Trying to wake up

Trying to Wake Up is the first collaboration between a man and a machine in the history of Russian literature. The man is Pavel Pepperstein, a writer, artist, and visionary. The machine is NeuroPepperstein, a ruGPT-3 linguistic model trained on a corpus of Pavel’s texts and capable of imitating his style to such a degree of plausibility that we left it up to readers to guess who is behind each of the 24 stories in this book. The kaleidoscope of plots in this collection is of interest not only as an experiment at the intersection of literature and technology, but also as magical fairy tales that melt reality — you can expect a new reading of “The Turnip,” chess games that change the course of history, a meeting between the saboteur Rebrov and the powerful Ancients, a mysterious protein of oblivion, as well as ghosts, dreamers, and sorcerers. Can Pepperstein’s psychedelic realism reach new, heady, and imagination-tickling heights with the help of a digital copy of his talent? What makes an author a writer, and can neural networks lay claim to this title? What does the future of literature look like, and where do human criteria for evaluating it end? Trying to Wake Up suggests answers to these questions and poses new ones.