When we go through the hot-process of reading stories we are changed and the world itself seems to be telling a story that intensifies the interest and meaning of our lives. In an age when a.i. generates fiction called slop and may very well (and probably soon) patch together fiction as engaging as anything people can write, who then will speak for the human spirit?
Machine intelligence can imitate us and may, eventually, have something original to say. But it will be a machine saying it. The human story is a biological one. What a peculiar fact that the DNA in any living creature has never died. Each of us occupies a physical form that has been morphing for four billion years and will experience death for the first time only when we die.
Until that mortal moment, somatic intelligence breathes us, beats our hearts, and electrifies our neurology with qualia no machine will ever know. Story is self-reckoning. That’s true for readers and writers both. We meet ourselves in the stories that captivate us. And what more important endeavor is there for any of us than getting to know this marvel of creation called being human?