these, uh, triathletes into the Seine to swim and the Seine is too polluted, or they're worried about how polluted it is, and I read that they spent, Parisian authorities, you know, they're worried A billion euros or something like some amazing amount of money to clean it up. It didn't quite work. So that's a problem to me. You, it's just a beautiful river, but there's a lot of traffic and however rivers in big cities get polluted, uh, So it, it's all, yes, it's very complex, and yes, it's easy to tune out, and yes, we all have to make small compromises. We drive cars, we take planes, we, you know, we're going to do these things. And that's probably not going to get erased anytime soon, but the awareness of the damage that we could do And the sense of responsibility to the planet. I think that's good. You know, that's that's called surviving That's called being being a good steward as you said and just connecting with the rest of the world in a way That's maybe a little bit better than we have been for the past couple of millennia. Don Bishop: Yeah. Yeah, you know, I I try to Excuse me, I try to drive a car with a small engine if possible and if If it doesn't make a lot of difference, I'll take a bike instead. Um, I, I don't get the enough. Oh my goodness. I'm, I'm going off. Don't, don't get political. I don't get the backlash against the notion of walkable cities. I think that's a great idea. I think, I think, uh, perhaps the alarm is about being forced to have them, but I, I have daydreamed about like, you know, just, Maybe start, uh, with some kind of commune, but not like that. Not like that. Like an HOA, you have your area and you, you don't allow these things. You plan it in a certain way so that, um, it encourages walking and people can have the option of living there or not. And I think it'd be great. Again, you go outside and maybe you don't touch literal grass, but you touch proverbial grass, use your legs. And that's, That's good for your health. Lee Schneider: Yeah Yeah, well, this is one of the great gifts that this growing catastrophe Gives us which is we really have to rethink What is a city? What is a community? How do we generate power? Where people live? How we get around? And those are all great things to be thinking about and to be rethinking. The, the way we power cities right now is a problem for the earth. Uh, the way we have made cars, the way we get around for the most part and not bicycles in many U. S. cities. It's a problem. And in Europe and other places, they've addressed this at least step by step. So I think it, it's really rethinking all of that. And that's a great thing. Actually, that is a great thing to be working on. Don Bishop: So I've, we're off topic, but I have lived in the San Diego area. And while we were there, the last place we lived in was, uh, it was a suburban neighborhood. We, we had our house and it was maybe a half mile walk. I think it was less than that, but we could, we could walk to this place where there was a, there were a couple of stores. There was a little Hispanic market and a pizzeria, and we'd go on like family walks, we'd go on a walk to the Hispanic market called La Perla Tapatia and we would, um, we'd, Get some food, get some, uh, some marinated beef, go home and have some carne asada tacos. It was amazing. It was great. Uh, and now where we live, there's nothing within walking distance. There's nothing within reasonable biking distance. We have to drive, uh, the, the, okay. There's a pizzeria to a two minute drive away. So mile and a half, probably, um, we go out on this main road where there's no sidewalk. And no shoulder. So you've got to drive and, and as a, you know, the Marine Corps made me a little bit of a runner and I, it bugs me how there's not a good place to run around here. There, I figured something out finally. Um, and I, I can do laps around the block. It's, it's not as fun that way. I like to explore. I, in, in San Diego, I could go this way or that way. Um, we lived in different places and one of the places, actually two of the places we lived. We're close to a river and it usually wasn't flowing cause that's how California is. But, um, it meant that there was a trail along it. And if I could get across the trafficked roads to that trail, then I was, I was scot free and I had miles, miles that I could run. And, um, yeah. And now like I've taken up walking and dictating into a microphone to, to write. And there's not really any good place to walk unless I drive there first. Mm hmm. Lee Schneider: Yeah. Don Bishop: It's, it's frustrating. Lee Schneider: It's planning. You know, the, the idea, uh, I think there's an expression which goes something like, design is all around us and everything is designed. And that's design, you know, that's someone designed your neighborhood to be that way and someone designed my neighborhood to be this way So in california, there is a lot of walking and running, you know, we can run i'm 10 blocks from the beach I could run down to the beach. I could run along all kind, you know There's plenty we could run up 5k every morning if we wanted to because there's nice places to run that so It's good. Yeah, I I Don Bishop: really wish there were trails near me Hmm Got to drive there first. Okay. So back to your books. Um, so it's kind of, uh, the AI is, is governing things. And, um, how did you decide about the AI as far as what the AI holds to be important and, and taking this from the perspective of recent and current events and who is, uh, assembling AIs and, and. Deciding how they are designed. Lee Schneider: Yeah. Well, you've hit upon it there because it's really who is controlling the AI who's building the AI. That's predominantly who's benefiting from the AI. You know, we enjoy, uh, having improved search if you're using any of the AI search things and we enjoy having the AI, you know, write a poem for us or things like that, but it's really my cat is I'm going to have to pause one second here. Don Bishop: Uh, we were Lee Schneider: so we were talking about AI Don Bishop: about. Yeah. So, um. Who, like, decides, where were we, who decides how the AI is designed and what it thinks is Lee Schneider: important. The interesting thing to me about AI is, AI is generally pretty stupid. Uh, in the sense of, what does it know, Itself, nothing. It is the way they've been doing it is with large language models, scraping, bringing in information, all of our writing, all of our creativity, all of our books and paintings and thoughts. And it brilliantly quickly assembles all that, but it's really our work that has formed the basis of what that AI spits out. It's not. Don Bishop: Yeah. And it's a statistical analysis or digestion. And so it. It doesn't really do things that are outside of those statistics. So if you want it to be original, you've got to throw in some extra programming and somehow predict all the different ways that a human might be original. Right, which Lee Schneider: is probably going to happen. I mean, uh, in mathematics, there's this expression that, you know, chaos isn't as chaotic as it used to be. Because the mathematical expressions of chaos are closing in and understanding chaos more and more. So, if you really look at something that is truly random and truly chaotic, that's a smaller zone of thought than it used to be. And, uh, AI, also what we call intelligence, the simulation of intelligence is going to get more and more and more convincing. It'll never be human intelligence, but it's going to be pretty darn convincing. It'll, we'll, we'll trust it to make decisions for us even more than we do now. But what I found is, The powers behind the AI, like OpenAI or Microsoft, their interests are not maybe the same as mine. You know, say I want to write a good book, uh, and I want to find, I want to have a soul journey when I write that book. I want to dig into myself and find something about myself that I didn't know before. And I want to impart some of that. Let's call it magic to the reader. Well, an AI is not interested in that. If you tell an AI, write me a Harry Potter novel, it'll do it. And it might even be Halfway decent. Uh, it's about efficiencies. It's about maximizing profits. It's about all that fun stuff, which Microsoft should be doing an A. I. Open A. I. That's what they do. That's what they should be doing. But this the problem is, is for, say, someone who's an illustrator. A. I. To just to basic illustration for a blog or something. A. I. Is looking pretty good. You know, you're gonna put a lot of illustrators out of work and they know it and all the people who write marketing copy and things like that, it's going to be pretty tough for them. So I started thinking about that. There's a benefit to a I certainly that it Could control a large complex system. You could have a city that ran that an AI ran, you know, the city could decide Where the money goes where the buses go? Who's who gets the heat who gets the air conditioning where the water goes and AI could do all of that But it would do it in an efficient way Uh, that maybe wouldn't benefit some people who maybe needed more water or maybe needed more air conditioning and it would do it in a way that would benefit its, let's call them their masters, you know, whoever built that AI, whoever programmed that AI and maybe those people don't have everyone's best interests at heart. Uh, so the all powerful AI became kind of like as scary as alien for me. What would that be like? What would it be like to live under something like that? Don Bishop: Yeah, and it's kind of how, it's kind of like how our phones, um, are not just the tools that we paid for that we want them to, them to be, they are devices through which corporations advertise to us and Google and Apple, like that these people definitely want to steer us to buy something that will bring them some profit. Yeah. Well, the example Lee Schneider: for me is, um, the, Vision Pro, the Apple Vision Pro. At first I thought, hey, you know, this could be pretty cool, like you put these goggles on and, you know, you could, you, you're interacting with all this media in a different way. But then I started to think, well, that's exactly what Apple wants, isn't it? They just want us to strap the computer to our face and never take the computer off. That's getting a little weird, but true. You know, I have, I use the Apple medications thing to remind me of when to take medications. Well, I got to get my phone out again for that. So all of these things are helpful, but also controlling. It's Don Bishop: it's a platform like, um, Amazon. When I, when I, when somebody buys my book from Amazon, Amazon gets a share of that sale, but my ebook. Better not mention any bookstore other than Amazon. Yeah. They don't allow it because they want to make sure that All you people, you're only buying your books from Amazon. Lee Schneider: Well, that's, it's again, this kind of two edges to it, two sides to it, because self publishing and being able to create books and get books out there, that's a really great thing for, uh, For so many people Creatively for businesses, whatever and at the same time. Yes, there can be a monopolistic view I list on other platforms most of the books get sold on amazon, but I I list on IngramSpark, I list on Kobo, I list on Apple, just because, you know, I just want the book to be available. Don Bishop: Yep. Oh, and Apple, you're not mentioning Amazon and Apple. Lee Schneider: Right. It's a little complicated, but I think it's worth doing. First of all, as an indie publisher and an indie writer, it's better that every, you just try to find as many possible ways for people to find the book. Because that's how it works. And secondly, it's, you never know which platform is going to be the most successful for you. At least in my, I call this the early stages. You know, I, for a while I sold more books on IngramSpark because bookstores and libraries and those are the people interested. And in this round, I'm concentrating more on Amazon. To see what would happen, kind of my own experiment to see, you know, will I, will more people find, will the book find more people on Amazon than on the other platforms? Don Bishop: Yeah, and you kind of, you have to weigh, um, weigh the different variables and, and see what you think is going to work for you and kind of guess sometimes. So like my, my books are wide, meaning they're not, I'm not in Amazon's, uh, Kindle unlimited. Um, I, it is available on Amazon and in the Kindle store, but it's also available through, uh, Ingram spark. You can get it on Barnes and Noble or walmart. com and you can get it direct from me, but I'm thinking perhaps when this series is complete, maybe I'll put it into Kindle unlimited because there are readers there who want Basically only read there and so I'm not reaching them by being wide. I don't know It's it's a there's a bit of cat and mouse and a bit of guessing. Yeah, that's just how it goes. But yeah, Wow Interesting conversation. I think we're probably at a wrap at this point, but Where do listeners find you online? Lee Schneider: Website for this sort of thing is future x dot studio future x instead of dot com dot studio and I'm putting up the books there. I'm going to be starting another podcast about books, which is going to be listed there. So that's the main spot. And I'm on, uh, still on Twitter slash X as docu guy, like documentary guy, docu guy. And I'm on Instagram is that is on that. Uh, handle as well. Uh, and I've been using, playing around with Mastodon and Blue Sky and, uh, docu Guy is the, uh, handle on all of those. Okay. Don Bishop: Yeah, I'll put that in the show notes. But, uh, yeah, thank you for coming on the show. Uh, stick around a little bit after I hit the stop button on the recording. Yeah, for everybody that's, uh, author Lee Schneider, go check him out at futurex. studio. And we'll catch you next time on the Grand Hill Chronicles podcast.