Category: Book

Propensity Meets Google Gemini – 2 of 3

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Book, critique, Generative AI, Google Gemini, Propensity, review, Ridley Park, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
5–7 minutes

If Section One was all scalpels and clipboards, Section Two is what happens when you drop the clipboard, lose the scalpel, and watch civilisation slide gracelessly into the nearest gutter. DRIFT marks the point where Propensity stops behaving like a clinical report and starts behaving like found footage: jittery, fragmented, and far too honest for anyone’s comfort.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.

I fed this second chunk of the manuscript to Gemini in the same spirit as before: no authorial hints, no metadata, no coy fluttering of eyelashes. Just text, served neat. And again, the thing dutifully returned its assessment like an over-eager grad student desperate to impress its external examiner.

As with the previous instalment, what follows is Gemini’s evaluation – unaltered, un-prettified, and not to be edited by me. Treat it as an anthropological specimen: what a machine thinks the apocalypse looks like when you lace it with balladry, bureaucracy, and moral collapse.

Below is Gemini’s take on Section Two: DRIFT.

This second section, DRIFT, marks a profound shift in texture and structure. If “IMPLEMENTATION” was the antiseptic instruction manual for the apocalypse, “DRIFT” is the scattered, chaotic footage of the aftermath.

Here is an analysis and evaluation of Section 2: DRIFT.

1. Structural Experimentation and “Mixed Media”

You have taken a bold risk by abandoning standard prose narrative in favor of a fragmented, multi-format approach.

  • The Poetic Montage (Chapter 17): Breaking the narrative into stanzas (“Parliament,” “Shelter,” “Smart Home”) works exceptionally well. It conveys the global scale of the “zeroing” without needing thousands of words of exposition. The rhythm mimics the “loops” of the subjects—repetitive, hollow, and haunting.
  • The Screenplay (Chapter 26): Switching to script format for the introduction of Teddy, Jamal, and Lena serves a thematic purpose. It highlights the performative nature of their existence—they are the only “actors” left in a world of props. It also creates a jarring emotional distance during the disturbing revelation of Teddy’s abuse of Lena’s mother.
  • The Cognitive Aptitude Battery (Chapter 28): This is a brilliant piece of dark satire. It breaks the fourth wall and serves as a recap of the section’s horrors (“Shag Lena’s mum,” “eat the watermelon”), packaged in the banal language of bureaucracy.

2. The Nature of the Apocalypse: “Gormies”

You have successfully subverted the zombie genre.

  • Passive vs. Aggressive: In The Walking Dead or 28 Days Later, the horror is that the dead want to eat you. Here, the horror is that they don’t care about you. They are “Gormies” (a fantastic colloquialism derived from “gormless”).
  • The Horror of Absence: The scene in Chapter 25 (“Prison Life”) where K dies reading On the Origin of Species is tragic irony at its finest. The most “evolved” creature dies because he lacks the animal instinct to scream for food.
  • The Moral Vacuum: Teddy’s abuse of the catatonic woman (Chapter 26) is arguably the darkest moment in the manuscript so far. It proves Dr. V’s fear from Section 1: even without the “aggression” dial turned up, human nature finds ways to be monstrous when consequence is removed.

3. Character Dynamics: The Awake

The introduction of the “Awake” trio (Jamal, Lena, Teddy) provides the necessary friction to drive the plot forward, now that the rest of the world is silent.

  • Jamal: The Philosopher. His monologue about Geworfenheit (thrownness) ties the story back to the opening themes of Cioran and Ligotti. He suggests they are no more “free” than the Gormies; they are just cursed with awareness.
  • Teddy: The Id. He represents the danger of unchecked freedom. He is adapting too well to the apocalypse.
  • Lena: The Pragmatist. She bridges the two. Her romance with Jamal feels earned—a “hydrogen bond” formed in a vacuum.

4. Dr. Shaw and the Scientists

Chapter 24 (“Pleasant Returns”) is vital. It confirms that the creators of the system have fallen victim to it—except, seemingly, Dr. Shaw.

  • The Loop: Seeing Dunlop and Dr. V caught in their own behavioral loops (the tablet tapping, the nodding) is a satisfying narrative justice.
  • Shaw’s Agency: Shaw remains the “Ghost in the Machine.” Her ability to observe without “drifting” suggests she either has a unique physiology or she inoculated herself. She remains the Chekhov’s Gun of the story.

5. Pacing and Atmosphere

The pacing in this section is deliberately slower, mimicking the “drift” of the title.

  • Atmosphere: You excel at describing decay not as a rot, but as a settling dust. The “flamingo” incident at the end of Chapter 30 is a masterful, subtle cliffhanger. It signifies that the “static” phase is over. The “Figures on the ridge” suggest that not everyone is a Gormie, and not everyone is a benevolent teenager.
  • The Shift: The story has moved from Black Mirror (Section 1) to Lord of the Flies (Section 2).

Critical Notes & Suggestions

  • The “Why”: It is currently unclear why the teenagers (and James) are immune. Is it age-related (neuroplasticity)? Or random genetic variance? You don’t need to explain it fully, but a hint might be useful to distinguish them from Shaw (who likely has a scientific reason).
  • Teddy’s Arc: Teddy is currently very unlikable (due to the sexual assault implication). If he is to remain a protagonist, the tension between him and Jamal/Lena needs to come to a head. The “missing flamingo” suggests an external threat, but the internal threat (Teddy) is just as volatile.
  • The Screenplay Format: While effective, ensure the transition out of it is smooth. Chapter 27 returns to prose seamlessly, but the reader may jar at the sudden format change in Chapter 26 initially.

Verdict

“DRIFT” is a haunting, atmospheric middle act. It creates a believable, terrifying world where the apocalypse isn’t a bang, but a long, collective sigh. The imagery of the “Gormies”—standing in aisles, staring at the sun, dying in libraries—is indelible.

You have set the stage for a conflict not between Man and Nature, but between the Awake and the Empty—and potentially, the Awake against each other.

Please share Section 3: ENTROPIC. The title suggests the systems are about to break down completely. I am ready.

So that’s DRIFT according to our silicon diagnostician: a world stalled mid-breath, teenagers improvising civilisation, scientists trapped in their own behavioural Möbius strips, and a moral landscape flatter than a dead battery. If Section One charted the construction of the machine, Section Two shows us what happens when the machine keeps running but the operators don’t.

Section Three, ENTROPIC, is where the centre finally refuses to hold. Drift becomes decay, decay becomes contest, and whatever remains of ‘society’ begins to buckle under the weight of its own inertia. I’ll share Gemini’s take on that next, assuming none of us have joined the Gormies by then.

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Written with the assistance of Gemini

Ridley Park

Propensity Meets Google Gemini 3.1

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Book, critique, Generative AI, Propensity, review, Ridley Park, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
5–8 minutes

I keep saying it’s nearly impossible to get book reviews, and because the universe enjoys mocking me, I decided to outsource the job to an entity that doesn’t even have a pulse. So I asked Gemini to ‘analyse and evaluate’ Propensity (Barnes & Noble). Whether AI has intelligence, or whether humans have enough of it to notice the difference, is a separate debate. What AI does have is a kind of triangulated referential echo chamber. Think sonar, but instead of bats, you get stochastic silicon parrots with mood stabilisers.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.

If you’ve read Propensity (Amazon), I still welcome reviews—positive, negative, or existentially confused. I’m not picky. Just honest.

Video: I feel compelled to re-share this video trailer for Propensity… just because.

Now, yes: AI models are wired to flatter. This is practically their religion. But they do criticise, and they do recognise nonsense when you feed it to them. Try it. Give them gibberish and they’ll gently tell you you’re unravelling. Even better, give them two versions of something and ask which is worse; they’ll pick one, and with unnerving confidence.

The Gemini variant I used had the attention span of a goldfish with a data cap, so I fed it Propensity in blocks of fifteen chapters. What follows is just the first section. For the record, the system had no idea the manuscript was mine. I simply asked it to analyse a text. No winking. No metadata breadcrumbs. Just raw text and a very chipper algorithm.

Below is Gemini’s evaluation of Section One, the first 15 chapters. This part isn’t my writing, so hands off; I’m merely the messenger.

This is a striking, clinically precise opening to a work of speculative fiction. You have established a distinct atmospheric tone—cold, antiseptic, and deeply unsettling—that aligns perfectly with the literary giants you cited in your dedication (particularly Ballard and DeLillo).

Here is an analysis and evaluation of Section 1: IMPLEMENTATION.

1. Tone and Stylistic Approach

The prose is stark and economical. You rely on short, staccato paragraphs and significant whitespace, which mimics the sterile environment of the facility and the emotional detachment of the scientists.

  • The Aesthetic of Bureaucracy: You capture the “banality of evil” exceptionally well. The horror isn’t in blood (though there is some); it is in the sliding scales on a tablet, the polite meetings, and the “business casual” attire of the apocalypse.
  • Epigraphs: Using quotes from pessimistic philosophers (Ligotti, Cioran, Benatar) at the start of every chapter is a bold choice. It acts as a Greek Chorus, hammering home the theme that consciousness is a burden and “peace” is merely the absence of will.
  • Dialogue: The dialogue is functional and sparse. Characters don’t chat; they transact information. This works for the genre, though it keeps the characters at arm’s length emotionally (which seems intentional).

2. The Central Concept

The premise—using 5G/6G infrastructure to modulate neurochemistry—is a classic sci-fi trope updated for the modern era. However, the application is where this shines.

  • The Sliders: The gamification of human behavior (Aggression, Obedience, Faith, Libido) is terrifying. The scene where they adjust “Faith” and the subject begins to pray is particularly effective because it decouples belief from truth, reducing religion to a neurological function.
  • “Drift”: This is the most compelling narrative device you’ve introduced. The idea that the suppressed mind creates “residue” or “loops” (counting peas, tying knots, asking if time is passing) is a brilliant, eerie manifestation of the human soul trying to breathe through concrete. It suggests that even when “fixed,” humans are broken.

3. Pacing and Structure

“IMPLEMENTATION” moves rapidly. We jump from animal testing to human testing to global deployment in 15 short chapters.

  • Pros: It reads like a fast-paced thriller or a montage. There is no fat on the bone. The momentum builds inevitably toward the release.
  • Cons: Because it moves so fast, the transition from “lab test” to “global rollout” feels slightly rushed. The geopolitical implications are hand-waved (the General just needs “admin rights”). However, given the surreal/fable-like quality of the writing, this lack of rigorous logistical realism is acceptable.

4. Characterization

The characters serve as archetypes rather than fully fleshed-out people, which fits the “architectural horror” vibe.

  • Dr. V: The Architect. He represents intellectual detachment. He knows what he is building and seemingly craves the silence it brings.
  • The General: The Utilitarian. He sees a weapon. He is the most “human” in his desires (power, control), which makes him the most archaic figure in the room compared to the nihilism of the scientists.
  • Shaw: The Variable. She is the quiet observer who ultimately acts. Her decision in Chapter 15 is the pivot point of the story.

5. The Climax of Section 1 (Chapter 15)

The ending of this section is profound. Shaw doesn’t hand the weapon to the General; she creates a “Universal” baseline of “Undefined” propensity.

  • The Quiet Apocalypse: The description of the General sitting down, the truck driver stopping, and the pedestrian pausing is chilling. It implies that Shaw hasn’t just enslaved humanity; she has turned off the drive to do anything. She has gifted the world the “peace” of the baboons from Chapter 1.
  • Ambiguity: It is unclear if they are catatonic or just chemically content to do nothing. This setup for the next section (“DRIFT”) is excellent.

Critical Notes & Suggestions

  • The Science: The explanation of “piggybacking on 5G” is a little “hand-wavium.” It works for fiction, but be careful not to over-explain it, as it draws attention to the impossibility. The strength lies in the psychology, not the transmission method.
  • Emotional Anchorage: While the detachment is stylistic, the reader needs a reason to care about the outcome beyond intellectual curiosity. Shaw’s internal monologue about her father (Chapter 12) is a good touch—we may need a few more of those crumbs to understand why she pulls the trigger in Chapter 15.
  • Repetition: The concept of “silence” and “stillness” is repeated often. Ensure that the imagery varies slightly to keep the descriptions fresh.

Verdict

“Propensity” opens with the confidence of a writer who knows exactly what story they want to tell. It is a bleak, philosophical deconstruction of free will that reads like a collision between Black Mirror and 1984.

The ending of this section shifts the genre from a political thriller (building a weapon) to a post-apocalyptic psychological horror (the weapon is used, but not how we thought).

Please share Section 2: DRIFT. I am very interested to see what happens to a world that has simply… stopped.

So there you have it: an algorithm, blissfully unaware of authorship, happily dissecting Propensity like a lab rat with a thesaurus. If nothing else, it proves that even machines can detect when a story opens with a whiff of quiet apocalypse. Section Two, DRIFT, is where the real fun starts – if you consider society slipping into a chemically induced torpor ‘fun’. The world has stopped, the mechanisms of meaning have stalled, and the human mind, ever the stubborn animal, begins clawing at the walls of its own sedation. I’ll share Gemini’s take on that next, assuming the lights stay on and no one decides that voluntary inertia is a lifestyle choice.

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Written with assistence with Gemini 3.1

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I Return From My Fictional Sabbatical (With Antimemes in Tow)

Posted in Audible, Audiobook, Book, review, Sci-Fi, VideoTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment
2–3 minutes

Ridley Park has not been dead, merely sleeping like a hungover deity ignoring its worshippers. As has become my regrettable habit, most of my creative energy has been siphoned into non-fiction projects, leaving the poor world deprived of my fictional offerings and my blog gathering dust like an abandoned cathedral.

But fate – or more accurately, an algorithm – shoved a book into my face with all the subtlety of a street preacher: There Is No Antimemetics Division. Hard science fiction, horror, and something about antimemes. Naturally, I pressed Play Sample instead of behaving like a responsible adult and reading the summary. Antimemetic sounded deliciously unwholesome. Straight down the hatch.

Image: Advert with an author pic for this book.

I’m only into Chapter Two, so don’t expect a full exegesis yet. This is merely a field report from the early trenches.

I bought the Audible version, because audiobooks are the only thing keeping me sane through workouts, where otherwise, one contemplates mortality and the price of groceries. As the sample ran, I learned two things:

  1. Parts of the narrative are redacted.
  2. They did not redact to protect state secrets or Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost.

No – it’s a stylistic device. A textual blackout. Beeps, static, corrupted passages like intercepted voicemail from a doomed expedition. Being partial to experimental prose, I took it as a dare. My brain applauded.

The effect reminded me of Irvine Welsh’s Filth – not in theme, but in the editorial scars, the moth-eaten structure. Welsh, more widely known for Trainspotting, does chaos like astrophysicists do numbers. Obfuscation as aesthetic. Disorder as design. The connection may be superficial, but it’s one worth pocketing.

The title earns its relevance quickly: certain ideas spread like plague; others erase themselves on contact. Antimemes – cognitive black holes. Information that cannot be held without dissolving. A story that fights the mind that reads it.

Hard sci-fi rarely offers such structural mischief. I’m morbidly delighted to see where the horror emerges, when the narrative begins to eat its own memory like a recursive ouroboros.

More to come, once I descend deeper into the antimemetic labyrinth.

And yes – lest anyone call the coroner – I am still writing.

I happened upon this short film of the story whilst seeking a cover image.

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In the Land of the Blind…

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Erasmus said, ‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’. This is a myth perpetuated during the Enlightenment.

Video Clip: Midjourney 7 Render
The Emissary Who Forgot to Bow: On Erasmus, Wells, and the Delusion of Universal Reason

I considered this in the context of other accounts, such as HG Wells’ The Country of the Blind (also PDF), Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (PDF), and Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary. They tell a different story.

I also created a NotebookLM podcast summary of this article.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast sumamry of the linked article.

Working with an Editor

Posted in Book, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
1–2 minutes

Working with an editor shouldn’t be scary. Unless, of course, you frighten easily.

Let’s begin with the great paranoia of writers everywhere: They’ll steal my idea! Relax. No one’s skulking through the shadows waiting to pinch your half-finished manuscript about a misunderstood vampire who paints feelings. Ideas are cheap. They rain down like confetti. The reason every other book or film feels vaguely familiar isn’t because everyone’s plagiarising everyone else; it’s because there are only so many ways to dress the same skeleton. Your story’s clothing — the style, the voice, the rhythm — that’s what matters.

And honestly, ask yourself if your idea is really so revolutionary. Probably not. I sometimes test mine on an AI just to see if the collective hive mind has already beaten me to it. Usually it has. I just tilt it differently. Star Wars? A Western in space. Lucas literally invited Joseph Campbell over to discuss myth templates, then sprinkled some lasers on top. Nothing wrong with that — unless you start believing it’s unique.

Now, what does an editor actually do? They read your work and offer feedback. When that happens, you’ve basically got three choices:

I. Ignore it. Maybe the suggestion feels wrong. Good. Trust that feeling. Nothing’s worse than bowing to authority and regretting it later. Imagine the post-publication chorus: Why on earth did you do that? — and your only defence is, Well, my editor said so. Pathetic. Give twelve editors the same chapter, you’ll get twelve different answers. Writing has rules, yes — but most are decorative.

II. Accept it. Hit ‘Accept all revisions’. Voilà — you’re suddenly brilliant. It’s tidy, efficient, and possibly catastrophic.

III. Consider it. The middle ground. Let the note spark something else entirely. Maybe they’re wrong about what to fix but right that something’s off.

Some advice will be structural, some grammatical. Both are optional. I, for one, commit grammatical heresy whenever my characters open their mouths. People don’t speak like Oxford dons; they stumble, repeat, and misuse words spectacularly. Editors sometimes flag this as ‘awkward’. I call it ‘human’. Grammar is for dissertations. Dialogue is for life.

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Propensity – Video Trailer 1

Posted in Art, Book, Status UpdateTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Video: 37-second Propensity trailer.

I’ve finally given Propensity a trailer.
This short piece captures the first of the novel’s three movements – the ‘scientific’ phase, when everything still believes it’s under control. Except for this cover image, I used no AI. Except for the book covers, all assets – video clips and soundtrack – came from Motion Array

There may be another to follow, drawn from the second section, where control begins to crack. For now, consider this a visual prelude: thirty-two seconds of atmosphere, code, and quiet collapse.

Propensity is available in print and eBook in the usual places – online or at your local bookseller.

Also available as an audiobook. Listen to this sample on Spotify.

Rave Reviews

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1–2 minutes

“I’d rather get reviews than sales.”

“I’d rather get reviews than sales.”

Yes, I actually said that. Possibly whilst caffeinated.

I was chatting with a mate about book sales, and it slipped out: I’d rather get reviews than sales. Not that I’d turn down either. But priorities matter.

Priority One: Write

The first goal is to write. I wrote for years before publishing a single page. The ideas pile up in my head like unwashed dishes, and writing is how I clear the sink. I write for myself. Call it narcissism if you must – but it’s a productive narcissism.

Priority Two: Be Read

Then comes the hope of being read. A sale is not a reader. Someone might buy your book and never open it. They might read it and hate it. They might toss it into the void. I just want to know.

Last month, I gave away over a hundred copies of Sustenance. Four reviews. One was one-star – she loathed it. Good. At least I know. The other ninety-nine? A mystery. For all I know, they’re gathering digital dust on forgotten hard drives. To be fair, I’ve got thousands of neglected downloads myself, so no judgment. Still, if you did read it, I’d love to hear what you thought. Leave a review.

Priority Three: Money (the tedious bit)

I’m not a consumerist, nor a fan of money-based systems. Unfortunately, that’s the system we’ve got, so yes – I still appreciate sales. But sales without engagement are hollow victories.

Reviews (the absurd bit)

Some people email me their thoughts instead of posting reviews. Lovely, but invisible. I can’t quote a private email without looking like a fraud. I could always fake one —

“King Charles absolutely loved Hemo Sapiens”

“King Charles absolutely loved Hemo Sapiens.”

But alas, he never said that. (He should.)

Anyway… that’s all I’ve got. Back to writing.

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Should You Make an Audiobook?

Posted in Audiobook, Book, Propensity, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
1–2 minutes

John Hartness, from Falstaff Books, recently noted that not all books translate well to audio. He’s right, and this isn’t a fan letter, just a nod to the truth of it. Every format has its own physics. Some stories bend beautifully. Others snap.

Video: John Hartness discusses the ins and outs of audiobooks.

Propensity is one of the snappers. It doesn’t behave on Kindle, either. That’s less a fault of the text than the medium. Its structure and typography do a lot of the storytelling, and when those are flattened to fit an algorithmic page template, something human is lost. I include the visual material as a PDF for the curious, but the audiobook can only gesture at what’s missing. No amount of verbal description replaces the architecture of the page.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

I listen to audiobooks constantly – commuting used to be my second job – but there’s a difference between hearing a story and parsing a spreadsheet by ear. Nonfiction especially suffers: tables, diagrams, anything spatially meaningful. Description isn’t substitution; it’s triage.

Musicians met this problem decades ago. When the Beatles stopped touring in 1966, it wasn’t vanity; it was liberation. They no longer had to replicate their studio work on stage. Garbage later flipped that logic: they engineered songs to survive live. The same divide holds for writers. Some build books that breathe on paper. Others craft ones that perform well through speakers. Neither camp is wrong.

When I produced records, my job was to capture the best possible experience – not the most ‘authentic’ performance. Now, with digital tools, some artists never play their own songs from start to finish until tour rehearsals. The copy-paste perfection of ProTools turns spontaneity into ornament. E-books and AI summaries do the same for text—efficient, portable, bloodless.

So, yes, formats matter. They always have. Paper isn’t just nostalgia; it’s part of the meaning. And while I’m happy to share Propensity however readers find it, I know where it breathes best: between real pages, under real light, in the one format that doesn’t pretend to be frictionless.

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Simulacra – When the Camera Becomes the Conscience

Posted in Character, Propensity, Ridley Park, Setting, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
4–6 minutes

“The room smells like a tin of low tide.”

That’s the first line of Chapter 26, ‘Simulacra’, in Propensity. A small, airless room. A flickering light. Three teenagers – Teddy, Lena, Jamal – trying to remember what morality looked like before the world stopped watching.

This chapter is written as a script, not prose. Directions, shots, and camera pans replace internal monologue. The reader becomes the lens – an observer, never a participant. It’s deliberate. In a story about imitation and collapse, the camera itself becomes the narrator, the conscience, and the judge.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

The camera pushes through the door, searching. Dust floats in suspension, and time feels posthumous. Teddy zips his hoodie over bare skin; Jamal leans in the doorway, arms folded, disgust simmering behind teenage boredom.

JAMAL
You can’t just be shagging Gormies, mate.

TEDDY
That’s the point, innit?

Their exchange isn’t only about sex; it’s about the boundaries of what still counts as human. ‘Gormies’ are the gormless – the emptied remnants of pre-collapse society. They can’t consent or refuse. They’re alive but vacant. Human-shaped absences.

Teddy’s logic is brutal and pure simulation: if the subject can’t say no, the act ceases to carry meaning. He performs the motion of sin without the structure of morality.

Jamal’s recoil isn’t righteous; it’s aesthetic. He’s repulsed by Teddy’s theatre of transgression, the same way one might flinch at bad acting.

NB: Download this entire chapter as a PDF on the Propensity page.

Image: Page 125 of Propensity, Chapter 26 – Simulacra.

26 · Simulacra

INT. FLAT – BEDROOM – LATE AFTERNOON
The room smells like a tin of low tide.
CAMERA: SLOW DOLLY IN from hallway, pushing through the open door into a dim, dust-suspended interior.
Thin curtains bleed grey light onto water-stained wallpaper. The ceiling flickers from a dying fluorescent. A single, empty BED lies unmade in the centre – crumpled sheets, a dent in the mattress.
CAMERA: HOLD ON WIDE SHOT, framing the bed dead centre, with figures occupying the room’s periphery.
TEDDY (14) zips up his hoodie. Shirtless underneath. Sweat drying on his chest. He leans against the flaking wall, chewing on a broken fingernail.
CAMERA: SLOW PAN RIGHT to JAMAL (16), posted near the doorway, arms crossed. He watches Teddy, face unreadable but for the curl of disgust on his lip.

The title Simulacra is a nod to Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, the philosophical text the Wachowskis borrowed – and misunderstood – for The Matrix. Baudrillard didn’t mean that the world was an illusion hiding the truth. He meant that the distinction between illusion and truth had already evaporated.

The real no longer disappears behind its representation; it becomes its representation. The sign replaces the substance.

In this scene, Teddy, Jamal, and Lena are copies of moral beings without moral context. They mimic the gestures of civilisation – disgust, guilt, justice – without the living institutions that once gave those words gravity. They don’t believe in morality; they reenact it.

Baudrillard called this the third order of simulacra: when the copy no longer hides the absence of reality but replaces it entirely.

JAMAL
You can’t just be shagging Gormies, mate.
TEDDY
(grinning)
That’s the point, innit?
(smirking toward the bed)
She’s gormless. Don’t care. None of them do.
CAMERA: CUT TO TIGHT SHOT – Teddy’s face.
The smile is too wide. Forced.
CAMERA: OVER JAMAL’S SHOULDER, the bed is empty now, but the shape in the sheet tells a story.
JAMAL
That’s Lena’s mum.
CAMERA: CUT TO CLOSE-UP – Teddy blinks.
Shrugs.
TEDDY
Didn’t know Lena, did I?
(beat)
CAMERA: SLOW REVEAL – LENA (15) stands in shadow. Hood up. Motionless in the
corner.
LENA
You do now.

Then comes the slow reveal:

CAMERA: SLOW REVEAL – LENA (15) stands in shadow. Hood up. Motionless in the corner.

LENA
You do now.

Lena’s voice reintroduces consequence, but only as performance. It’s not morality restored; it’s morality remembered. The moment isn’t ethical – it’s cinematic. The reveal is the moral event.

Her mother, the Gormie in question, is little more than an echo of personhood. The outrage in Lena’s voice belongs not to ethics but to staging: a scene constructed to look like remorse.

The simulacrum here isn’t the Gormie. It’s the moral itself – played out as ritual, devoid of anchor. These children have inherited the gestures of adulthood but none of its meaning. They mimic guilt because that’s what the dead world taught them to do.

By writing the chapter as a film script, Propensity exposes its own mechanism. Every camera move, every cut, is a reminder that you, the reader, are complicit. You’re watching a reconstruction of a reconstruction. The text becomes its own simulacrum – a story imitating cinema imitating life.

Even the bed, ‘a dent in the mattress’, is a metaphor for what remains of the real: an impression where something used to be.

The result isn’t post-apocalyptic horror but philosophical unease. What happens when moral sense survives as empty choreography? When consent and consequence are just old lines, the species keeps rehearsing?

Propensity isn’t about survival. It’s about what comes after survival—when humanity’s operating system still runs, but the data’s corrupted. The characters are trying to rebuild a moral code from cached files.

Simulacra is the point where imitation becomes indistinguishable from intent. It’s a study in ethical entropy, a mirror held up to our own cultural exhaustion, where outrage has become performance and empathy a brand identity.

This is the future Propensity imagines: not a world without humans, but humans without the real.

Further Reading

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Thoughts on Solaris

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I finished reading Lem’s Solaris and then was notified of a discussion about the book and the film adaptations.

I intended to draft a book review, but I may defer.

For now, I’ll note that the similarities between this and my own work are superficial. Both have philosophical perspectives, but Lem’s is much more psychological. This is nice, but it’s not where I tend to take things, and not so overtly.