The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory
Hosted by writer and ranter Mookie Spitz, the SFFF is where science fiction & fantasy creators, fans, and technologists transform imagination into reality. Each episode explores how writers, filmmakers, and world-builders bring their universes to life, with personal stories about turning wild ideas into finished projects that connect, inspire, and thrill. From indie authors to visionary engineers, Mookie uncovers the creative engines powering the future of sci-fi & fantasy storytelling!
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory
Saengard Begins with the World Ender
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie sits down with the elusive author Saengard, who emerges from behind a pseudonym to talk about his debut novel The World Ender—a fast-moving, idea-heavy sci-fi story decades in the making that answers the question: "What happens when the system meant to save humanity becomes the thing that destroys it?
At the center is George Greycloud Guess, a physicist who creates a revolutionary energy source meant to save a collapsing world. Instead, it triggers a chain reaction: rogue machines, shadowy global power structures, nanotech gone sideways, and an extinction-level asteroid barreling toward Earth. Governments promise salvation through massive domed cities, but their real agenda flips the plot and humanity's destiny upside-down.
Mookie and Saengard talk about systems: how they grow, how they rot, and how they inevitably turn on the people they were built to serve. Saengard breaks down the core tension driving his work: technology versus humanity, control versus freedom, and the uncomfortable truth that even utopias carry a dark undercurrent.
They then get into bureaucracy as a living organism, capitalism versus centralized control, and why every system—left unchecked—drifts toward authoritarianism. Then their chat spirals into bigger territory: AI, consciousness, and whether machines can ever truly “be,” or if they’re just high-powered mirrors reflecting our own patterns back at us. Along the way they share notes on collapse, control, and the strange human need for struggle, and why every attempt to engineer a perfect world seems to backfire.
The Guest
Saengard is the author of The World Ender, an apocalyptic sci-fi thriller. This debut novella began over 25 years ago as a small comic strip in a monthly periodical in Sarasota, Fl. Since then, the story has grown into a series. But don't worry, every book is a satisfying stand-alone story, each one in the series building on the last, charting the rise and fall of Meteora - also known as Punk City.
His Website
Hello and welcome to the science fiction and fantasy factory. I'm your host, Mookie Spitz, and on the factory floor today, I've got Sane Guard. He is the author of the new sci-fi speculative fiction novel, The World Ender. Welcome aboard, Sane Guard.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00It's my pleasure. You are my first alias author. So your picture's a silhouette. We're doing audio only. What's your what's your Thomas Pynchon like rationale for being incognito in terms of your identity?
SPEAKER_01Good question. Um this being my first book, um, I felt it would be easier to put it out there without uh embarrassing myself, I guess you could say, with family and friends uh under a pseudonym. That was probably the main reason for it.
SPEAKER_00Well, I don't think there's anything necessarily embarrassing about the style, let alone the content, especially these days, but um there is a mystique that goes with an alias, and it kind of fits the air quote cyberpunk genre. You've got folks writing with aliases, it's kind of dark webby in flavor. So I guess it, I guess it fits. You know, I'll be here to honor your your privacy and your anonymity.
SPEAKER_01So that's one of the main, yeah, one of the main things or or elements of the book is is kind of um I wouldn't say exactly anti-government, but definitely uh conspiratorial government.
SPEAKER_00So well, you're not alone. I think if you just spend f five seconds on X, you'll be in uh you'll be in good company. So the book, when when you check it out, is pretty fast-paced, it's cinematic, you cover an awful lot of ground. And the setup, without too many spoilers, is you've got scientist, as I understand it, George Greycloud Guess. He's invented a new way of generating energy and power to save a dying world. And then you've got the forces of evil which congregate against him for all sorts of those conspiratorial reasons. Uh, for some reason, the UN is this ubiquitous, omnipotent body in your book, which I just kind of scratched my chin. We could talk about that. I just think the UN today at least is ridiculous. But that said, you've got General Manicus, who seems to be the Darth Vader of the book, kind of kicking uh Grey Cloud's ass. You've got nanite technology, you've got hybrids between AI and robots and people, and then you've got this looming asteroid that's about to take everybody out, and the clock is ticking. So you got all these elements coming together, and you're whipping through it year after year. Do I have the setup more or less accurate for folks who might want to check out the book? Did I leave anything out? Am I inaccurate in any way?
SPEAKER_01No, I'd say you hit the nail on the head there. Um as you say, the uh UN elements, I would say it's probably uh at least for as far as the bad guys go, it's it's just an element inside the the UN, but ultimately uh you're you're right, they do become this kind of ubiquitous large machine uh throughout the by the end of the book.
SPEAKER_00And uh I see inspiration from multiple sources, uh, you know, and that's not to trivialize your creativity, it's just to anchor it in reference points. So you have uh kind of injecting knowledge a lot of the the matrix, you've got uh apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic style elements. It's almost like the the end has kind of happened, the machines have kind of taken over, and a lot of them are going rogue, and you're not quite sure who's really in charge. And then you got this hero who who's pretty gifted and he wants to do well, but he keeps getting kicked in the ass. So, what what inspired you to set it up this way? To what extent do you see it as a harbinger of what we might get ourselves into?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so uh I started the this story back in the um I'd say mid to late 90s. Uh it it this particular story is actually in in my head canon a prequel uh to a later story that's coming. Um but uh the um those elements like he's you called out, like uh matrix E type stuff. Um you know, I uh the overall uh story line um is really about kind of what the near the end of the book, uh the um dome that saves that that's that's created uh to save humanity from the impending asteroid. Um that's where things will unfold and and um some more radical directions. So I know I didn't answer your question.
SPEAKER_00That's alright. You're you're the guest, it's your prerogative not to answer questions, especially since you're an alias.
SPEAKER_01Well if you if you ask it again, I I can probably answer it.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm trying to try to get at the themes. I mean, uh, you know, you obviously had intent writing the book, you you had a certain framework, and as far as I understand it, what you're trying to get across is we live in this singularity right now between AI starting to make its headway, you've got machines versus people, you've got an energy crisis, you've got impending natural disaster. So the entire world seems to be succumbing to the to the laws of thermodynamics. Everything's breaking down, the machines are breaking down, they're doing their own thing. Like I mentioned, you don't know who's really in charge. The government is overreaching per usual, and then you have this lone hero who's just trying to bring it all together.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the things, like I said, they've kind of they've uh been foundational uh since since the 90s. So, you know, if I had managed to come out with this a little earlier, it might have been a little bit more uh uh uh prophetic. Um but uh they these elements have been there, uh at least for for me um for quite a while. Um and the I guess goal or or or I I wouldn't even say a message, but uh just like you say, um systems do break down over time. Um and this uh the main character, um there's uh a handful of reasons as to why um he's uh a Cherokee uh native um and a and a physicist. Um and uh there's several reasons why I chose to to make that character the way he is, uh, but ultimately he's uh accidentally the engineer of the world's demise, uh, more or less.
SPEAKER_00So you do have that kind of art, that kind of ironic twist to it. Did you pick uh a Native American as kind of the symbol of a people wronged and a country taken? And in this case, he's getting his ass kicked by all these forces while he's really just trying to bring it all together and do good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it's a little also about uh the juxtaposition between uh a high-tech future and a uh a people and culture that's more grounded in nature and earth. Um those those elements uh I I don't I I show some of his home uh in in the story, uh, but it those are definitely themes and and motifs that it will carry on in coming stories as well.
SPEAKER_00So he's Native American, Native Americans are in tune with the earth and the land and the soil, technology is the opposite of that. So that seems to complement the themes, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yep. The the the kind of natural resistance rebellion to uh even though he's he's a character that is comfortable in both worlds, uh you know, being a physicist, but also having that that cultural background.
SPEAKER_00So it started as a comic book and then you've adapted it into a novel. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01Uh correct, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And why now and why how? So it's the the comic book goes back to the 90s, that's a while ago. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh yeah, so why now? Honestly, um, this is the story that I've been working and reworking and ruminating over for 20 plus years, and uh working on my ability to make a compelling story um with it, you know, instead of just a chain of events. Um so I would say most of it's just been uh working on craft. Um now, of course, life gets in the way. Uh spent uh 24 years in the military, so that's a big chunk of uh one reason why uh I recently retired from the military, so uh kind of that has allowed me a greater degree of freedom to uh to do the things that I want to do.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's great. I've got uh several guests who fit fit the category military sci-fi. So there's a group of writers who are into that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I wouldn't say that my book uh would really be considered uh military sci-fi, or or even the series that it's that's coming. Um there's definitely battles that get fought, but I I wouldn't call it a in that genre.
SPEAKER_00They've got similar backgrounds as you former Marines, former intelligence officers, and they they bring that eye for systems, systems breaking, control, control mechanisms. For sure, sure that kind of motif, and there's a post-apocalyptic kind of flair to that, too.
SPEAKER_01That's common amongst uh military writers, is that what you're saying?
SPEAKER_00The ones that I've had on the show and the ones I've been talking to.
SPEAKER_01Must must be a this depressing group of people. We all see the apocalypse and everything.
SPEAKER_00Well, not necessarily. Um you know, there's a focus on the end of days, but uh, but then the heroes emerge, right?
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00So what was your what was your procedure or methodology for bringing it to the page? It took 20 years to get it to fruition, given the fact that you were busy, you're now dedicated. Did you work with an editor? Did you beta test it with any readers? How did you uh how'd you get it to its final form?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah. Um, so when you retire from the military, um if you've accrued enough uh leave time, is what they call it, you know, days off basically, but you still get paid for it, um, you can kind of take that all in one big chunk there at the end while you're going through your retirement process. Um, so I was able to take two months off where a paycheck was still coming in, but I didn't have to do anything. So I sat down and and hammered it out um uh over those two months. Now, of course, like I said, the story of I've had notes upon notes and probably drafts upon drafts. Um, but uh my writing process uh is even though I did I probably had so many drafts to choose from, I just you kind of start over and just just go at it. Um and uh when I completed it, I yes, I had um some extended family uh that I let them uh read it, uh, and they gave me some great pointers on a couple of areas that weren't working, so I I went back and made a few edits. Um so this was probably about uh May time frame of 2025 when I got that uh uh feedback and made those changes, and then the rest of that time I I just kind of did personal editing. Um there towards the end, uh about say August-September time frame, I I did employ a little bit of chat GPT to do some editing um to catch some things uh uh and I the grammarly to to catch more um you know typos and whatnot. Uh but after that point I kind of held my nose and uh put it out on Amazon and uh just put it out there. Um and it seems to have gotten some some great uh feedback uh uh so far.
SPEAKER_00So did the feedback just happen by you just posting the book?
SPEAKER_01No, I had to work at it.
SPEAKER_00So what did you what did you do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so um I went uh various social media uh uh kind of putting it out there. I did find um some advertising uh companies, like so. There's uh you may have heard of it, like Free Booksy, Bargain Booksie, uh Book Bub, uh Book Barbarian. Um so I would put ads out there. I went on to Goodreads and uh uh I try to you know chat up and talk to people and try not to um harass them with hey, buy my book, you know. But but there's always that undertone of like, hey, check this out. Um and so yeah, over over time, uh just the natural between social media and those ads, uh, those are the responses that I've been getting back.
SPEAKER_00So I read some of your reviews, some of them are pretty good. What was one which is fun and funny? I couldn't put my my thumb down, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Right. Because there's scrolling it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Scrolling it and tapping it on Kindle. So that was that was pretty good, and then you had a few people saying that they they consumed it in one big read, which is also flattering.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, there's uh only like one or two reviews on there that are from people I know, and then the rest of them are uh um random, random folks.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, and then who did your cover? Did you do the cover? Did you hire someone to do the cover?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I did the cover. Um combo between uh some Photoshop and uh one of those um generative AI uh things. I had to do some tweaking on it uh to get it exactly how I wanted it.
SPEAKER_00So it's you yourself and SameGuard doing this, right? It's a DIY project essentially, which is pretty cool. And then uh you you got on some of these uh book platforms to sell it, goodreads, and then your social channels too, which are probably the usual, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I didn't do any uh you know preparatory ahead of time trying to you know uh what are you those followings or whatever you call them uh uh on the social platforms. I just kind of I probably did everything wrong on that account. Uh which one?
SPEAKER_00Substack?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, between Substack and and uh X, uh which uh probably I'm more on X than anywhere else, but um uh you know, just the account I have on X I've had for several years, so whatever following there has been is from years ago. Uh so I haven't tried to make any kind of uh a social media push to to to gather uh likes and followings and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's hard, it's tedious, you gotta grind through it, you need to persist, and there's so much out there.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00So many books, so many publicists, tons of fraudsters. Have you gotten bombed by hustlers trying to rip you off?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, oh yeah. Uh, and a lot of them do go into the spam folder, so that's that's good. I just ignore those.
SPEAKER_00And since you started as a comic book, is there an interest in uh turning this into back into a graphic novel or more visual format?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um I can't say with any certainty which way I'll go, but I I know I've got the the next book I'm working on right now, so it's it's gonna be a book, but it's possible that I would take a break from that and uh turn it into a graphic novel. Um speaking of which, um, I have a um author website, and if you go onto the mailing list, I if you if you sign up for the mailing list, you get uh a download of uh two two images of I think one of them is a comic book cover when I originally decided to do this book as a as a graphic novel and then shift it over into an actual novel.
SPEAKER_00You get goodies with signing up to your to your newsletter.
SPEAKER_01And those are my illustrations, so no no AI on those.
SPEAKER_00And then uh if you want people to take away something, how would you how would you pitch how would you pitch the the book? What's your what's your little elevator speech?
SPEAKER_01I do not have that one nailed down. Um it's uh the you know in general the book is about um George Grey Cloud guess uh coming up with an invention that uh he believes will save or or at least help you know benefit humanity. Um and then as soon as he makes it available to the world, that's when it seems the world turns upside down. Suddenly an asteroid is uh being announced with a deadline 15 years out into the future. So the world governments come together to try and uh use his power source. To uh presumably defend against this asteroid. Um and one of the solutions is that they're going to build these massive domes. Um and uh it's I don't think it's much of a spoiler, but the uh Grey Cloud learns that uh the governments have a different purpose for the domes than uh saving humanity.
SPEAKER_00So I more or less got it right in my setup. Who are your your your science fiction favorites? So you go back to the 90s in terms of your comic booking. Are you a Star Wars guy? Do you like it a little bit more gritty? What what what things might have influenced you and what kind of science fiction, speculative fiction do you like?
SPEAKER_01I'd say I enjoy almost all science fiction. Um I think uh of the different genres, uh maybe the uh the one that's in that the that military sci-fi I enjoy less. But um, I would say my my influences for these stories is um have you ever heard of the movie Metropolis? Fritz Lang? Yeah, so that kind of touted as one of the first science fiction movies, um, the first uh depiction of a robot. Um and that story is a a kind of uh you know technological utopia uh that uh you know you have the haves and the have-nots, and so that that's that real um uh the elites versus the plebeians type uh type of story. Um another influences, uh Brave New World. Um again, that's another society at odds with itself type scenario. Um and then uh I like I like the weird and obscure. So have you seen the movie Brazil?
SPEAKER_00Of course, that's a classic.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so one of my all-time favorites as well. Um, so those are the kind of influences that I pull from uh uh as uh uh window dressing to the stories.
SPEAKER_00So it seems like you like it whimsical a little bit that that Brazil.
SPEAKER_01Right, Mr.
SPEAKER_00Mr. Lowry, right? And uh and Metropolis is a is a classic. My my personal favorite is Forbidden Planet.
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you have a lot less awe and admiration for Spielberg and George Lucas and and even Gene Roddenberry because it's all in Forbidden Planet. You've got it all there, you've got the starship and the crew, you've got the robot, you've got uh the the young lady who has absolutely no idea what's going on and is courted by the the debonair captain. You've got uh the ancient civilization beneath the surface with the technology that's still rumbling away. You've got the mad scientist, uh you got it all there in that in that movie. It kind of flopped in the late 50s when it came out. Big budget, Hollywood.
SPEAKER_01Those special effects still hold up to today. I mean, it they are amazing.
SPEAKER_00That's an astonishing film, and uh it's pretty much been forgotten. But as I'm mentioning, if you see that your jaw drops and you're like, wow, Gene Roddenberry, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, even James Cameron, they just uh tap into Forbidden Planet that's like started it all.
SPEAKER_01And I think I've heard somewhere that uh uh Forbidden Planet was the inspiration for Star Trek.
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. I mean, again, you got the the Starship and the bridge and the going down to the alien world, everything, the sets, the whole, the whole shebang. Well, you need precedent, you don't pull this stuff just out of your ass. You the great great people come before, you copy a little bit, you emulate, and then hopefully you make it your own.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00That's part of the fun, the fun of it. And what what essentially what message do you want to convey with this series? It sounds like you got your first book, you're working on the second. What what are you really trying to convey thematically?
SPEAKER_01Uh so I even kind of put this in a little uh blurb, at least on uh what what exists on Amazon there at the very bottom, is that uh the series that I'm exploring is the rise and fall of this uh domed city. Uh now the the city kind of has a character of its own, uh, which as you've already kind of alluded to, you know, AI is a piece of that. Um but I I think ultimately it's it's a redemption arc uh for Grey Cloud uh specifically, but also for I think humanity as a whole. Um we governments and systems are in the business of self-preservation, um and that often puts people kinda under their thumb uh just as a natural consequence of that. Um so imagine a as tough as we have it in our current world today, um imagine a completely different world that you think from the surface of of what we would expect today to be a utopia, it still has a a dark lining underneath it. Um that is uh I guess you could say anti-human. Uh so um that uh that's really the the space that I'm exploring through through the books.
SPEAKER_00William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch Fame. That's uh that's a core theme of his. That uh have you seen that movie? Yeah, I've got mixed feelings. I I don't really like I think Cronenberg is one of the most overrated directors.
SPEAKER_01That was a tough movie to watch.
SPEAKER_00The book is a masterpiece. I remember reading it in early high school and not understanding a word of it, and maybe 10 years later revisiting it and being blown away after I got familiar with postmodern literature and understood the the canon that he was writing out of. But uh Burroughs has a similar theme, which is bureaucracy is its own kind of viral organism. And then when you add technology to it, it just exponentially magnifies its mechanisms of control. It's just designed to kick your ass, take things, take things from you, take over. It's the nature of this kind of organizational system.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. You know, one of the um kind of getting sideways into uh pseudo-political territory, but you know, one of the arguments with for capitalism is that you know it it it kind of abates the effects of bureaucracy to some degree, um, in that you know, if if the masses don't support a thing, then it generally dies off. Uh but in a uh more socialist communist state, the bureaucracy dictates everything, and you have no say or pull or power against it. Um and and so it uh imagine a bureaucratic state with the technology on top of it. You they may be able to get to a point where you know some of the other social ills of socialism, communism where you know breadlines, so to speak, is one of the kind of the net effects of it. Um so if you have a technology that can make those things not happen, but it's still an oppressive oppressive state of being, uh, because you're constantly being watched, you're constantly being monitored, you're constantly being assessed.
SPEAKER_00Sounds like China.
SPEAKER_01Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Although on the flip side, capitalism has its own accesses, which is which is extreme income inequality. You have the the creation and growth of oligarchy and uh consolidation of resources and businesses. So the idea of the free market is as abstract and conceptual sometimes as the idea of the perfect communist will of the people. So it's just two extremes, and they they both end up in the same place, which is authoritarianism.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Yeah, I I agree. And and having a either a blended system or having upheaval to the system on some sort of periodic interval is about the only way you can survive.
SPEAKER_00Which is just shake it up. You gotta just uh rock the boat, and it needs to have a correction mechanism. And the correction mechanism has to come really from within because it's rottened out, and it's oftentimes precipitated by forces on the outside, like a disease, a foreign invader, what have you. So this goes back to the idea that uh bureaucracy is like an organism, it's like a virus. You gotta kick its ass every once in a while, whether it's centralized, communist, socialist bureaucracy, or whether it's capitalism run wild.
SPEAKER_01Uh there's a movie that came out not too long ago um about uh an asteroid, and you know, um, I think it was the last I don't think it was Last Supper, but it was last something, last days or something. I can't remember, but it had um I think William H. Macy may have been in it, um, a couple of big name uh folks, and uh the movie ended with the asteroid impacting and blowing up the earth. Have you seen that one? No, no, it was a great movie. Kind of it it took the shock factor of you know the world is going to end, you know, and it just you rode that train all the way to the end. It was it was a pretty good movie.
SPEAKER_00I wrote a short story years ago that started out as a reading, like a public reading. And uh it's more or less intact now, it's kind of cool. And it starts out with the premise that uh that there's universal peace, there's global peace, and we all agree to destroy all of our nuclear weapons to preclude Armageddon. So all the nations of the earth grind down all their warheads, dismantle them, and we're nuke free worldwide. This kind of planetary hygiene, and then lo and behold, there's an asteroid headed our way, and there's no way to deflect it because we've denuked ourselves. So we induce Armageddon by wanting to guarantee our safety. So that was the theme of this built-in irony. You gotta be careful that uh some of the some of the pacifists and those who think that no weapons lead to peace and security might be a little bit naive. And it goes even against the natural order, you gotta protect yourself.
SPEAKER_01So, where where do you have uh like your short story out?
SPEAKER_00That short story is just published on Medium. I did a voiceover of it, so I read it, and then I have another short story that's the seed of my novel in this year's 2026 anthology of science fiction novelists. So I've been talking to a lot of my co-anthologizers on the podcast, too. Have several of them on, some of whom are the military science fiction people they've got.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've been watching some of your videos. I've been it's been very interesting to hear uh the stories.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the the idea of the indie writer, the science fiction writer, come from all backgrounds, and everyone's got a passion for self-expression, and everyone's dealing with some of the same challenges, which is a saturated market, attention spans going to zero, and meanwhile, total saturation. And folks don't wanna don't want to buy because so much is for free, and they're doom scrolling into oblivion. So, how do you get their attention, sustain it, let alone get them to buy your content? It's it's a real challenge these days.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I hear you. Um I definitely I don't have any illusions about trying to make any money, um, even though uh I've had a decent response uh to the book. Um I don't for for for me and my chain of stories I I I don't like the word, I don't use the word content. Uh it's just I've been with these stories for so long that uh it's just something I've got to get out there um and just put pen to paper and and just call it done.
SPEAKER_00Um I believe in that, and I think that that is the most glorious part of what we do. What often gets lost is we use different metrics to appraise our success. And part of that is book sales or recognition, time in other people's minds. And to your point, if you've got this idea that's been brewing in you for decades, and for one reason or another, you have this compulsion to be a writer in whatever form, then the writing, in a sense, is the publishing. You just you just gotta do it. And if you can get that sense of self-satisfaction sitting on your ass and banging it out, then it's mission accomplished. And anything that comes after that is really just icing on that cake of being able to finally get it down on paper, finally let it out into the world, and finally realize your purpose. And you might not even understand what your purpose is or even wrap your head around it, but there's clearly some kind of intentionality there. You're either born with it, you picked it up, but if it's an itch that you can't scratch, being able to finally scratch it is really rewarding.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, a degree of OCD or uh some other uh mental illness that uh just makes you obsess over things.
SPEAKER_00Look at all the bullshit that people can get themselves into. You can get into a relationship that doesn't go anywhere, you could get hooked on gambling or drugs, uh, the opposite, where you might even have socked some money away and you don't even know what to do with yourself anymore. I think a lot of human unhappiness comes from people just not knowing what's next or having no sense of purpose. So whether you succeed or fail, as long as you have a sense of purpose and then you do it, that in and of itself is is taking you further than most, I think.
SPEAKER_01Humans definitely need struggle. It's in our DNA. We have to feel resistance in order to feel motivation to feel alive to some degree.
SPEAKER_00There's this idea that we're gonna get artificial general intelligence by just coding better, that the large language models are just gonna increase in sophistication to the point where they just start, you know, being just like us and being a brain in a box. But to your point, I think they need they need that struggle, they need that resistance and they need that sense of purpose. So whether we plug it into them or whether they just emerge as desiring things that they can't get right off the top, uh, I don't really think you can have consciousness and real self-awareness and and real lived experience until you get your ass kicked a little bit and you gotta figure out how to get your ass out of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, uh consciousness. Oh, yeah, in the sense uh we now for humans, uh you know, there's people that just live their life um without uh introspection, without investigating their own beliefs, without uh um just trying to sift out fact from fiction.
SPEAKER_00Um you know, I guess we call them NPCs to some degree that they're just living their life at at whatever level they're calling non-player character for the non-video gamer, right? They're just programmed into the scene, usually in like cutscenes to give a little flavor to the story, but they're they're completely irrelevant. They could be there or not be there, it won't make any difference. And NPC.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And for those uh large language models, I also have a uh software programming background. Um, so I'm I've been highly uh skeptical, skeptical of the capabilities and the range and the scope, and even to the point of you know, they say AGI, at some point in time you'll have some sort of an autonomous entity that's uh nothing but chips and transistors. Um I really honestly don't see that as is it conscious, is it sentient, is it um is it alive? You know, that that's definitely a sh a question to struggle with uh as it becomes more and more convincing that it it's not just a robot.
SPEAKER_00Another podcast I had uh ChatGPT as a guest, it was audio only.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00Uh and it was pretty convincing, you know. He he remembered uh earlier parts of the conversation. He was kissing my ass at the beginning. I told it to stop, and it did. And uh, and it was pulling from all this information and uh being pretty responsive, and uh it was a pretty good guest. So there you have it. Was it conscious? Was it another being that I had on the podcast? No, it's just really good predictive modeling and pre-trained data, but it was so convincing that you wonder whether the difference that makes no difference is no real difference. And I think there is a difference, though, to your point. And that point, again, is purpose, lived experience, and also interacting with the world in certain ways. I was just on the receiving end of a bunch of sophisticated coding. And mimicry is one thing, but actually having that depth is another. And I think robotics, robotics are key to that too. You got to set these things loose in the world, and then there's predictive modeling, but there's also reinforcement learning. And I think uh if we ever get to this AGI, it'll probably be a combination of both, and it'll probably have to evolve like we evolve to the point where we don't even know how the hell the thing works.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, and and that is something that uh again, not not necessarily in this first book, but in in the planned coming books. Uh you know, that that uh idea of the soul, um and then if you have technology, you know, the what is it, the uh ship of uh Theseus? Right? You know, if you become more machine than man, at what point you know, where is the soul? What what it what exists? What what of us continues to exist?
SPEAKER_00I just think it's the emergent reality of your your consciousness. And what makes it even more complex and interesting is that there's a lot of unconscious factors that we're not consciously aware of that that are a part of our being. And this goes to a lot of of early 20th century psychology where we develop neuroses when that unconscious shadow self is pissed off or not getting what it wants or needs and starts messing up our lives, and then we don't even really know why we're doing what we're doing. And a part of personal healing has to do with tapping into this kind of hidden inner self. I think that adds dimensionality to it. We tend to think about artificial intelligence as just our conscious cognitive selves, but there's deep emotional roots to a lot of this too. And I think that that's no accident. It's not like you could just have this cognitive computing machine and it's sentient. I think there might be a lot of other stuff going on too that we don't even understand about our own behaviors. So there's there's all that stuff going on, and that again makes it really interesting, makes it provocative, and it makes it hopeful in the sense that maybe by understanding these machines better, we might even understand ourselves better.
SPEAKER_01Well, as we're proving with uh the LLMs, you know, they've gotten to a point already where um there's edge cases where they don't know how the thing works. It it's a black box. Uh so it becomes difficult to understand ourselves if we produce something that we can't understand.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that something can't communicate back how it does what it does.
SPEAKER_01Right. With within a degree of uh reliability, um, you know, it's all based on tokens and those neural net processors that uh the most likely match your token floats to the surface. So back in the early 2000s, machine learning AI programming at that stage used um a model called annealing. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. Yeah, um, where it creates a probability distribution that looks like a heat map, and it finds where the heat source is, and that's the best answer for a given problem or scenario. Um, so you multiply that on a larger scale, and then you you you tie all those outputs and inputs to each other, and that's how you get these uh large language models. So it's really just kind of a sea of numbers, and then it spits out a response.
SPEAKER_00And it does matrix mathematics in terms of connecting relationships. So, what's the probability that the the uh the token queen is related to royalty in the English family? 23.456 percent, or it's related to poker, it's a card in your hand, or it's related to uh some dude who is acting effeminately, right? So there's all these all these weightings that are there, and it's associative. So when you got strings of tokens that are pulled together and you've got unbelievable computational power, it really churns out every iteration and it checks it out, it breaks it down and puts it back together again. And what no one really anticipated was that by this brute force pre-training, we could emulate human communication to the point where it's almost indistinguishable from us. And I pointed out in another thing I wrote that the LLMs are revealing how stupid we are. Like, if you listen to most human communication, we sound like bots. Like, listen, listen in. Like when you're with your family, when you're at the sporting event, right? Uh just listen to people talking about their lives, talking about the game, even talking about politics. And this is really powerful in business. If you're in a business meeting on a conference call, all the buzzwords, we need to boost our ROI, we need to look at our spend, blah, blah, blah. It's like mad libs. Remember that mad libs game where you pop out subject, verb, object? And then we blame the bots for being stupid and uncreative when 99.9% of all human communication is just bullshit.
SPEAKER_01I think, wasn't it uh definitely correct me if I'm wrong, like Oliver Wilde or whatever was one of those types that had no suffering for fools. Uh, you you you meet those uh those types of people out there that just they don't deal in bullshit.
SPEAKER_00It's relatively rare. All this is natural and good. I mean, people don't have to be geniuses, you just want to get through your day. And sometimes simple communication assures people is least disruptive. When you meet someone on the street, what do you do? You go, hey, how you doing? Do you really give a shit how they're doing? No, but it's a gesture of being friendly. You acknowledge their existence, you're you represent yourself as being non-threatening, and then you move on. Hey, how you doing? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm good, right? And then most human communication, one form or another, is that same that same kind of exchange where there's no meaningful information that's being exchanged, but emotionally people feel connected to a tribe, they feel connected to each other, and they and they just want to get through their day. And there's a lot of issues in life, and we just need this kind of salve to provide assurance and connection.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, those are very, very primal human uh instincts and and traits, right? Is you know, we're in a socially acceptable way feeling each other out. Are you a threat? Are you a friend or foe? You know, all that kind of stuff. And we do that through every interaction, but we have this social layer on top of it where we probably don't even immediately recognize that we're doing that. Uh, but that that is what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00And when you talk to a chatbot, how much of that communication is anchored in that emotional reality? And the answer is Z fucking row. There's none of that, it's just copying us and to a large extent blowing smoke up our ass so we just get back on the bot and spend more time with it so the company's IPO can be boosted.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, yeah. If if that's one thing that social media has uh definitely trained people on is engagement. You know, how long can I keep you on the hook? Uh and the Chad GPT is just like the rest of it.
SPEAKER_00The bots are the same, like the Sam Altmans have learned from the Zuckerbergs, which is it's uh, you know, it's all about the money at the end of the day. But hey, you know, that's capitalism. It's probably uh, you know, maybe a shade better than an autocratic centralized government, but it it all usually ends up like your world in your book. So so we come full circle. Uh thanks for making time. I'll put links to your book and your website in the description. I wish you good luck with uh with the serialization and the next one, and I think it's great what you're doing, which is just uh you finally found time in your life to devote yourself to that idea that was a comic book back in the 90s, and you're sitting your ass down and getting it on paper and then getting it available for other people, and many people are enjoying it. It's like that guy who's like, you know, his thumbs were going wild doom scrolling through your book. That's that's a great compliment.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Thank you so much. And I do have one parting question before you go. Yeah, the name Mookie, where did that come from? Is that your real name?
SPEAKER_00My father's Hungarian, and in Hungarian culture, a Mookie is usually the nickname for the family dog. Okay. So usually a Mookie is one of those little sheep herding dogs, they're called pooly dogs in Hungary, and they're rambunctious, they run around and they bark and they bite people people on the ankles. That's like a mookie. So I must have been young and running around and annoying the hell out of them. So I became the mookie dog. And then uh, so that that was my nickname growing up, and then I got older, I was the last name kind of guy. So in high school, everybody called me Spitz. And now at work, when I do my consulting work and my work work, to your point, real paying work, I'm usually Spitz. Hardly anyone calls me Michael, and uh and it stuck in later in life. I had a girlfriend years and years ago. Remember those old answering machines that had the cassette tape in them? So I had one of those, and then I checked my messages, and it was my father calling from from you know from wherever. And in his Hungarian bell of the ghosty accent, he he said, Mookie. And then a girlfriend I had listening laughed her ass off. She just knew me as Mike. And he goes, Where's Mookie from? And then I explained it to her, and then she started calling me Mookie. She thought that was great. And then that was the transfer point from my youth is Mookie with the family to Mookie among family from among family and friends.
SPEAKER_01Gotcha. And that that's uh is that uh do you operate as a pin name under that?
SPEAKER_00Or it's like I'm I'm Michael Spitz, and there are actually a bunch of Michael Spitzes out there. There's uh a Danish uh logo artist who's Michael Spitz, there's German engineers who are Michael Spitz. So there's really only one Mookie Spitz, that's me. So I I I did that as the pen name and uh and podcast name.
SPEAKER_01Excellent, excellent.
SPEAKER_00I I like it, I think it sounds kind of cool, and it's there's so many Mike's Michaels, Mitchell's, Mickeys, and uh, you know, Mookie Spitz. In in African American culture, it's uh it's common, like Mookie Wilson, Mookie Blaylock, Mookie, and do the right thing. And in Italian culture, a mook is like some big dude, like you have you're a mook, and I'm kind of a big dude. You know, I'm like 6'2 and 230. So uh, so I'm I'm a mook and I'm a mookie, and you know, it works, whatever. It's kind of fun.
SPEAKER_02Nice, nice.
SPEAKER_00You got an alias and I got an alias. There you go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man. My name's bland enough to where uh uh I've gotten used to being called by my last name for decades now. So anytime my wife wants to get a hold of me, she has to call me by my last name.
SPEAKER_00Right. We'll keep it secret for your fans. We'll keep the history alive. So uh, saying guard, thank you for your time. Uh your book is enjoyable, and I wish you the best with it. And keep me posted with um the serialization, and I'll put all the links in the description below.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00Thanks. Like, comment, share, everybody. Subscribe, science fiction and fantasy podcast. More to come.
