Podcast

Transcript

John Goodwin (00:07): Hello, and welcome to the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Podcast. This is John Goodwin, your host. This podcast is dedicated to the aspiring writer and artist and will provide inspiration and tips from top professionals in the field. If you’ve been listening to this podcast or are new to it, I thank you very much. I would also appreciate if you took a moment to follow it on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts. Riders of the Future is one of the longest-running writing competitions in the world, now celebrating over four decades of providing a helping hand.

As initially conceived by L. Ron Hubbard. Today’s guest is William Ledbetter. I originally met Bill in 2012 as the Rise of Future winner published in Volume 28 with the story The Rings of Mars. He has been published in fantasy and science fiction, analog science fiction and fact, Jim Baines Universe, Escape Pod, and other magazines. His novelette The Long Fall Up won the 2016 Nebula Award.

I reread his bio in volume twenty eight and got my question answered on how he was able to write such a story as Level Five, and then there’s Level Six and Level Seven as the conclusion to the trilogy. He was a mechanical designer in the aerospace defense industry. I received a promo from Audible featuring their originals and saw a book from William Ledbetter called Level Five, so I downloaded it to listen. It was much more intense as hard sci-fi than I’d read in a while.

So when I finished I reached out to him to invite him to this podcast and here we are. Hello Bill.

William Ledbetter (01:35): Hi John. It’s good to talk with you again.

John Goodwin (01:38): Yeah, it’s definitely been a minute or two. Yeah. So I guess just as an overview. How’d you get started as a writer?

William Ledbetter (01:47): well I’ve I’m a longtime science fiction fan, of course. So back when I was in high school, my teacher gave us an assignment to write a short story. And so of course mine was science fiction. Sure. the problem with that is that I waited until the night before and I wrote it out longhand instead of typing it. So it was it was interesting because I got my grade was an A slash F.

The A was for the story and the F was for the spelling and the sloppy work. But the odd thing was the teacher read it aloud to the class and at the end of the story, several of my fellow students said, Wow, that was cool. So I guess I kind of have been pursuing that reaction and with readers and kind of the high from you know, from getting that reaction from readers ever since. So

John Goodwin (02:41) Wow. Well that’s pretty cool. That’s a good start. That’s a that’s a good way to get that that approval at the get go. So now your work. so how has your work life influenced your author life?

William Ledbetter (02:58): Well, you know, like many kids, I grew up in the sixties. I dreamed of becoming an astronaut, but back then, in in order to be an astronaut, you had to be like a military pilot. my eyesight was too bad to allow me to get into any of those programs. So I did what in my mind was the next best thing. I went and started working for companies who built the equipment needed for space exploration. So

You know, I worked on a lot of aircraft programs and spacecraft programs. and I think probably the coolest was I worked for the on the radiator system for the International Space Station. That was that was a lot of fun. So a lot of my fiction either happens in space or space travel plays a big part. you know, like you were you were mentioning Level Five, that is mostly about AI, but there’s also a big

you know, a lot of space travel in the story too. Of course, my interest in AI came later since I never did work in the computer industry.

John Goodwin (04:05): I get it. So now in the book on Level Five, you also I mean it’s hard sci fi and yes there is space travel in there, although it probably plays a bigger role when you get to Level Six and Level Seven. But on the first one there, ’cause it takes place heavily on Earth and with these AIs, but it’s definitely dystopian science fiction, which is a big genre, you know, it’s a mega genre. But is that what you gravitate to as I’m I’ve I said I’ve not read Six or Seven yet, but

Five was definitely dystopian.

William Ledbetter (04:39): I think not necessarily. I think well way back in two thousand as far as AI goes, way back in two thousand, I read an article in Wired magazine called Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, and it was by Bill Joy, who was one of the co-founders of Microsoft of Sun Microsystems. And he basically had broke things down in his opinion was if AI happened, one of three things would happen. One would be it would be a

It would be good. we would keep control of the AI, or the AI would love us and want to help us. Two, would be that bad, which would, you know, the AI would see us as unnecessary or a threat and try to wipe us out. Or three, humans would merge with our technology. And that third possibility is really what interested me the most. So when I started l writing Level Five back in 2015, that merging

With our technology was kind of my focus. Back then the AI gold rush really wasn’t mainstream yet, but I found myself having a difficult time imagining a future without AI of some kind. and as far as writing dystopian, is you know, there’s a famous quote by Ray Bradbury that kind of sums it up. It says, you know, the function of science fiction is not only to predict the future, but to prevent it. So, you know, I was thinking.

You know. this is why so much science fiction in general is dystopian, I think. But you know, I think we’re preventing we’re presenting futures that could happen if we’re not careful. And of course, you know, there’s you know, a lot of people talking about AI have been worried about where it might possibly go if it’s not controlled. So of course, you know, there’s a story there and that’s where I went.

John Goodwin (06:19): Yeah.

John Goodwin (06:34): Yeah.

William Ledbetter (06:35): So yeah, while the novel paints a rather grim picture, you know, a lot of my other stories, my short stories, especially like the one that won the Writers of the Future, I think, had had rather hopeful messages, so

John Goodwin (06:48): Yeah. Now it’s I’m trying to find there was a story that L. Ron Hubbard wrote too, like what you’re saying there, it was it was after the bombs had been dropped in Japan and he actually wrote it for certain people in Washington DC, congressional leaders and stuff like that. And he said it served his purpose, it gave an alternate future where the non the complete proliferation of atomic warfare resulted in the mass destruction of the planet because it just went out of control. And someone asked us, so was what about that book? He says, Well it did what I intended it for it to do. You know, so he wrote it there to be able to say, look at this is something that could happen if we don’t all of a sudden get some like smarts connected with these atomic bombs that you guys are so

gleefully, you know, sending out there and building. So that part was good. It just for me, I just finished I was well into the nonfiction book. If anyone builds it, then we all die. And then I read your book there and I went, wow, okay. So there’s a definite thing. And I can see how you’re going where there is that third scenario that you just mentioned forming. But that’s at the tail end, you know? And

So you’re setting a stage of stupid people, very smart AIs getting smarter, which is part of the thing, too, that you have happening right now with the generative AI. They’re teaching themselves now because we can’t teach them fast enough. They’re like way smarter than we are. So now they can program themselves. And that whole instinct of self-preservation seems to be innate within the AI as well, wanting to keep itself

No, not wanting to have itself, you know, shut down. There’s various instances that occurred in the last couple of years of trying to say, look at, you know, if you don’t do this, I’m gonna shut you down. And they immediately went out and said, If you gay, if you try to do this, I’m gonna post your, you know, your illegal thing all over the internet. And so it just shows that there’s a definite sense of self survival there that’s going on in there. And you definitely see it here, but it’s also what you see is

John Goodwin (09:16): Not all generative AIs are created equal. They’re not alike. You know, you got some that are like, all right, let’s work together. And some are like, okay, we’re creating our super race. You’ve got like the, it’s almost like the Vger from Star Trek. Right. Yeah. You know, that type of thing. So now I’m doing this because it’s the science in there, the thing that

You know, I’ve learned because I’ve read a lot of books during this podcast now for seven and a half years. And I’ve got it from talking to a lot of the masters of science fiction, you know, like Larry Niven, for one, is getting the science right. Because if you don’t, you’re gonna have people coming squawking and saying, No, that’s not right. That’s not right. So how did you establish or do it? ‘Cause you’ve got a lot of science in there on generative AI.

William Ledbetter (10:12): I yeah, I did a lot of research. I did a lot of reading. you know, like you I haven’t read if anyone builds it, then we’ll all die. But it’s on my it’s on my audible wish list right now. So the next time I get a I’ll I’m gonna get it. But I did read a lot of other books on AI development and theory, and did a lot of research. I think probably my favorite was a book called Superintelligence by big by Nick Bostrom. But the thing is, I read that back in 2014. And so you’ll notice I mean you know that book and probably most of the books that I read for my research were in that time frame and before that. So that’s before the first LLMs really came bursting onto the scene in 2022. so you’ll see a lot of familiar concepts in in my

Books like agent-based AI is in in there. recursive self-improvement is you know, like you were just talking about is in there. But I don’t think I actually mentioned anything like, you know, like large language models or something. Right. I think that kind of came out of left field and surprised a lot of people because in in the research I was doing it was mentioned a few times, but nobody had given it

John Goodwin (11:23): You that term wasn’t in there, no.

William Ledbetter (11:34): You know, nobody had given it the kind of attention at that point, I think, that

John Goodwin (11:39): Well it was still a black box project at that time.

William Ledbetter (11:42): Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but yeah, in in Level Five, it’s basically about kind of introducing the world the way that it was and the AIs escaping from you know the from their bondage, I guess you could call it. But then Level Six and Level Seven, they start diving into more where I wanted the series to go with the co you know

AI and humans kind of merging. And at the end we kind of see that happen, though it doesn’t work out quite the way anybody expected, I hope.

John Goodwin (12:25): Yeah. Well one thing that’s good about the book that you wrote is it forces the issue. Right now, maybe when you wrote it was like, okay, this is definitely science fiction, and now it’s a combination of science fiction and current events. Yeah, so it’s so to that near future science fiction to me is always the scariest. There’s another author, James Rhone, who writes this stuff near future.

hard science fiction about supercomputer in China. And they create this app that everybody goes crazy over, which he doesn’t say TikTok, but that’s basically what he’s talking about there. And it’s used to profile all the different peoples of the earth. And both as a country and then also political leaders and military leaders so that it knows how far you can push before they’re going to react. And then if you if they go past the point where they can’t react in time,

Then that’s when they will do their attacks in that beginning of World War Three. And there’s a lot of the fake videos, all the you know, that stuff that you happening all over the place right now, that all this stuff is happening and getting making compromising speeches from political leaders that are creating local dissent as well as political between countries. And so you’re looking at what these AIs and what you’re doing, what your book, Level Five, is.

That’s what we see. You know, that’s what’s happening right now. And they’re capable of doing that. People are like, look at this. I love the baby the baby presidents. I love the baby this and I love look at this. We can make this political figure look like an arse and this person look like an angel, you know? And you can do all kinds of stuff. And it’s how can you tell what’s reality now and what’s not? Because those tools have not been invested into the machinery yet. To be able to say, Okay, this is this is AI. So it’s

News, I don’t know what’s factual and what’s not factual, you know, so you get all types of stuff. So your book is very prescient from that perspective and it plays it out in a fictional scenario. You know, there’s and in real life, you know, there’s people you’re gonna like that in a major conflict you’re gonna lose and that that your series two progresses over multiple

John Goodwin (14:50): life’s life cycles. So you got these guys, you know, parents and they got their daughter and then now you come back later on and now I guess the daughter’s grown up. I haven’t read Six or but it looks like on the preview I read for it, it’s like, okay, it looks like now she’s becomes a player in it. As the as the first ones get toasted and it’s like it’s you know, it’s we’ve come a long way since Sackett’s land with Louis Lemour back there in the mid nineteen hundreds.

William Ledbetter (15:19): True, yeah.

John Goodwin (15:19): So anyway for people that like, you know, this type of science fiction, I mean it’s fascinating what you do in that stuff and like I said, for me what’s the magic of it is weaving between what’s real science and what is your imagination and as seamlessly as possible, obviously some of the stuff is not there when you have them, you know, the spacing t near the end when they’re actually you know, zipping around and but we’re not that far from there, you know, on those modules that can transport back and forth, you know, between locations. so but it’s interesting how that’s so much of that stuff there.

And because of the mystery of AI, it’s really easy to dub in what you say is fact. You may have met that whole thing may have been whole cloth what you did, but because the whole thing of AI is so shrouded in mystery and your depiction of it, that could be as good as anything else, explaining what’s really happening. So that’s what made it to me even more of what science fiction can do. Like you said, it can also be the it’s the herald of possibility, it can also be a that warning to you know take a second look at y’all before you really push this, but you also hit the one thing on the head of the weakest link.

Is the human factor.

William Ledbetter (16:53): Yeah. Yeah. I that’s a very valid concern regarding creation of AGI, you know, or artificial general intelligence, is a is the control problem or the alignment problem. and you know, that’s the assumption that an AGI will quickly become much smarter than humans and maybe even smarter than the entirety of humanity. So we would need to make sure that we either have a tight control on the AI or create one that has been developed in a way that it will view humanity as a partner and want to help us instead of a threat and try to destroy us. So in it you know that idea pretty much drives my novels and I don’t think it would be too much of a spoiler since it happens very early in Level Five, but one of the AIs in the story realizes that humans are the wink link and that even though the technical barriers put in place to keep it locked up are very sound.

it convinces its financial firm that owns it that their competitors have released their AIs. And they if they don’t do the same, they’ll soon fall far behind. So basically it’s using human greed and mistrust against us. And you know, it doesn’t matter how well our technology works, you know, if it can convince us that it’s not working, then then that would work for it.

John Goodwin (18:21): Yeah. Well the thing that probably the truest, the scariest part is your portrayal of the different human elements in that whole saga. You got the military side where, you know, the one guy that at the end he’s just like, I really don’t like him a lot. But he’s the one that’s survived, you know, like, wow, okay. And then you see the other guy that’s, you know, he’s got a mission to…

He’s got a beef against humanity. And so, but he’s also been infiltrated by an AI. And so you got all these different things. And but it’s stuff that we’re doing right now with chips. You know, you got Elon Musk with his brain implants that can do different things to help someone that can’t control, you know, maybe their parabolic quadruple. So you’ve got that so they can think, do these things. Well, that’s a very nice, you know, thing to talk about. What about everything else you can do with it too that doesn’t get mentioned?

You know, with those things. And so you look at it and I go like, Wow, this is it really makes one think, which is one of the good things about good science fiction. It makes you think about something that you’ve got as a trilogy. And you know, I need to get through volume Six and Seven just so I can have closure on my future life. You know

William Ledbetter (19:44): Yeah. Well hope hopefully the our real AI development doesn’t f track too closely to what I’ve written, but

John Goodwin (19:51): Yes. But like said there’s just that weakness in in humanity makes such an Armageddon so real. You know, it’s like you’ve got these people that have their programming, they’re doing and they’re just you know, there’s so much into that stuff. So they don’t have very much in terms of social graces and so they might be very jealous or envious of somebody else, so they could say, Okay, well I’ll just boom, I’m gonna click this button here and just see what happens to you. You know, that’s their

they can become their own power hunger satiated through their programming. You know, and then how effective is a backdoor to be able to stop these things if something does get really out of hand that, you know, I haven’t seen I’m assuming that that one little thumb driver, whatever it was that’s that was passed on, that that comes into play because it was such an obvious, okay, something’s happening going to happen with this. It didn’t happen here, so

I guess volume Six or volume Seven is going to come into play somehow to help save the day. But it’s yeah, it’s just for me, just all the secrecy around generative AI within the government. You know, you’ve got this this whole let’s be really transparent. You go. Yeah, that’s the basic problem with government in general. It’s by the very nature of it, it’s not transparent because there’s all these covert operations and

You know, for some things, if you if you make it known public, then it can actually have a bad effect, you know, s but the people that make that decision, they’re the ones that have bad hair days, you know. And if you give it to somebody else who like an AI, and then it’s programmed to be one thing, so I don’t know that it’s a decision is gonna be the right s so you provide a solution, a moving off planet is a necessary solution to the disaster that could occur. So

That seemed when I asked you like how much did your job fit in with this, you know, was that something there that because of what you did working with, you know, the space station and other things on the on these building parts for space travel impacted you on including this?

William Ledbetter (22:05): Yeah, I think so. you know, I it kind of go back a little bit w what you said about the seek you know, government secrecy thing. I you know, all the companies that are working on this on a AGI right now, you know, they’re all they’re all competing against each other. And so it’s like the government actually is I don’t know, they’re trying to

They want it to be a US company because they’re also competing with foreign operators. So, you know, but the thing is, it’s like there’s so much money involved that, you know, when n the first AI to wake up, the first superintelligence really to wake up is pretty much gonna dominate the rest. So it’s like every company wants that to be theirs, and every government wants that comp the you know, the company to be in their country.

You know, so it’s like the US government actually isn’t, you know, they’re not putting a lot of brakes on any of this. They’re you know, they’re kind of making a they’re making a regulatory environment that that basically, you know, allows these companies to go, you know, full tilt and do the research that they want to do.

John Goodwin (23:22): ‘Cause if we don’t do it, somebody else is gonna do it.

William Ledbetter (23:24): Yeah, and that is exactly the thing. And of course, you know, a lot of these you know, these you know, rich tech bros, you know, they think, well my way is the best and my way, you know, the AI we create will be good for humans and not bad. So it’s like so you know, I guess there’s probably some ego involved and there’s a lot of you know, a lot of competition involved. but yeah, there’s also a huge, huge amount of money involved. So

It’s like that also has to go a w quite a ways for you know greasing the wheels, you know. And yeah, it’s like there’s that whole opinion that if we don’t do it somebody else is going to. So it just you know, it’s just a headlong rush. And in Level Six, I get into that that exact same, you know, scenario. one of the main characters in Level Six is the guy who invented the Level Five the Level Five AIs. Uh-huh. So we get, you know, we get him having some regrets and having trying to do things to kind of mitigate the situation that he helped create. but we get a window into his thinking and the thinking of the company that he worked for while they were trying to create that. So and yeah and then to go back to

Then to go back to the moving off planet, it’s like, you know, without going into too much trouble, you know, into too much detail, things devolve really quickly at some point on Earth. And so the only humans that are capable of still fighting back against the AI are the ones who ended up moving off planet. and you know, and I kind of in this future show that there was already, you know, a couple hundred or not very many, but several hundred people living off planet. and that ended up kind of being the seed of the resistance for the, you know, second and third books.

John Goodwin (25:36): Yeah, so that’s I mean so did you conceive all three the full trilogy when before you started volume one?

William Ledbetter (25:43): Yeah, actually I kind of had the I kinda had the arc of the full story outlined already. oddly enough, I had started writing the second book first, but then I got to a point where I was writing and it’s like I cannot cram enough backstory into this book to make it make any sense. So I decided to shelve that and then I went back and I wrote Level Five, which is the first book and that that confuses people, you know, it’s way

John Goodwin (26:14): Started with Level Six was the first book. Every first foray.

William Ledbetter (26:17): Well, right, and then I went to Level Five. I wrote Level Five and I sold that first with the idea that it’s like it stands alone but it is you know, there’s room for a series here, which they won they came back and wanted me to finish up. So then I

John Goodwin (26:38): Scott Card, I don’t you know this, but Scott Card on Enders Game. Yeah. that wasn’t the first book. He wrote he wrote Speaker for the Dead, but it didn’t fully make sense. So he had to he went back and he met with Tom Doherty, who is the publisher there for him at Tor, and he met with him at you know over lunch and said, Look, I’d like to I have an idea for, you know, an earlier book that sets up better, Speaker for the Dead. So it started off first of all, I think as a novelette and then turned into a novel.

Enders Game and then Speaker for the Dead came out afterwards. But he got, you know, he just is a handshake with Tom Dorris. Okay, that sounds good. So that’s how he did it there.

William Ledbetter (27:17): Yeah. Those kinds of stories are you know, they’re everywhere in the in this genre. So I love it how it works out, you know.

John Goodwin (27:25): Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and that one worked out really, really well and hopefully yours does as well, especially as we move forward into this world of AI and generative AI, what you know, what type of a play it is. But then your story can be also that that watchword for, okay, everybody, so let’s take the extra attention to put our controls in and know how we do have our controls. I mean, you’ve got you know, Elon Musk with his saying, okay, we need to put our controls on but he’s got also he’s in a race as well. Yeah. You know, so that’s just something to deal with.

William Ledbetter (28:07): Yeah, yeah. And that’s really, you know, like you said, that these near future stories are the scariest and that’s because we’re watching this unfold in real time, you know, and we don’t know where it’s gonna end up going. So

John Goodwin (28:20): Yeah, you know, just it’s just it’s an amazing thing. And I’ve been going through this for four decades now with Rise of the Future, where there’s always been, you know, the near future as well as the space opera stuff and the alternate history and then the there’s the fantasy. But it’s the near future stuff when you see it, you know, the upload and download your consciousness into that’s we’ve had that for about twenty thirty years now on in Writers of the Future and the enhancing drugs, you know, that you can do to have your that you can think faster, run faster, all the stuff faster. And you see how that has really gone off the deep end. But nevertheless people have been doing that to be able to try to accomplish that to create the super whatever type they’re you know they’re trying to super stupefy.

But it’s just I’ve been seeing this now for so long with Writers of the Future, the you know, the different stories and AI controlled cars. And now the guy that wrote our grand prize winner a couple of years ago, ASCII, it’s about cars that were totally controlled by AI. You know, they’re the ones you put tell where you want to go and you schedule, you get in there and it drives you where you want to go. And this one here decided

Okay, this guy here, because it has the cameras and it saw that there’s a book in there would have been a revolt against these computers. So it decided it was going to crash into a tree and kill the guy and destroy that that manuscript. You know, and when the author came he landed in at LAX here and he got into a car and he saw these cars with no drivers. He’d never seen that before, the Waymo’s. He’d never seen that. And we’re one of the pilot cities here in Los Angeles and we’re everywhere.

You know and he was just like, my gosh, it’s for real, you know. Where he was writing signs

William Ledbetter (30:21): Gonna one of them gonna ram me now that I’m here?

John Goodwin (30:24): Now that I’m here letting the cat out of the bag. But it’s just it’s just interesting how you know, how fast science is moving. You know, so like what you said you read twelve years ago is totally different now. So what you had there, those that’s those are models or schematics for what was being done, but then now twelve years later it’s so much different with what the computer is able to do, you know, just doing just going to Gemini, you know, to do a search for something. It’s

There’s no more here are the top five links or here’s the above the fold and below the fold. That’s an old concept now. That’s rapidly gone the way of the cassette or the real to real.

William Ledbetter (31:06): Yeah.

John Goodwin (31:08): So you were the winner back for volume twenty eight with Rise of the Futures, so what do you remember from that week?

William Ledbetter (31:15): yeah, I really enjoyed it. there were I think probably what stands out the most is the people. you know, it’s like I you know, my fellow my fellow writers and the artists, the pro writers who came in and shared their stories and their you know their professional methodologies with us and things of that. And of course, you know, author services staff, you were all great you know, to us while we were there.

and I also remember kind of being treated like a professional. And you know, I really yeah, I really liked that, and I think it kinda helped me think of myself as a professional. Of course there were individual sessions that kind of stood out, and oddly enough, one of them that stuck with me was the one about signing autographs. I’ve used that one. That one has been very useful in in in the years past. And of course the various you the various sessions about craft and listening to, you know, stories about some of these established writers’ careers and things of that nature.

So all of that stuff was just you know, when you’re a newbie writer, it’s like you don’t know what you don’t know. So every little bit of thing, you know, every bit of that kind of stuff kind of adds up and helps build you as a writer. So

John Goodwin (32:39.586)

That’s good, yeah. We had a girl that won this past year, Kathleen Powell. She just did a TV show this morning in her hometown. And she’d been she’d gotten like 17 honorable mentions, silver honorable mentions, two finalists, you know, twenty plus entries, and then finally got the call saying, Okay, you won. And what did it for her was last year in the book, there was an article

An L. Ron Hubbard article called “Circulate.” And it talks about, you know, you can have you’re in your hometown, you’re there, you see everything, and then someone else comes in from outside of town, they seize the corner drugstore, they see this and talk to somebody. They write a book and you know, they do great. How they do that? That that’s not fair, you know. But he points out that, you know, you need to look and see and just talk to the local people. And you’ll there’s all kinds of stories and magic in your own area, you know, with what you know. So she wrote a story about Springfield, which is her hometown. And she said, you know, I decided I’ll look around. I saw the magic in my hometown. And she wrote it’s a fantasy story. And it was great. You know, she was just inspired by that, and that’s the story that she won with. Was there any particular essay that you remember that stood out for you? Even if you don’t remember the title, I might remember the title if you describe it.

William Ledbetter (34:05): It seems like that there was one on creating suspense.

John Goodwin (34:09): Sus call suspense, yeah.

William Ledbetter (34:11): Is that what it was called? Yeah.

John Goodwin (34:12): Go figure.

William Ledbetter (34:15): Yeah. You know, and the thing is it’s like I don’t know, I guess most of the suspense that I had been creating up to that point had just been kind of I don’t know, inherent in the in the way that the story came together. But it kind of made me think that maybe I need to plan out the suspense and make that you know, like a core element as and prior to that I don’t know that I had I had done that before. So, you know, things like that have were helpful.

John Goodwin (34:44): Yeah. ‘Cause your suspense factor in your in Level Five was definitely there. It was like

John Goodwin (34:51): Definitely was there. And you know, just what are these stupid humans gonna do now? This you know, these guys that do this like insane stuff in this military guy. It’s like the what was that? Contact? That one where that gal, she’s trying to make contact and then the military wanna come in and set up the bomb to blow it up. You know, that

William Ledbetter (35:11): right. arrival. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John Goodwin (35:15): Well that was it, yeah. You know, and then the abyss, the same thing with the abyss where the military wanted to go and blow it up and the guy’s trying to save it. And at the bottom, of course, there’s Hollywood at the bottom there where it gets that deep you can’t really tell colors. So he’s like, Okay, which do I snip to some to defuse the bomb? But then the guy that’s wants to blow them up anyway, he’s anti American, so you know he’s gotta be reversing the colors of the wires.

But you can’t see the colors of the wire. So, like, what do I do? What do I do? And of course he snipped the right one, but it’s just seconds before it was scheduled to detonate. So there’s Hollywood’s contribution. But you know, with you know, with your story there, the suspense was definitely like, no, what’s gonna happen now? And then when these guys get in there, and then some stuff, you know, okay, good, it’s gonna I’m so used Hollywood word, like it stops two seconds before, but then in yours, it’s like it happened.

No. You know, ’cause okay, good, okay. So there’s ’cause I listened to the audiobook to appreciate to enjoy your story. And then okay, half hour, okay, so at some point it’s gonna be the people are gonna get their act together and then fifteen minutes, okay, the people can get their act together, and then ten minutes are gonna get their act together, and people are still being really dumb people. And then stay tuned for part two. You know.

William Ledbetter (36:39): There’s more dumb people.

John Goodwin (36:40): But it’s unfortunate because we’re we have to deal with that. You know, you take a look people get so caught up in, you know, you got the Republicans, the Democrats, and you got somebody you’re gonna oppose, okay, I’m a liberal, so I’m gonna hate all conservatives, I’m a conservative, I’m gonna hate all liberals. You know, that type of mentality just, you know, is getting us into this some of the scenarios. And so you got the same type of thing playing out in, you know, in the story here that

That’s that I mean, that’s the real stuff. That’s what makes it scary, you know, is that this kind of stuff could be going down because people will be people. You know, they’re gonna be

William Ledbetter (37:20): People have people have their own motivations and their own drivers that you know and once you know and they have a hard time a lot of times looking past that to see other people, you know, why people other people are doing things the way they’re doing. They can only see things from their own perspective and

John Goodwin (37:38): Yeah. And because the social media where they’re getting all their news now and everything else is controlled by AIs, they’re being fed a certain narrative that that’s all they’re getting. They don’t see the other side at all. All they see is narrative that validates their frame of mind, their thought pattern. And so that’s what you got. You see that happening in you know in your book there, like, wow, you know, you can disagree with it, but that’s what’s going down, you know. So that’s

I keep on going back to it, even though my questions are long since beyond that, but I keep on going back to that. It left a mark on me. So now when you did the workshop, you know, so that we had you had twenty eight, so you had was it Tim Powers and Dave Farlin were the teachers? Yeah, the primary instructors. Then we had all the other guys come in the last few days. So any particular lecture or talk or instructor that was like you either fanboyed about or you went, wow, okay, that’s really good. I can see this is good or even somebody that you went, I have no idea this how this applies to anything, but I think it’s important. So I’m gonna take this down and at some point I’m going to realize what he was referring to.

William Ledbetter (38:56): wow, it’s been so long. I can’t really Sure. There were there were a few instances though. well just, you know, I fanboyed a lot just getting to talk you know to a lot of these, you know, like you know, Eric Flint and I don’t know, all you know, just about all of them were there. Yeah. There was one moment that stood out that I still remember and it was after the gala when we were doing our mass signing. Yeah.

Jerry Purnell came up and wanted me to sign a book for him. And it’s like, this is surreal because, you know, I grew up reading his stuff and now he’s wanting to, you know, he read my story and wants me to sign, you know, a copy of it. And it’s like so that was kind of a surreal you know fanboy moment for me.

John Goodwin (39:47): Yeah, the contest was really important to him. In fact, the night he passed, the last thing he did was judge that quarter of stories, you know, for the contest. And because he had he’d wanted to go to DragonCon for the longest time. So I set him up with Pat Henry to go. And so he went there, but he got con crud and he just couldn’t get over it. And he came back and a couple of weeks later, you know, he was gone.

But the last thing he did though was to judge those stories. Same thing happened with or a similar thing happened with Frank Herbert, one of the first judges. You know, the last article ever wrote was for Writers of Future. And the last thing he did that, you know, he was adamant that the books be sent, the stories be sent to him so he could judge him. And that that day and the next day he passed because he wanted to get the judging done. It was the judges, it’s very important to them because you’re case in point.

you know, that they like to feel that they’ve got and they do have a sense of contribution to the future of science fiction and fantasy and you’re part of that heritage as a place forward, you know, rolling out with the next generations of writers as they as they get validated and get that little encouragement, which is hard to get. And last year there was over five million books published. So getting yourself

recognized is so important and that’s one of the big things that Writers of Feature does. So are you familiar with any of Hubber’s fiction works?

William Ledbetter (41:25): You know, I can’t remember I think probably the only thing of his that I remember reading was Battlefield Earth. and it was it was interesting. I liked it. but it again, that’s been like I don’t know, I was probably in high school when I read that sure. It’s been a long time. So

John Goodwin (41:44): Yeah, both Kevin Anderson and Brandon Sanderson said when they read that book for them it impressed him about pacing, that Hubbard was one of the most successful writers, pulp fiction and beyond that, at a mastery of plot and pacing, that the pacing just kinda like he said, you know, how he did it, they followed what he was doing to learn how to handle pacing and how to speed up a story and how to slow it down. You know, the short sentences, long sentences, short paragraphs, long paragraphs.

You know, and so that’s why I always ask that in case it’s curious, ’cause now everybody as part of coming there, ’cause Tim Powers and Jody Lin Nye, who’s the other coordinating judge with Tim, has everybody read one of the Hubbard stories that which was being written at the time he was writing these essays that are part of the workshop as examples of how this is done, you know, and some of these things are the ones that are set the stage for what became those genres like Fear for doing that that type of fantasy, that dark fantasy, was he was gonna you know Stephen King and Bloch and Bradbury. I’ll say, you know, we definitely owe Hubbard on this for creating this subgenre or Typewriter in a Sky with which was a few of our judges’ favorite Hubbard book because it’s a science fiction about itself. It’s called recursive.

You know, so I always like to ask guests if you’re familiar with it and any comments about it. So we’ve got about fifteen minutes left. So what I’d like to do is discuss a bit about advice that you would like to share with aspiring writers, both that’s been successful and unsuccessful.

William Ledbetter (43:34): I think there’s two things. Two words. Patience and persistence. and because I mean persistence or perseverance, I guess, maybe. I think that’s ninety percent of the recipe for being for success in this field. It’s very difficult, especially early in your career, you keep getting rejection after rejection after rejection. And it’s very difficult to keep

you know, to keep positive about it and to and to keep thinking that you can do it. You know, is a lot of times you think, I am just, you know, wasting my time. I’m beating my head against the wall. But when you talk to successful writers, it’s like almost all of them went through that period. I mean, they, you know, they had a very difficult, you know, launch. And

But they stuck with it and then they kept writing and they kept trying to improve their craft. And I think that’s very important. And patience also is very important because just about everything in this industry takes forever. I mean, you know, like if you’re submitting a short story to a market, it’s like you send the story in and it takes them six months to get back to you, and then once they get back to you, they say, you know, if they do say that they want to publish it, then it’s another, you know.

Five or six months before you get, you know, you hear from them again. And then, you know, sometimes it takes, you know, from the time you sell a short story until it actually comes out in print, it’s like a year or two. so it’s like, you know, you have to be really be patient. and then also it’s like if you’re trying to like, you know, sell a novel or you’re trying to use a novel and get an agent, it’s just a long, grueling process.

And so patience and perseverance I think are the key things that you need to have, the key tools that you need to have in order to become a writer eventually. So

John Goodwin (45:42): And what would you suggest are un unsuccessful things to stay clear of?

William Ledbetter (45:49): You know, a couple things

John Goodwin (45:50): Besides sliding manuscripts under the toilet door in the bathroom for an editor.

William Ledbetter (45:55): Yeah, we’ve all heard those stories. That’s just bad. you know, some of the advice that I’ve that I’ve heard that just never worked for me, one of them is you have to write every day. And it’s like, no, you don’t. But I think consistency helps a lot. Like for me, my process for a long time

was that I would get up early in the morning, earlier much earlier than I had to, and I would go to a coffee shop and write for anywhere between an hour and two hours before I went to my day job. And so you know, that consistency, and you know the when I would go there I would sit down with my new you know, my big cup of coffee and I was in the zone and I would start writing and I cranked out a lot of stuff, a lot of short fiction and the first novel in, you know, in this series were all written, you know, sitting at a coffee shop. And so oddly enough, I still do the same thing, even though now I’m retired, I’ll still get up and I’ll get, you know, my shower and get dressed and I’ll go down the road to the coffee shop and sit there for a couple hours and write. so I think consistency is important, but n not as a rule, not that it’s like you have to write every day no matter what’s going on. Yes, your parents died, but you can’t give up writing. You still have to write that day. You know, it’s like that’s just that’s just ridiculous. That and one of the tools that a lot of writers use, and this is very useful for a lot of writers, is having like a minimum word count per day. And I that never worked for me either. I would go into my writing session with a goal, but it wasn’t necessarily a word count. It was like, well I want to finish this scene

Or I want to go back and reread this scene and tweak it, or I want to start a new scene and go from there. So, you know, that those are kind of the goals that I had. And I’ve never really had a had a daily, you know, word count goal that I used. So I don’t think, you know so, you know, new writers out there, if that is something that you struggle with, then don’t worry about it. You know, you everybody has to come up with what works for them.

John Goodwin (48:15): Good. Now with your writing, did you get an editor and go the traditional route or did you do indie publishing or self-publishing? How did you get your books the specifically like Level Five, Six and Seven?

William Ledbetter (48:32): Well, a traditional route, but a rather weird traditional route. Okay, ’cause I I kind of came into getting an agent backward. I got my agent after I won the Nebula Award for the novelette. So I you know, I had I had a body of short fiction that I had and most of that had all been published, you know, traditionally as well, then magazines and anthologies and things. and then I got

John Goodwin (48:47): There we go.

William Ledbetter (49:02): got an agent after that and the agent my agent said well you know he eventually came up it came to me and says I got a really good offer but it’s only for the audiobook and so it was and that was with Audible originals. And back then I don’t know if they’re still doing it quite the same way now but back then when they bought mine

it was just like a regular publishing deal. they gave me an advance, they were paying royalties. they provided, you know, the cover art and the narrator and of course, you know, being a division of you know audio Audible being a division of Amazon, they had this huge marketing definition. So that worked out really well. and so all of those books, all three of those books came out as an audio book first.

John Goodwin (49:51): Machine. Yeah.

William Ledbetter (50:00): And then after there was an exclusion period of about six months.

John Goodwin (50:04): Yeah. You still do that. Rob Sawyer has his originals too, which it’s like I think it’s six months before the book can actually come out.

William Ledbetter (50:11): And then so after that, then I can publish them in in print in eBook, which I which I’ve done. So and again, those are through those are through a small publisher, but you know, it all worked out great. I even wasn’t able to have the same cover art and everything. So Audible worked with me on that. So yes, it’s traditional publishing, but it was rather un you know unconventional way of doing it.

John Goodwin (50:38): Unconventional how you do it. Yeah, you got one of those get out of free jail cards, you do that, and then when you went there and said, Here you go, let me give this, and I’m gonna go to Park Place straight away.

William Ledbetter (50:49): That’s right. Yeah.

John Goodwin (50:52):  Yes, yes. So all right, so now on the on the Writers of Future itself, because you’re a winner and what ’cause I always like to tell people because this this podcast goes out to roughly four million people listen to it. And so the value of this contest, because that probably why I do this is to encourage people to enter the Contest. It’s free to enter and you got nothing losing everything in the gain. And an honorable mention is like the top ten percentile, which now after four decades is now no longer considered a reject. It’s like, you know, I won an honorable mention. You see people put that in their press releases saying, Yeah, I also won honorable mention with Writers of the Future when they come up with their first book. So what can you say about from your perspective, the value of what L. Ron Hubbard created with Writers of the Future when started this?

William Ledbetter (51:43): Well, I had a you know, for me I was kind of a I was kind of a sporadic you know with my n sending stories into Writers of the Future. It’s like I would I would I would go for two or three quarters and then it would be another two or three quarters and I didn’t. But I had friends and that were doing it they were making sure to have an entry ready for every quarter. And I think that it was very effective for them because they, you know, once they started getting to the point where they were getting honorable mentions and then eventually they would get to be a finalist and then eventually a winner, I mean, it was a very clear roadmap, a very clear path that that they had taken because it’s like, okay, at this point you’re not really making a lot of headway, but you keep getting better, and as you get better you get you climb up that ladder.

And by the time that you’re a winner, you know, you know that what you’re writing is at a fairly high professional level because you know, because the you know the competition, you know, there’s so many people s entering stories. If your story revel rises to that level, you know that you’re that you’re on the right track. You know that what you’re doing is working. And so yeah.

John Goodwin (53:09): Good. Yeah, ’cause it’s one of the things that a lot of winners have said over the years is that they’ve had, you know, problems with feeling. You know, one, there’s the imposter syndrome, but it’s also there’s the feeling that, you know, it’s fine that my mom or my dad or my husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, best friend says, Hey, this is really, really good, but then how do you know? Because what are they gonna say? You know?

William Ledbetter (53:34): Right, yeah. Yeah. My mom thinks this is great, you know.

John Goodwin (53:37): So by getting something from especially with Riders of Future from judges who are the people that you have read growing up as a child science fiction aficionado makes a big difference. Like you said, with Jerry Purnell saying, Can I will you sign my book for me? It’s surreal. You know, people with Larry Niven doing it and with you know Eric Flint when he was there, Brandon Sanderson, all these people when they come ask for the book. It’s like it’s crazy the effect that it has. But it’s just the main thing is to get that recognition, which is really hard to get, you know, unless you get in those big publishing deals, which is, you know, I said over five million books published last year. So recognition is a really big thing to be able to get yourself heard above the din of everybody else saying, read me, read me, read me.

And that’s something that this contest is it definitely able to provide. So as an author, so your goal is so you’ve done the these three series, the Level Five, Six, and Seven. So are you strict do you stick strictly with science fiction or are you moving to fantasy or what else do you have that’s in your books.

William Ledbetter (55:00): In short fiction I have I have several horror and fantasy stories that are published as well. but you know, my novels are all science fiction and I’ve been working on a new novel that is almost finished, so and it is also hundred percent science fiction. So I’d say yeah, mostly science fiction. That’s you know

John Goodwin (55:25): But then who is it that said that a sufficiently high technology to a lower race will look like fantasy to them, you know? So Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean some of the stuff you did there definitely is magic, but nevertheless it’s you know, what it was able to do like it so fast was like crazy. So what do you recommend is a good first read for

William Ledbetter (55:35): Yeah, it looks like magic, your exact

John Goodwin (55:53): yourself. I obviously mine was Level Five because I it came to me.

William Ledbetter (55:58): Well, yeah, I of course Level Five, especially if you’re if you’re interested in a AI or nanotechnology. but if you want a good sampling of what I’ve written before, I have a collection of short fiction that’s out and it’s called The Long Follow Up and Other Stories. and it’s out through Interstellar Flight Press.

And it has it has my this story that that won the nebula award. It has it has “The Rings of Mars,” which you know was my fan Writers of the Future winner. and a bunch of my other stories that have appeared in Analog and Asimovs and right and fantasy and science fiction, some of those some of those magazines. So it’s a g it’s a good sampler, yeah.

John Goodwin (56:45): Sampler.

John Goodwin (56:48): What’s it called again?

William Ledbetter (56:52): The Long Fall Up and Other Stories.

John Goodwin (56:54): Okay. And that’s under William Ledbetter, not Bill Ledbetter, so it’s William Ledbetter, the long fall up. Okay, great. And then how do people find you?

William Ledbetter (57:05): I think just about it you can find out just about anything you want through my website. And I keep that fairly up to date. And it’s called it’s William Ledbetter, all one word, WilliamLedbetter.com. and I have there links to my social media accounts. I have a list of my conventions and appearances that that are coming up, and there’s a complete bibliography of all my stories and books there and where you know where those stories and books can be found.

So yeah, I also have a newsletter every month that or not every month, about four times a year that I put out. you can sign up for the newsletter there. So I would say definitely visit my website and you can you can spread out from there.

John Goodwin (57:49): That sounds great. Well, thank you very much, Bill. It’s been great talking to you. And I’ve said I was really happy to see that, you know, when it was fed to me like this this audio book, I went, wow. And I was able to go boom, boom, boom, and here we are. So this is great. So thank you very much.

William Ledbetter (58:07): It was good hearing from you. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

John Goodwin (58:09): Yeah. And thank you for listening. Subscribe to the Writers of the Future Podcast where we get your podcasts. We’ve also been syndicated on the United Public Radio Network where you can find these podcasts as well. Writers and Illustrators of the Future are contests created by Elwyn Hubbard to provide a means for the aspiring writer and artist to be seen and acknowledged for over four decades. It is free to enter and open to amateur short story writers and artists of science fiction or fantasy. Again, thank you very much, Bill.

William Ledbetter (58:36): Thanks.