I'm D. Bohdan, one of the finalists. Feel free to ask me questions.
I have a write-up at https://dbohdan.com/unslop and a repository with my work for the contest at https://github.com/dbohdan/unslop.
2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results
31–40 of 157 posts
Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results
#32Take the first stories I found from this month's Clarkesworld[1] or Granta[2] or BCS[3] and read the prose. Notice the specificity of the language, how the doesn't try to insist upon itself? Notice how very few metaphors are actually in prose? Notice how, even when writing about fictional worlds and concepts, the language used grounds the _stories_ being told and not the concepts?
And then look at the submissions for unslop. This is the best we can get? Cliche-driven, over-metaphor'd, statistically-average purple-purpose _content_? It's sad, really, that we're many years into this entire thing and it still can't produce something that doesn't have my eyes drifting from the page.
[1] https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/khan_07_26/
[2] https://granta.com/here-comes-the-sun/
[3] https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-ecstasy-...
Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results
#33I think people are missing the point. The point is not that AI produces slop (it does). The point is that I don't want to consume "art" that has been generated out the distillation of stealing all of the world's current art. That's not original, it's a facsimile of art. I want to read something that has intent. That has a purpose. A reason why it exists. Not just the lowest effort cash grab. This usage of AI is the e…
> I don't want to consume "art" that has been generated out the distillation of stealing all of the world's current art
It seems that you've fundamentally misunderstood art. I wouldn't personally call it "stealing", but T.S. Eliot would beg to differ (as would Pablo Picasso who "stole" that line)
> I want to read something that has intent. That has a purpose. A reason why it exists.
If the "allegories for the LLM condition" angle is accurate, then these stories do. In which case I believe what you mean to say is that you want to read something that has human intent.
Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results
#341. Imagine a video game like Red Dead Redemption where each NPC is voiced by AI and can respond to you in a convincingly human fashion. Their responses and even the plot of the whole game can change based on your interactions with NPC's. 2. Imagine a world in which humans can still write books and interactive experiences and find audiences sufficient to earn a living at it. I really want these two things to be compat…
> each NPC is voiced by AI and can respond to you in a convincingly human fashion
This is no longer fiction - see the latest AI update of PUBG.
Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results
#35I think people are missing the point. The point is not that AI produces slop (it does). The point is that I don't want to consume "art" that has been generated out the distillation of stealing all of the world's current art. That's not original, it's a facsimile of art. I want to read something that has intent. That has a purpose. A reason why it exists. Not just the lowest effort cash grab. This usage of AI is the e…
> distillation of stealing all of the world's current art
Here's the age-old dilemma, though - how is reading stealing?
Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results
#36> Your final submission must be a 500 to 10,000-word short story, generated entirely by AI. No human-written prose and no post-generation editing. To verify this, you will submit your full prompt harness / setup alongside your story.
Seriously, what? The entire contest doesn't sound like novel contest at all and more like a one-shot novel-generating harness contest (at best). As who have written quite a bit of stories with AI---with lots of prompts to steer it, of course---, I would be very interested in the harness more than the actually generated story. The same can be said for agentic coding by the way, we don't value one-shotted code that much and are more interested in agentic process.
Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results
#37Take the first stories I found from this month's Clarkesworld[1] or Granta[2] or BCS[3] and read the prose. Notice the specificity of the language, how the doesn't try to insist upon itself? Notice how very few metaphors are actually in prose? Notice how, even when writing about fictional worlds and concepts, the language used grounds the _stories_ being told and not the concepts? And then look at the submissions for…
> Cliche-driven, over-metaphor'd, statistically-average purple-purpose _content_
If this is expected from LLM generated prose, why don't we expect LLM generated code to exhibit the same qualities?
> It's sad, really, that we're many years into this entire thing and it still can't produce something that doesn't have my eyes drifting from the page
It's great. Human creativity is still king despite the attempts to reduce it to a few algorithms for talentless hacks to exploit with the click of a button.
Who but the sociopath would hope to supplant human creativity with a machine they control? I wish your position wasn't so widespread in these parts.
Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Is not a gamer's dream. It's terrible and you'll find out quite fast you're not interested in everyone's background and scream to most NPC's to shut the fuck up and get to the point. It's just as terrible as injecting 'realism' in games for the sake of 'realism'.
> It's terrible and you'll find out quite fast you're not interested in everyone's background and scream to most NPC's to shut the fuck up and get to the point. Many of the interactions in RDR2 are quite mundane, and despite thousands of hours of (high quality) voice acting, it can become quite repetitive. I could very much see those micro-interactions being LLM generated, but the TTS would need to be a step above wh…
The repetitiveness in video game dialogues is a feature, not a bug. Amongst other things, it allows you to re-retrieve information and hone in faster on what’s story and what’s relevant progression. Having each character invent their own inconsistent sloppy backstory whenever you talk to them is not a positive, it’s not good immersion when every character is a chatbot that can inadvertently give you story beats you shouldn’t be aware of yet or you missed some crucial bit of information but no one talks about it anymore (or worse, never did). In that world, those games would be made popular by people breaking the LLMs in funny ways, not the gameplay itself.
Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results
#39> If we as a society can manage to automate excellent writing and avoid the slopworld mediocrity dystopia, things could be so good. The dumbest thing I've read this year.
They describe a dystopia and act like it would be heaven if only the processed, distilled slop we have to consume was tasty. As if adding pepper to soylent green will somehow fix everything.
There is no need to automate writing. Especially fiction. There are tens of millions of people out there with really interesting and unique ideas and styles who would love to drop everything and write, if only they can get the chance to have their work seen.
Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results
#40Take the first stories I found from this month's Clarkesworld[1] or Granta[2] or BCS[3] and read the prose. Notice the specificity of the language, how the doesn't try to insist upon itself? Notice how very few metaphors are actually in prose? Notice how, even when writing about fictional worlds and concepts, the language used grounds the _stories_ being told and not the concepts? And then look at the submissions for…
> Cliche-driven, over-metaphor'd, statistically-average purple-purpose _content_ If this is expected from LLM generated prose, why don't we expect LLM generated code to exhibit the same qualities? > It's sad, really, that we're many years into this entire thing and it still can't produce something that doesn't have my eyes drifting from the page It's great. Human creativity is still king despite the attempts to reduc…
What might be bad for prose (predictable, boring) might be desirable for code. Maybe that's why LLMs work well for writing things read by computers, but not so much for things read by people.