If you are interested in artificial intelligence (AI), fiction with AI components offers an accessible way to explore the field without navigating technical jargon or reading academic texts. pip adam's Kluge and Tim Corballis' Nova are excellent examples of this kind of reading.
On Sunday 6 September, the two authors joined Nic Low for a session called Ghosts in the Machines: Technology & AI in Fiction at the WORD Christchurch Festival 2026. This event attracted readers from a wide range of age groups.
The conversation began with introduction of their book, followed by explanations of the ideas that inspired their writing.
Kluge is a novel about a collapsing tech company that questions what it means to be human through the perspective of Kluge, a satirical AI narrator and the novel's central character. adam originally intended to write a superhero novel. She was interested in exploring unchecked wealth and the labour that makes such wealth possible. This interest gradually developed into an exploration of what it means to have - or not have - a body. She became interested in artificial intelligence, which has no physical embodiment but can humans on an abstract level.
According to Corballis, Nova is a novel about an imaginary spaceship inhabited by humans and a self-aware world. He felt overwhelmed by events in the real world and wanted to write about everything that was happening around him. The spaceship serves as a container for exploring these ideas. He also wanted to give voices to things, which led to the machine, System, becoming the novel's narrator. Corballis did not intend to use the concept of artificial intelligence while writing his book. Instead, he was interested in exploring what might happen if things themselves were given a voice.
Then, both authors read excerpts from their book.
Both adam and Corballis explore the topic of the body-mind distinction in their novels. Neither Kluge nor System, possesses a physical body. This raises questions about the nature of knowledge: How can they come to know the world without bodily experience? Where is knowledge located if it is not located in a physical body?
adam was interested in how knowledge in large language models is shaped by human choices. She referred to Christopher Strachey's computer-generated love poem. adam was curious about how disembodied entities gained knowledge, she questioned how systems without bodies can understand things that people know through life experiences.
Corballs holds that tools, technologies and societies are part of the human body. He commented,
We cannot be embodied without being social. When System in Nova is the narrator, everything goes in. When we talk about a body, it refers to a social body. For example, the internet is an extension of our social body. We type keys and then get to know what we want to know. The body is not just bounded by the skin. Tools are part of our body.
Then, they moved on to discuss the idea of surveillance, as it plays a major role in both novels. adam gave Kluge eyes, ears, and a voice. She is cautious about surveillance and annoyed by it in real life. She created a world in which Kluge can describe only what is captured through video, audio, smartwatches, and keystrokes.
In Corballis's Nova, System functions as a control system, similar to a nation-state. For Corballis, the concept of surveillance is not new. It is something people have worried about for a long time.
Disembodied knowledge has the power to determine what counts as truth. adam questioned how people treat what they see or hear through video, audio, or written messages as truth. She explained that information literacy is taught to help people make judgments about the information they receive, but Kluge does not know how to do this. She believed that her novel is about challenging ways of thinking, and she hoped readers could gain this perspective through reading Kluge's narrative.
adam was uneasy about how knowledge and truth are increasingly accessed through searching. She said:
"This is worrying me. I am really worried about democracy. We have two or three political parties getting massive money. They also have international think tanks and create AI-generator apps... There is so much money being invested in producing information, but so little truth."
Corballis thinks that voice is an important political category. In his book, he gives System a voice as a narrator. He questions what counts as a voice and, therefore, what can be heard. According to him, there are many different kinds of voices, such as the artificial voice produced by AI and the corporate voice of the market. He then raises the question of who gets to speak and who is given a voice, whether through money, the market, or legislation. This uncertainty about voice can affect how we understand AI.
Set among these enormous voices, the role of politics becomes important. adam commented on what is happening in the real world, ranging from the exercise of political power and the use of weaponised humour as criticism, to the unfair transfer of wealth into private hands. These observations fit well within her novel, where they are presented through characters and voices. adam commented that there is nothing new here. These patterns have occurred repeatedly over time.
In contrast to the more limited setting adam established in her novel, Corballis was interested in the exercise of power. He created the spaceship Nova as a self-contained world separated from reality. As a self-contained and mobile system, Nova functions as a metaphor and can be understood as an artificial reality. He also viewed closure as a narrative category, which determines where an ending exists.
During the question-and-answer session, a question about gender and masculinity in the AI world sparked lively discussion. adam thought it was an interesting area and would like to explore it further. In Nova, Corballis approaches gender from a utopian perspective that is less dependent on traditional gender expectations. He also commented on how media representations of AI tend to feminise it, as AI is often imagined as a servant and associated with jobs that have traditionally been performed by women.
The session was open and encouraged discussion. It raised more questions than it answered. Neither author is an AI expert. Instead, they bring observations from real life into the context of an AI world and encourage readers to view AI from a different perspective. Both books explore real-world issues while placing them in a fictional setting. If you are interested in these ideas, you may find Kluge and Nova inspiring.
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