Why write family-based novels?
Today the news reported the resignation of one of the key developers of AI, or ‘Artificial Intelligence’. Apparently Geoffrey Hinton, (a ‘British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist’ (BBC News May 2nd) had realised that at the current rate of progress, AI could become dangerous to us humans by becoming ‘more intelligent than we are’.
His explanation includes that AI could handle far more information than human brains could possibly manage to contain ‘one brain at a time’, and that if disseminating all that information to every AI throughout the world — well, it would just outwit us – and then what…?
Interesting scary thought. Especially as so far the routines and expectations of “normal life” world still feel distinctly disrupted by the Covid pandemic. And that, especially among, young adults, the taste for “dystopic” novels and movies is distinctly large, maybe driven by fiction such as The Hunger Games, combined with a real apprehension about their future driving their interest in the effects of climate change and preserving the planet. Yet, ironically, students are already using AI for homework and college essays – and in fact, in a small way, many of us writers use programs, such as Grammarly, essentially a type of AI, to check their work.
So why, in this disturbed post-pandemic world, do I persist in writing family based novels? Not crime, not dystopian, not horror or thriller? Looking at what those popular genres have in common, I still choose to write about human interactions.
It may look naive. It may look like writing what will only be read, if at all, by a small number of knitting grannies – though consulting the figures, I discovered that the most popular genre for older people isn’t books by authors such as Maeve Binchey, or Joanna Trollope, it’s crime.
A family novel may be a warm, cuddly kind of a book. But all families are different – and incredibly so. Open up any household and the configuration of the family is unique. Contrasting families may have radical differences, and once joined by relationships coming in from outside the group, things can get messy. Everyone, ultimately, will have begun in some kind of a family – whether large or small, Bohemian or traditional, cross-cultural, multicultural, single-parent, blended, religious or secular, those family backgrounds affect all of us, and the meetings and relationships within and across families, make for ingenious solutions and interesting, sometimes bizarre, plot twists.
Family life also reflects social change, sibling rivalry can mirror political and national conflict. Crimes may indeed be committed. Unstable or dysfunctional families create their own mini dystopian world. At present a number of ‘family based’ novels centre on the struggles of failing families and children in care. And others on immigrant families, think Brick Lane** or culture clashes, think An American Marriage. (Or my Baby, Baby and The Labyrinth Year****)
As I read recently on a books and writing based website, “families are as varied as the people who composed them“ (mind juggle website) and in writing about families an author composes character-based tales about the vast and intriguing variations of human behaviour, charting some startling changes in social mores, and demographic, beliefs, attitudes, rebellion and accepted norms, often reflecting how these affect the generations within families.
As for AI, becoming “more intelligent than ours” my own worry is not so much about the quantity of knowledge, but the ignorance of ethics, integrity, and compassion to support or temper the use of that knowledge. Something we can learn about, and chart – or not – within human families.
* BBC Newspage, 2 May 2023
**Monica Ali, 2004
***Tayari Jones, 2019
****Mari Howard, 2013, 2014