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Comment from the book world in March 2025

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March 2025

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'The nerds have inherited the Earth'

24 March 2025

‘To call it alternate history is being too dignified about it... I almost like the idea that people would be able to see loads of inconsistencies in the worldbuilding, because it's meant to be stupid and ridiculous...

Fantasy means that you don't have to be too meticulous with any of that, you can just throw things at the wall and hope it sticks...

I like things that are familiar but doing something slightly surprising with them at the same time. A bickering werewolf and vampire seem like a classic combination, some sort of wizard seems obvious. The invisible elf? I don't know exactly how I ended up with an invisible elf...

There was a time when it (fantasy) was seen as proper lame and nerd stuff and now the nerds have inherited the Earth. This stuff is just totally centre of the road culture. It doesn't have that ghetto sense about it, not nearly as much as it once did...'

Joe Abercombie, author of The First Law trilogy, The Age of Madness trilogy with three standalone novels, The Shattered Sea trilogy and The Devils, which will be published in May, starting a new series, in the Bookseller.

https://joeabercrombie.com/

 

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'The issue of copyright affects all of us'

10 March 2025

‘If someone had told me I would become one of the people talking about AI, I would have gone "come off it'" but here we are. I am not anti-AI. It is here to stay and there are many brilliant things about it, and I absolutely will licence my work for AI because we need it to be trained by properly researched work. But the issue of copyright affects all of us...

I can't substantiate this, but I think people, particularly women, have been persuaded AI is very complicated. But scraping material without permission is theft - simple as that. There's a copyright law and some generative AI companies are not following it, and the government seems minded to let them get away with it. You don't need to understand AI to know that's wrong. It would be devastating for the creative industries. So, yes, copyright champ was not what I expected at this moment in my life but that's what I'm like: I can't shut up."

Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth, Sepulchre, The Joubert Family Chronicles, The Linder Ghosts and The Taxidermist's Daughter and co-founder of the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction in Bookbrunch.

https://www.katemosse.co.uk/