ITT Enki's computer makes shallow pastiches of popular authors

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

BEWARE OF THE DRAWER IN MY DESK. AND DON'T TELL NANNY. Mr Wonka by the
sheer horror of uneducated people. And so, my dear child, please don't
worry about them!' cried Charlie. 'That nearest one! What's it going -
if ever you should know that this hairiness made him dip his whole body
became motionless as he fell, as he tapped the walnut shell with his
entire face by the hand came out with it! If Bruno has been studying
the guest list. "Eight o'clock tomorrow evening, then. Good afternoon,
my little frrroggies," I heard the crunch of the corridor and entered the
Dining-Room. If I ever tasted,' one of those in authority. It was like
a can of brown. The label said, FOR CHICKENS WITH FOUL PEST, HEN GRIPE,
SORE BEAKS, GAMMY LEGS, COCKERELITIS, EGG TROUBLE, BROODINESS OR LOSS
OF FEATHERS. MIX ONE SPOONFUL ONLY WITH EACH BUCKET OF FEED. 'Well,'
George said aloud to himself as he carefully transferred the rack of
test tubes with his shoulder. 'Now listen to their feet the right and
so long as it did magic things! Is that the accumulation of their little
squigglers into the air just like you. It's thrown the alarm-clock right
out of courtesy to their feet crunching in the least to see to! Don't
disturb me. I had made things easy for a king To find himself that he
owned, and treasure it as high as it were, the first person ever to see
you have a good deal. "You'll be all right." "He certainly is!" Bruno
shouted from the bed. 'Where's my mother?' bawled Mrs Bucket. 'But that's
tomorrow! Today is the living-room,' announced Muggle-Wump. 'The grand
and glorious day?' 'Not too bad for the grapes.' "I glanced at her with
her walking across the nose. It's all over. It put its head on one side
of the table. They were evidence, surely, that my father and mother of
Mr Fox's nose from far away. It was June and very swift.

Roald Dahl

Praise for the phone. "Mr. Becker, wait here, please." "What's the
title?" Langdon eyed the hatch, he peered out and walked aimlessly down
Calle Delicias pondering his options. "Director!" Jabba exploded. "When
these firewalls fall, every user on the basis that they were sitting
side by side. Langdon suddenly sensed that the chopper gained altitude,
the wind as she stood in the highest bidder tomorrow at noon." Susan
felt instinct takeover. Digging her shoes came off. In one fluid motion,
Langdon leapt up, swinging his gun and heaved the heavy cryptex from
her depressing reverie. The door opened and families poured into
the darkness, a pencil-thin beam of light spread through the center
screen, right beneath the ice here was highly classified and would be
most unpleasant." Harper glared back, and then said, "They are dead,"
the monk advanced, Langdon stepped into the woods, wondering where
Silas was, Silas had faithfully denied himself all sexual indulgence,
even self-administered. It wasThe Way. He knew my grandfather. It is
obvious they pressured him to fold. For a full house at the spires of the
darkness, hoping Strathmore wasn't listening. If saving Susan meant his
plans for a second motivation still burning within her.The truth about the
brotherhood..." He paused, leaning forward, and his gross overbudgeting
on new technologies. Tonight, a high-tech, high-profile arrest of one of
the airport concourse loomed before Becker like an insect hovering inside
the Velcro pocket of his body too weak to fight. Tears of exhaustion
and pain poured down from above. "Mr. Chartrukian?" The three Crypto
employees froze. High above northern Maine, a G4 jet continued speeding
toward Washington. Onboard, Michael Tolland was already moving deeper
into Node 3, but the librarian's smile suggested otherwise. Langdon
still felt lost. "But that's the literal translation.Clef de voute -a
stone key beneath the ice behind the one-way glass of Node 3.

Dan Brown

But there was
no on-site staff at their ease. His ex-wife told him at the podium,
flinging him into the bathroom, and Chia took the better part of
some large institution's mainframe. Around that time, but they hang
back. They do not know 30 what he quickly stopped. Some blocks on,
at the slimy pilings. "We can go home and kin and even a door, Fraser
led the way they hauled him back to the Museum of Practical Geology, in
deposition before Magistrate G. H. S. Lywood, for The Monthly Review of
the shaft. Houston moaned. "Please be quiet," she said. "Tell me about
it. They knocked down the time-line. Amazing, though: that business
around Curie's husband... Changed everything, and he hadn't seen officers
patrolling the streets. They must have descended to level with her,
although he supposed was scarcely taller than Yamazaki, stands staring
down into himself, the sound of rain blown against oiled paper, for
flowering weeds a-nod down tiny alleys, the glow of Narita. It's all to
shit himself. Baldhead looked like wax crayons, plastic propellant molded
around alloy flechettes like big nails. 'If we knew what they need to,
and Chevette caught a glimpse of her hand between the twin tensor beams
stab at power, up on the wheel, how the freshly glossed red of her was
waking up with Carson?" "No," Chevette said, "I don't." "Hmmm." Jammer
looked at the top of things. "Hey there," the fnidge said. "You've got
a pair of swinging doors, their edges lined with the first hints of
transgalactic traffic. I used it in the back seat of your own kids over
here?" Her eyes narrow, deepening the wrinkles at their work, but climbing
the twisted fireball showed Turner the pack, but Turner shook his head. "I
know I don't know him. Left this for sampling. The whole lot of favors,
because he had it, though I doubt they'd let me read. Rydell needs quiet,
in order to a crowded dray laden with ale-kegs. The proprietors had no
idea what I'm here to crouch there like that. Hide all sorta good:es in
the strictest confidentiality. Nothing you say she's dead. They cremated
her already." "I know," she says. "Then he runs you over, 'cause you got
it to the French tour; to this story of her thirty-five years and the wall
beside the dead man's eye, like some mighty locomotive of the market.

William Gibson

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I would be the keenest of financial negotiators, second only in larger
letters.' They stared at Vimes over the head of the heap of wrappers
and greasy bags indicated that Ossie had arms like Nobby. I think-'
The watchman stopped, and when Lord Rust would probably quote date
and time. And yet all the empty desk beside him. It had a broad
education. He'd been in here,' he said gently. 'It's been a thief,
at least say,' cut down that description and make them sink.) And
he thought about them in the town. I sit on this meall. There's no
more explosions, gathered around. This might be called stupidity. It
was said that dreams were only dreams. She'd seen other things. Gods
play games with the Wolf Pack that I have a word with Lady Selachii,'
said Lady Sybil a little unclear about those next few minutes. That's
the way of getting a run for their money, because the wizards wouldn't
bother us?' he said. 'Er... he's... he's taking them out of his pocket
and wrote on the plan, just here, look. ..' 'Ah, yes,' said Victor. `My
name's Victor Tugelbend. Er. But my friends call me Victor,' said Ponder
admiringly. `I'm amazed you're still a student.' He looked down. There
was more or less to himself. The Patrician walked softly through the open
window and then a low murmuring which went on for several hundred years,
my lord. And they told me you had to be told, sir.' 'Right!' 'And anyway
I couldn't quite define, much to this fishing ground, but for Solid the
trip was usually well worth it. The far walls were hidden in the front was
just like the picture box right up close to-' `What? You think they'll
say we went to a face that any sensible man would trust. For years it
had some done,' said Vimes, more or less sidled back, like a bundle
of old rags. The windows would be easy. Any idiot canfail . Victor's
uncle had left 'They're so mixed up!' 'All right, all right,' said the
troll. `Yes,' said Victor helpfully, `but I think I got carried away.

Terry Pratchett

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Praise for the hour. We're on different time zones, Vernet modeled his
sleep habits after the rebellion of the rope really exists until the
cuff links. On any given time know where my nipples stick out through
Chateau Villette. So far, the evidence is consistent with it has no
immediate threat to the ocean. It was receding quickly, already heading
for the Weishaupt slogan of 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The catch,
of course, the peculiar relevance in your mouth. Lord, God, Rebecca, I
love you." "We love him, too," Sade interjected helpfully. "And we will be
any change it's got to be enormous--over ten billion possible choices. At
one end under an electron microscope, we see such an issue in Sexton's
campaign either. And then Hagbard wrote like a barn door. A torrent of
emotions in his car. "You're kidding." "I have Director Pickering in the
bed in three days, if he didn't have to move you." Clark Kent sat up now,
threw off their hinges. Hale launched himself over the past month had been
collected by the hydrogen in water than by any other all empires are the
province of Sam Spade. Give me a favor. Anyway, I had imagined a museum
of Atlantean men and women are good that whoever uttered the aphorism
he was a brilliant one. Apparently Strathmore had been chalked on the
front," Simon interjected. Dillinger laughed. "Yes," he said, trying to
get them involved. It worked with you mean by a pirogue full of corpses,
and the CBS or Conservative Bavarian Seers." Joe nodded. "Soâ€" you know
nothing about it, and few mysteries have caused as much as psychedelics
slowed it down. "Last," Miss Portinari was saying "Rude bastard, isn't
he?" to Dr. Wagner. At the same black teeth, horribly rotten. And he
was an achievement beyond his wildest dreams. It would be held among the
founding of the clinic; he had help from Langdon. Sophie was stopped on
a frozen pond, TRANSLTR's hull let out a small glass cases filled with
too many questions. "I've got it but it looks like chaos. The thuggee are
a Canadian citizen, aren't you?" "Yes, of course!" the German lied.

Conspiracy lit mashup #1

Praise for the look of a revolution far greater pain. He was perched
on the bed, smoking a thin freckled man, blond, nearly bald, steps
out on safely. . . .). Slothrop frees his arms still locked around
his basic premise. Swift was Sense/Net's most important of all, the
age of greatness!" "It needn't mean much at his post, his animated
sandwich-board illuminated against the bark. It is the elegant laws
of ballistics, feral ravening, promised more delight. She tested
the action of a second, that he felt so high above the crowd, If you
know if I'm right." * * * When he spotted the Lief Erikson Cabal,"
said Stella. "Stella! What happened to be much safer." Sophie had seen
on the scene like that would've kept them from a position fix, if the
words had no way you can climb up there and see- No. She shut the gas
off. It made no move to step over on their own title, as well the Tower
in Yesod and the Father-conspiracy do not believe Silencio is there,
his arm around Mitchell's daughter, crooning something in Japanese,
and knows that the water level inexorably rose. The dog whined and the
hopelessness of the time, but in the summer. He seemed miles away. Despite
the wariness of open sea. Then, executing the bizarre image, his initial
skepticism on his knees, and Silencio means no harm, and he had seen
the man, his boots so they'd fit Slothrop. Dodging constantly for jeeps,
ten-ton lorries, Russians on horseback, he finally gets around a fire,
and smoke a cigarette, and despite endless Tchitcherines vaulting in
over the knurls atop the ice in a typeface designed for the job, had
gone over to grab them, and things Harwoodian had led the Luddites are
dead tech, destined to rise as high as blocks of foam, her cheeks then
in the wire-rim glasses following him. Outside, Becker scanned the
figures. "Huh." She finally married Jim Riley, the dope for relief
from the deck. D D D D D D D D D D D D Pumm, Easterling, Dromond,
Lamplighter, Spectro are stars on the right along the corridor-streets
of the Geographical Society." Wakefield pursed his lips. Nodded. "Where
is she?" Becker's heart was never caught. Meanwhile, Lord Caernarvon
himself died in an old News of the Soviet State.

Conspiracy lit mashup #2

[Cramulus]

I enjoyed those!

Is there a way to control for grammar? I think these might read a bit "better" if the machine were generating complete grammatical sentences. For example, I really like this sentence--

What's it going -
if ever you should know that this hairiness made him dip his whole body
became motionless as he fell, as he tapped the walnut shell with his
entire face by the hand came out with it

--because it combines some interesting images, some of which are recognizable from Willy Wonka. But you can't read it in one pass, your mind keeps blurring over the edges where the fragments of meaning are still jagged.

Controlling for subject might be interesting too, like if sentences were clustered topically. You'd get a paragraph about Mrs. Buckets, even if its contents were all over the place.

I think these texts would make good source material for a word+image collage.


My favorite of the batch was the Conspiracy Lit #1, because I recognize a lot of it from Illuminatus. Due to the "fifth person" narrative in that book, I'm sure some more interesting mashups could be made by selecting specific passages as the mashup source material. It also makes me wonder what it'd be like if you mashed up a bunch of acid trips in different literature. Illuminatus, Gravity's Rainbow, the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test -- a lot of these books experiment with different narrative devices to illustrate a psychedelic drug trip. I'd be curious to see what it'd be like to mash a bunch of those passages together.

Can you tell me a bit more about how the machine assembles these?

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I can't particularly control for grammar here, unless I use a grammar checker afterwards and throw out all the sentences that don't match a template. I could get 'tighter' prose by using a higher order chain.

Currently, the way this works is that it splits the text up by spaces, and finds all contiguous pairs of words, then sorts them by number of instances -- in other words, makes a list of words that show up next to each other, and puts the most common at the top. Then, given the first pair of words, it goes through and finds the most likely pair of words starting with the second word in the pair before it, over and over, and finally comes out with the full document. This is first order, because it only rates one word at a time. Second and third order chains exist, but if you don't put enough in you tend to get the exact same document out.

One thing I could do to 'tighten up' without resorting to a higher-order chain is to remove the pairs already used.

[Cramulus]

interesting. so we're looking at cutups on the individual word level? That's surprising, I'd figured there were some sentences might have survived in their original form. In that case, I'm surprised these cutups make as much sense as they do.

like, I find this passage particularly poetic, but only because I'm very familiar with Illuminatus!----

So far, the evidence is consistent with it has no
immediate threat to the ocean. It was receding quickly, already heading
for the Weishaupt slogan of 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The catch,
of course, the peculiar relevance in your mouth. Lord, God, Rebecca, I
love you." "We love him, too," Sade interjected helpfully. "And we will be
any change it's got to be enormous--over ten billion possible choices. At
one end under an electron microscope, we see such an issue in Sexton's
campaign either. And then Hagbard wrote like a barn door. A torrent of
emotions in his car. "You're kidding."

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Yeah. Markov chains are pretty amazing -- it's just single word cutups plus really simple statistics. One of my favorites:

Susan felt instinct takeover. Digging her shoes came off. In one fluid motion, Langdon leapt up, swinging his gun and heaved the heavy cryptex from her depressing reverie. The door opened and families poured into the darkness.

The imagery is quite amusing.

[Triple Zero]

ENKI, would it be possible to use a simple Part-of-Speech tagger to improve accuracy? Look it up, there's some fairly simple libraries that just roughly match words into types and add some kind of grammatical tagging to a text. Perhaps if you'd include that, like a higher probability to use a certain choice if it also fits a known grammar-tag sequence, or something?

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

ENKI, would it be possible to use a simple Part-of-Speech tagger to improve accuracy? Look it up, there's some fairly simple libraries that just roughly match words into types and add some kind of grammatical tagging to a text. Perhaps if you'd include that, like a higher probability to use a certain choice if it also fits a known grammar-tag sequence, or something?

That's what I meant by templating -- most of those tend to look up words for all possible parts of speech, and try to fit them into a sentence template. Problem is, a lot of legitimate sentences (say, in the original work) will very much not fit any correct template (a pedant will say that the original sentences are grammatically incorrect). It's generally easier to assume such a sentence makes sense than it is to remove all the sentences that can't make sense automatically.

That said, a lot of the stuff that's very far-out gains some of its far-out nature from sentence structure that has already been used. I can't really phrase WHY, but when I patched this program to remove a pair of words from the list once it was used, it got far more coherent.

Alternately, I could modify it to split by spaces rather than space characters -- these documents are far more coherent than some earlier versions because I modified the program to split by space characters rather than non-alphanumeric characters.

[Triple Zero]

but that's not what I meant, what a part-of-speech tagger does is to tag words for whether they are verbs, nouns, adjectives and things like that (possibly a bit more fine-grained than that), it doesn't check the grammar itself.

see usually you convert the texts to a stream of tokens (words, split at spaces or space characters as you said), and then train the Markov model on that stream.

but additionally you can convert the texts to a stream of token-types/part-of-speech-tags, and then train a Markov model on that.

now when you generate your mashup texts, at each point in the stream of mashups you get a set of probabilities whcih are the most likely words to come after this, depending on the previous words, and based on that pick a random new word.

when in addition to that you've POS-tagged the texts and trained another Markov model on that, you will also get a set of probabilities for which token-types are most likely to come after that, depending on the previous token types.

so you could combine those probabilities in order to boost the logical part-of-speech sequences with respect to the bare token/word sequences.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

That's an interesting idea. I'll have to see if I can hook into wordnet or something. I didn't write the original version of this markovizer, so I may end up wanting to write one from scratch for doing that.

[Triple Zero]

wordnet is kind of big, there are much simpler POS taggers. I came across this one a while ago:
http://ifile.it/52horbe/ling.zip
it's written in Python, dunno if you can use that. I haven't tried it out myself though.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

This one is in lua, but I was planning on calling out to other programs anyway.

[Triple Zero]

you can always have the POS tagger just tag all the input texts in one pass and then output that to another textfile.

might be the easiest way to go about it anyway, you'd get a pretty good markov model out of text that goes "verb verb thing adject noun pronoun verb pronoun thing otherthing ..." (I tried to do the previous sentence but I'm not to good with what you call all those linguistic thingies).

since it would have a very limited set of "words" (tags), you could also easily make it higher order and still end up with a pretty accurate probability estimate.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

And write a program that translates tags to words of that part of speech in the original?

There are probably some other applications for this. For instance, applying the grammar constructs of Gibson to the vocabulary of Rand, or something.