X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter (22 Mar 2025)(upd. 31 Mar 2025)
IN THIS ISSUE:
* The (latest) Big Theft
* Quick Update
* Actual Good News
* Me & Aviation
* Std stuff - how you can help
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=== The (latest) Big Theft === (upd. 31 Mar 2025)
I woke up this morning to an email from the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers Association) noting that Meta is known to have stolen millions of published works to train their AI. The note pointed to an article in The Atlantic with a search option. (upd. 31 Mar 2025: Here’s an Author’s Guild link that doesn’t require a subscription to see all the info, with an easy pathway to send a letter.)
I checked, and lo and behold, both “Minimum Safe Distance” and “Custodians of the Future” are in that database.
I then searched for other authors and found:
James S. A. Corey
Levi Jacobs
Mike Torreano
Ben Weilert
Jodi Bowersox (until very recently President of the Colorado Authors League)
John Scalzi
N. K. Jemisin
Mey-Yen Moriuchi (art history professor and author)
I stopped there.
It’s the SFWA’s policy, as with other organizations of creatives, that permission should be required and payment should be made for the use of creatives’ works, i.e. Thou Shalt Not Steal.
With names like Scalzi, Jemisin, and Corey among the theft victims, and who knows how many other famous and influential authors in the database, I wonder if a class action lawsuit will be brought.
This is another example of a corporation weighing the costs of taking illegal and unethical action. There’s no way that any legal actions, if successful (a big question when oligarchs are currently in power), could take away Meta’s AI, and I can’t imagine that the AI could be reverse-trained to remove the stolen works. If anything, after years of legal sandbagging there might be a class action payout of two cents per crime victim. At least, that’s my cynical view. That’s what has happened with so many class action lawsuits when products were found to cause health problems due to negligence or outright cost-benefit calculation, or companies let their databases be breached, releasing fundamental personal data to hackers (possibly their own hackers, to bypass legally required safeguarding).
My cynicism on that point is not an argument against class action lawsuits. There simply must be some punitive cost associated with companies taking illegal and immoral actions. I prefer it to be painful, to establish discouraging precedents for future companies making this cost-benefit calculation. If our legal system is going to consider corporations to be legal persons, then the same legalities about theft must apply to corporations as apply to les miserables who steal bread. If they’re not legal persons, then since they’re so powerful, even more stringent legalities should apply! As has always been the case, white collar criminals can steal a billion times more than petty thieves on the street.
Anyway, here I am, among countless other creatives getting their stuff stolen. I’m in good company.
=== Quick Update ===
Owing to things of the above nature, I’m having a great deal of difficulty writing my next novel. Not story development, the actual writing.
I’m striving to write from a place of joy and to stave off my pedantic side as much as possible, at least from an expositional standpoint. I’ll always be a protest writer.
But as I’ve mentioned before, I only have a few joy neurons, and the current state of things continues to make it extremely difficult for me to find a way to infuse my writing with joy. My state of mind has always been tied to the wider world. I’m not an out of sight, out of mind kind of person. It’s a bit of a curse.
I promise I’ll keep at it. It’d be a crime to stop now. They’d win.
In happier news, The Bookworm in Boulder, CO, continues to move my books. Three more have sold since the last time I replenished their stock. That’s not nothin’! And, as always, it’s not about sales, it’s about exposure. I’ll likely remain in the red on this endeavor probably until the day I die, but when walk-ins at a college town bookstore buy my books, I have to consider that some kind of validation.
=== Actual Good News ===
Recently, I scanned through Science Daily. I was surprised to find that there’s actual good news. Let’s take heart in some of these news items.
These first few are a bit removed from daily life, but they’re good news! Basic research advancements always yield countless improvements to life on the streets.
First operating system for quantum networks
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250312123858.htm
(quantum computing and quantum networking will solve so many currently untenable big problems)
New DESI results strengthen arguments that dark energy may evolve
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250320214311.htm
(this is just one big news item in cosmology, along with stories about Penrose’s ‘gravitise QM’ efforts and the developing Quantum Holonomy Theory which will finally break the last century’s stagnancy in basic physics)
Weather emergencies affect older adults’ views on climate and health
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250320145454.htm
(people, especially older people, actually changing their views on a topic like this is always good news)
Experimental mRNA cancer vaccine shows potential for advanced stage cancer patients in Phase 1 trial
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/09/240913145621.htm
(we’re finally entering the era of actual medical progress against cancer)
Anti-amyloid drug shows signs of preventing Alzheimer's dementia
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250319225201.htm
Robotics and spinal stimulation restore movement in paralysis
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250312145730.htm
Paralyzed man moves robotic arm with his thoughts
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250306153135.htm
These are just some of the good news items coming from science research. I saw another one about a new method for creating biodegradable plastic (vs. the big problem of forever chemicals), and another about good news related to carbon absorption in wetlands. It really is possible that we might beat this thing through science rather than government action, which continues to fail us all, across the world but especially in the D.S.A. So join me, the ultimate cynic, in taking heart. Fight on!
=== Me & Aviation ===
The following is not boasting. It’s me trying to feel good about myself, and, hopefully, offering inspiration to keep learning and creating, no matter the context.
Owing to the above paralysis, I recently found myself flightsimming again. It’s expansive (see the world), technical, and genetically fun (we evolved jumping around in trees). Countless real world pilots (i.e. aviation addicts) are flightsimmers, not just armchair aviation enthusiasts. And many flightsimmers also create freeware or payware addons — sceneries, flyable craft, utilities. It’s a big thing.
A couple of decades ago, I had my fifteen minutes of fame in the flightsimming addon world.
Afterward, I decided to test my simulated aviating against reality by getting a PPL Glider ticket at Mile High Gliding at Boulder Muni. Years of “edge of envelope” technical simflying translated perfectly, and my instructor, Dave, agreed. I also had a discovery flight with a coworker, Richard, in his Piper Archer II. Thanks, Richard!
Glider training is great — it’s ultimately less expensive than powered flight (the money people spend on alcohol could easily pay for it), you generally fly out of uncontrolled airports, so all that annoying ATC radio work and “airspace flying lawyer” stuff isn’t required (unless you move on to cross-country gliding, depending), and you get to do stuff single-engine prop students don’t get to do (cable towing ops is a kind of formation flying, tricky on its own, and take my word for it, stall-spins in a medium performance glider with a parachute on your back will get your blood pumping).
My fifteen minutes of fame in flightsimming, just to close out this bit, came from having created a wildly popular aircraft carrier experience package. This was early millenium, and there was no such capability in general flightsims, MSFS in particular.
One aspect was landable top and middle deck surfaces for a very nice aircraft carrier static scenery (created by Javier Fernandez). At the time, it was absolute computing wizardry to put landable surfaces on stuff in the sim, and that took great effort and patience to work out experimentally. The other aspect was a software add-on that allowed cable traps and steam catapulting, with sound effects. My product, ArrestorCables, started out as freeware. That version received a ‘Bear Gold Award’ from one of the big online repositories. For a few years there, multiple online flying guilds used ArrCab for traps and cats, doing realistic oval patterns, coordinating with each other on voice comms. I even received a note from a former naval aviator thanking me, saying it felt (and sounded) realistic to him. Then I was approached by Abacus for inclusion in one of their products, Flight Deck III, which was on store shelves for a time. When that exclusive license contract ran out, I put ArrestorCables back into freeware. Eventually, it was replaced by other utilities, but it opened the door.
I have a shadow box to remember all this. This is an example of what I mean when I say I’ve always been a creative, one way or another. You can, too!
=== Standard Stuff === How to Help ===
Why help? Since I subvert pop genre expectations instead of pandering to them, and because of my autism and other isolating factors, it’s extremely difficult and expensive for me to reach out into the world to find my audience. I don’t have a team helping me. Just writing newsletters like this is an exercise in self-esteem suspension of disbelief (swirly thing alert!).
I truly rely on word of mouth and grassroots support. In case anyone assumes this is some kind of gravy train side hustle, I’m still thousands of dollars in debt on this, and every convention adds more red to my ledger. I’m in this for the long haul, but I must keep reaching out and pushing. This is not “write it and they will come”, that’s the erotic fantasy romance section (which sells itself).
How to help: Reading my books, writing reviews (if you liked them :), and passing the word would be great. If not that, then one could post my one-page ads (see below, or on each book’s page on the web site) on appropriate billboards and tell people about my web site, https://XHoYenAuthor.com .
But here’s something very nice that anyone can do to help — request that “Minimum Safe Distance” be carried by your local library!
It’s usually as simple as going to your library system’s web site and searching for “suggest a purchase” or “submit a suggestion”. Usually, there’s a special page for that, and often it’s at the front of your dashboard.
They will want information like this:
Title: Minimum Safe Distance
Author: X. Ho Yen [please get the capitalization and spaces right, one after the period, another after ‘Ho’]
Publication year: 2022
Format: Book/Paperback
# of pages: 396
ISBN: 978-0-9766158-1-1
Publisher: Grand Unification Monastery
Audience: Adult
Language: English
Notes:
Good professional editorial reviews, including Kirkus:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/x-ho-yen/minimum-safe-distance/
“…Ho Yen’s descriptions of advanced technologies should please fans of hard SF, but what really makes the book work are the questions it raises about what it means to be a person and a member of a species.” Our verdict: Get It
Carried in Arapahoe County Library System:
https://arapahoelibraries.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S115C2180350
and the Colorado State Library Book Club Resource (https://csl.catalog.aspencat.info/Union/Search?view=list&lookfor=minimum+safe+distance&searchIndex=Title&searchSource=local),
and Biblioboard (https://library.biblioboard.com/content/a3f3fc17-626b-428b-b6a2-5b5a9a44a494).
Author web site: https://XHoYenAuthor.com
This process usually takes only a few moments once you find the book suggestion/recommendation page. Thanks! Put a reminder in your calendar right now!
I haven’t been emphasizing “Custodians of the Future” as much as MSD, but only because MSD has more kudos (which is because I spent a lot more money on MSD, and that’s unsustainable). I’m hoping that interest in MSD will lead to interest in my other stuff.
Space Autistic Author
If you haven’t watched “Space Autistic Author”, Logs 1 to 3, yet, do check them out. They’re only a few minutes long, but they’re fun! Logs 2 and 3 demonstrate how SAA allows cross-promotion with other creatives without requiring anyone to vouch for anyone else’s work. Pass the word!
While you’re there, check out the other videos on my channel, especially the Galacticon ‘23 video (in 4 parts). That one’s longer, but it shows why my pen name is not cultural appropriation, and gives a fun overview of Mars exploration (since the late 1800s) with details of my participation in it, mostly on the Mars Global Surveyor mission.
https://XHoYenAuthor.com/media
Like, subscribe, and share!
All purchase options can be found here: https://XHoYenAuthor.com/books. Both sites include links showing how several of the big vendors allow you to gift eBooks.
Thanks for sticking with me! I hope it’s at least mildly entertaining to watch this author second career thing come together.
Please do share my page with fellow realism-based sci fi fans, especially anyone who enjoys Corey’s The Expanse, Older’s Infomocracy, Card’s Speaker for the Dead, Mandel’s Station Eleven, Suarez’ Delta-V, or movies like “Arrival” and “Don’t Look Up”. I'm convinced my books would appeal to the same audience, because I wrote them for me and I'm in that audience.
Thanks for your support!
XHY
https://XHoYenAuthor.com