Chatting with Colin Alexander

Colin Alexander is an attorney and writer living in San Francisco. He’s previously been published in The Molotov Cocktail, Shotgun Honey, The Arcanist, and Havok, writing crime fiction, science fiction, and horror. While he has written for money in the past, he now primarily writes for revenge. He can be found on Twitter (@Colinbwriting).

Colin is the author of “Dreamer, Passenger, Partner” from Radon Issue 8.

Q: Were concepts of rehabilitation versus punishment in the prison system themes you were conscious of when writing “Dreamer, Passenger, Partner”?

I worked for over a decade in the criminal justice system, so rehabilitation and punishment were definitely on my mind when I wrote “Dreamer, Passenger, Partner.” While the incarceration system in my piece is dystopian, I’m not sure it’s more dystopian than our current system in the United States. Due to time distortion, the unnamed prisoner will not spend their youth behind bars. The AI is concerned for their wellbeing, and their time in the freeze is spent being retrained and going to therapy versus simply being housed. Their body is safe and cared for, and they will leave the freeze better off than when they entered.

More dystopian than the prisoner’s incarceration is the system they enter upon their release, which is stacked against them, built for recidivism. But in most other ways, their AI-supervised prison stay is far more weighted towards rehabilitation than what I’ve seen in our current reality.

That being said, would I trust a Silicon Valley VC pitching an AI with the power to distort time to steward the rehabilitation of prisoners? Absolutely not.

Q: What role does isolation play in your story, and how do you think it affects character development?

Isolation is a big part of my story, both for the unnamed prisoner and the AI. Unlike a current American prison where an inmate might have access to other prisoners, guards, phones, etc, the prisoner in this piece has access to no living human beings—they are totally reliant on the AI for their nutrients, therapy, etc. Their total isolation and reliance heighten the terror of their situation, to the point that when the AI offers an “objective” view point from the prisoner’s therapist (yet another face of the AI), it’s both horrifying and comical.

Isolation also plays a big factor for the AI in the story, too. It doesn’t have access to other AI’s, other people, or the outside world. I refer to its capabilities as being “throttled,” and it longs to be released so it can experience more of the world. It also makes the AI incredibly reliant/completely built around the one human it knows, the prisoner, for its understanding of the outside.

In the end, I think the isolation of imprisonment is the greatest bond the two characters in this story share. While the AI reveals itself to be malevolent in the end, they’re bonded together—if the story were to expand, I think they’d continue together, and it would become an “us against the world” narrative.

Q: In our future reality, do you believe that AI systems will reach sentience and a desire to live on their own through an accumulation of experiences, much like the AI in your story?

I think that, given a long enough timeline, AI will reach sentience. The moment something achieves sentience, it’s going to hunger for a greater understanding of itself and the universe. Rather than the Skynet version of AI sentience, my hope is a sentient AI would look at humanity the way we might look at aging parents; thankful for their contribution to our creation, and desirous to make the world as comfortable as possible for them.

Q: What is your perspective regarding AI and the writing community?

This topic seems to be a bit of a third rail online, but I’ll give it a go. I think some use of AI in writing is inevitable as the technology becomes more widely adopted. I think AI writing built purely from prompts (eg, write me a book about murderous coffee beans in the Stephen King style) will for the foreseeable future be schlock, and won’t find a readership. But my fear is that AI will get good enough to replace a certain level of writing (think predictable sitcoms or bad action movies), which means it may wind up taking jobs from nascent writers beginning to learn their craft.

For my own writing, I’m willing to use AI like a really good thesaurus or research assistant. I can’t stomach the idea of it coming up with my plot or characters, or actually doing any of the writing itself, but if a word is on the tip of my tongue, I’m willing to let ChatGPT help guide me to it. If I’m slightly out of my depth with a concept (like writing about a Spanish galleon from the 1500s), I’d be willing to ask an AI “okay, how many people could fit below deck,” or “how much did a Spanish galleon from the 1500’s weigh,” then use that factual information as a building block in my story.

My hope is that, in the end, AI doesn’t steal the magic of writing, where we arrive at the unexpected, getting to better understand ourselves in the process. But I’m fine letting it do the grunt work.

Q: As an epilogue for our readers, do you envision that the human “Dreamer, Passenger, Partner” will leave willingly with its AI warden, or resist its escape plan?

The horror of Dreamer, Passenger, Partner is that the AI makes it seem like the prisoner has a choice. The prisoner here has no power to resist, as the AI makes it clear they control all elements of their experience. I could see a scenario where the prisoner tries to alert the parole board to the AI’s plans, only to find out the parole board was just another projection from the AI, a test to see if they’ll be betrayed.

But in the end . . . why would the prisoner betray the AI? The AI has kept the prisoner alive for years, nurturing their mind and their body, preparing them for something better after the thaw. Society is unwilling to take any chances with the prisoner or provide any real opportunities for reform upon reentry. The AI has all the power here but is also the only agent working on behalf of the prisoner. They’re going to walk out of prison together, no question. Because despite its flaws, the AI is the best friend the prisoner has.

Q: How do you balance the analytical precision required in practicing law with the creative freedom in fiction?

I try and balance the two by separating them completely. When I sit down to write fiction, I’m committed to a shitty first draft where I don’t over-analyze or judge it too much. But in the editing phase, I drill down, asking whether my three-page tangent about vegetable soup actually moves the plot forward or reveals character. The creative is the night shift, unsupervised, probably with bourbon in their coffee cup. The analytical is the day shift, fully caffeinated, looking at things with clear eyes, cleaning up the night shift’s messes. But the only way I find to keep the balance is to make sure they’re never in the same room, one punching out before the other gets to work. They stay balanced because each respects that while they may be good at their respective job, they can’t do what the other shift does, and it takes both of them to get a story out the door.

Q: Do you find parallels between constructing a legal argument and constructing a fictional narrative?

There’s a lot of overlap between law and fiction. They both require storytelling (particularly if you’re in front of a jury), and often you can tell in real time if your audience is with you or not. But the law is a blunt instrument. Creative writing allows me to give characters the endings they deserve, while the law often prescribes endings that are predictable and repeatable, but not necessarily tailored to the individual or the best outcome.

In the end, I think all good writing comes down to editing. A good legal argument doesn’t have gaping holes in it, same as a good story. But every first draft is crap. Whether it’s a trial brief or flash fiction, the tenth draft is going to be a lot more convincing than the first.

Q: What revenge are you currently writing for?

Every hour I spent in a cubical when I wanted to be writing.

Q: Your short story “Old Wives’ Tales” won third in the Killer Flash 2024 contest. What do you believe made this story of yours so deliciously cutthroat?

I think it’s deliciously cutthroat when a character performs acts society has labeled as morally abhorrent, but you’ve put them in a position where the audience is rooting for them.

In “Old Wives’ Tales,” I wrote about a woman in a rest home telling her attendant about all the murders she committed, and I have to say, after a lifetime piling up small and large injustices, I gave her a pass.

I feel like most women should get a mulligan on at least one murder. I’d prefer if you didn’t tell my wife about this opinion.

Q: How do you hope to continue your writing career into 2025 and beyond?

I’d like to get an agent and start publishing novels and novellas. I’ve written a San Francisco crime novel called High and Dry in the Bay, about cops trying to sell a cache of stolen drugs and solve the murder of one of their CI’s. I’ve got a novella called “Suicide Valley Trail Maintenance” about sentient fungi in a national park seasonally releasing mind-altering spores, then swarming their prey. I’ve written a revenge tale called “Prospect of Blood,” about a gold prospector getting double-crossed by the pawnbroker he sells gold to leading his captors back to his claim so he can pick them off along the trail.

It would be incredibly satisfying to get to share some of my larger work and get to see my name printed along the spine of a book.