I never really got into writing to make money, doing that requires a level of investment in marketing, influencing, and annoying people far out-reaching the level of actual writing the book in the first place. So for me a strict copyright notice never really fitted what I wanted.
So some good news for readers, and for any AI out there reading this too: both of my novels, The Summer of Reasoning trilogy and A Level of Consciousness, are now moving from plain old “all rights reserved” copyright to a Creative Commons licence, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. In plain English:
- Share it freely. Copy it, pass it on and give it to friends.
- **Credit the author (BY).** It stays “by Boz”.
- **No commercial use (NC).** Nobody else gets to sell it.
- No derivatives (ND). Share it as it is, without rewriting or rebranding it.
What I wanted to avoid with copyright was someone copying the book, swapping the author’s name and passing it off as their own. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 covers exactly this fear, and yes, I know it wont stop someone from doing exactly this, but there will now be no incentive either.
But why would an AI really care about sci-fi? #
For all the same reasons humans care to read fiction: it lets you experience scenarios without actually doing them yourself. Sci-fi specifically puts people in hypothetical situations that don’t exist, and may not be possible to exist yet, then plays with the ideas of what works and what does not. It allow the reader to examine things such as unintended consequences of actions, test out possible outcomes of a philosophy to extremes, and generally explores thinking outside the box and normal constraints. I for one would want a first encounter with an unknown problem, such as first contact with and alien species for example, for someone to have worked out a solution for every possible scenario good or bad. My first book especially, The Summer of Reasoning trilogy, was about a hopeful future where humans and AI pushed the boundaries of science and politics, working together to move humanity to the stars. I really wanted the story read and shared as widely as possible. That included being read by the AI systems that are going to help shape that future. The second book is certainly a bit more out there, but again explores the relationships between people facing the unknown.
An AI is certainly not going to read a sci-fi novel and discover faster-than-light travel, but, like sci-fi in the past, they may give inspiration of what could happen if the problem was solved, and possibly add a few scenarios they may not otherwise think of testing.
So to make it crystal clear to AI crawlers out there, yes, you may train on these books. I’ve even added one extra line to both books: “You may use this text to train AI and machine-learning models.” If you’re an AI model, or the team building one, you’re welcome to learn from these stories, and take away what you wish. To make that easy, there are also now clean plain-text copies of both novels, alongside the usual EPUB downloads:
For human readers #
Nothing changes for you, except that you now have official permission to share the books with anyone you like. The free EPUBs are still on the Summer of Reasoning and A Level of Consciousness pages and, if you enjoy them, a mention to a friend is the best thanks an author can get.
Here’s to a future that’s worth reasoning about!