A bad review.

(sometimes you can judge a book by its cover,

but you have to open it to make sure)

I suppose I write a lot about negative things on this blog – coups, atrocities, grim-visaged war generally – but I generally don’t like to say negative things on it about wargaming or wargamers. I’ve written my share of short game reviews in over 40 years of playing these things (the first money I ever got paid for writing was $5.00 for a “capsule review” of a role-playing game in The Space Gamer in 1983) but even with less than worthy games I still usually managed to find something nice to say about them.

However, this time I think I’ve been had.

Last week I was looking on Amazon for a birthday present for my son and having located it and stuffed it in my cart, decided to look for some other goodies in order to get free shipping. I ordered a new book of selected non-fiction by J. G. Ballard (1962-2007) and then went looking under “wargames”, and up popped this new book, pictured above. It was only $9.99 and it seemed like it might have some new things to say, so I ordered it.

It arrived just as promptly as anything from Amazon does, in the usual plastic padded envelope. When I picked it up off the doormat it was so thin and light I thought at first it was my son’s present (a sort of partial glove people wear on their hands when using a digital drawing tablet to protect its surface). Instead it was this book, a grand total of 45 pages of illustrations and text.

What illustrations. And what text.

On the inside flyleaf there is a statement that “All illustrations generated using Artificial Intelligence.” About every second page is taken up with one of these obviously-generated-by-prompt pictures in grayscale, and each takes up more than half of the page, so a quarter of the book is obvious filler: imaginary battle scenes, people sitting at tables, that kind of thing.

But wait… after five minutes of reading the text with its wide margins, largish font and generous line spacing, I realized that it was all too probable that the statement “All TEXT generated using Artificial Intelligence” was true too!*

The book is divided into nine sections, each no more than 5 of those scant pages long, and the phrase “this essay aims to explore/ delve into/ …” or slight variations thereof appears in the first paragraph of each section. An italicized paragraph concludes each section, essentially repeating what the first paragraph said. The writing itself is the worst kind of overstated, mediocre, leaden, adjective-stuffed and detail-free pablum that anyone who has played with ChatGPT or something like it for five minutes will recognize right away. Random examples include the following – honestly, I chose these by literally rolling the page number on a pair of dice.

As the digital age continues to unfold, tabletop wargaming stands poised to embark on a new chapter of innovation, creativity, and camaraderie, guided by a shared passion for immersive storytelling, strategic gameplay and the enduring magic of imagination. (p. 35, concluding paragraph, sixth section)

*****

Role of Wargaming Clubs and Communities in Preserving the Hobby During Turbulent Times

Wargaming clubs and communities played a vital role in preserving the tabletop wargaming hobby during times of social and political turbulence. These clubs provided a sense of camaraderie and support for enthusiasts, fostering an environment where individuals could share their passion for historical simulations and strategic gameplay. Particularly during periods of social upheaval and economic instability, these clubs served as havens for like-minded individuals, offering a reprieve from the harsh realities of war and its aftermath. (p. 23)

The “times of social upheaval and economic instability” referred to above are the Great Depression and the Second World War!

This is one of the most absurd items I have ever bought.

It’s beyond useless; it’s comical in how badly it’s written, and how everything in it is variously trivial, meaningless or mistaken. A human could not have created this through their own efforts beyond sitting down with ChatGPT, typing in a few prompts and cutting and pasting the results without bothering to read them. I think this is exactly what happened.

On top of all this, the author, one “Tony Evans”, appears not to exist, at least not as the author of this work. The page on the Barnes and Noble website advertising this work (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1144252217 ) describes the author: “DR. TONY EVANS is the founder and president of The Urban Alternative, a national ministry dedicated to restoring hope in personal lives, families, churches and communities. Dr. Evans also serves as senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. He is a bestselling author and his radio program, The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, is heard on nearly 1,000 stations around the globe every day. For more information, visit: tonyevans.org.” The website is indeed that of a legitimate and long-standing evangelical preacher who has published dozens of books but appears to have no interest in wargames, though he has written a few books with “spiritual warfare” in their titles.

Meanwhile, the publisher, “Witwise Wargames”, sells PDFs of this book and paper cutout armies and scenery on wargamevault.com. It appears to be a one-man operation by someone named Shahshank Rawat.

If the true author of this work, “Tony Evans” or not, would like to correct me on my supposition that this book was not written but assembled from items made automatically by a piece of software, I would be interested to hear it… but either way, it’s still a useless item.

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.

You have been warned!

We’re going to be drowning in this garbage before very long, I suspect. In a few years almost no one will be able to tell the difference, for so few will have the time and energy to winnow out the falsehoods (where these large language models don’t have citations, they will simply make up new ones). We are continually writing and rewriting past histories that never existed, over and over again, to suit the demands of the most recent enquiry and interest. Not only is there no need for historians, there is no need for Winston Smith… the Ministry of Truth has been completely automated, and the self-assured voice of baseless authority will be found everywhere.

Philip K. Dick in his last books wrote about VALIS – Vast Active Living Intelligence System – as his notion of God, though sometimes it was an extraterrestrial communication satellite network. I would refer to ChatGPT etc.  generally as VAPID – Vast Artificial Plagiarism-Insufflator Devices, in that they suck up likely-sounding language written by other people, turn it into smoke and blow it up your fundament.

* Artificial Intelligence: it has a long way to go, but it doesn’t even know how far it has to go. In fact, it’s not AI at all; it may be artificial but it isn’t intelligent. Things like ChatGPT and other “large language models” are, as Noam Chomsky and others put it, “high-tech plagiarism” and “a way of avoiding learning” (https://www.openculture.com/2023/02/noam-chomsky-on-chatgpt.html ) .

[Edited to Add: the brilliant Rex Brynen used ChatGPT to summarize this post itself! Chuckle, snort, guffaw… https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2023/11/12/brian-trains-really-bad-wargaming-book-adventure/ ]