Benny the Blue Whale, the “scholarly, childish, fascinating and hilarious” (Chris Addison) new book by bestselling children’s author Andy Stanton, has been included in the Waterstones list of Best Popular Science Books of 2023. Find Benny here and the full list here.

Most people regard AI chatbots like ChatGPT as streamlining tools, as all-powerful research engines, or even as an imminent threat to their livelihoods. An open letter co-signed by Elon Musk calls for their development to be put on hold, arguing they pose ‘profound risks to society and humanity.’ But Andy Stanton sees things a little differently…

Diving gleefully into the conversation, Andy invites ChatGPT to co-write a novel with him. From a simple initial prompt, man and machine find themselves dancing a bizarre cross-species tango as together they build an increasingly hallucinogenic yarn around a benevolent blue whale and his underwater world. Sometimes the AI wants to play along, sometimes it doesn’t. It all adds to the mix.

This leviathan improvisation raises all sorts of fascinating questions about language, creativity and how we understand stories. Andy interrogates these themes in his extensive and discursive annotations to the text to deliver an ‘exploded diagram’ of a novel that examines the DNA of narrative itself.

Benny the Blue Whale: A Descent Into Story, Language and the Madness of ChatGPT is out now. Grab your copy here or, better, via your local bookshop or Bookshop.org.

Follow him @AndyStanton15.