Benny the Blue Whale, the “funny and surprising” (The Bookseller) new book by bestselling children’s author Andy Stanton, has been reviewed by Perspective magazine.

In the review, which you can read in full in the December issue, Peter Phelps writes:

“It is there, in Stanton’s foot notes and marginalia, that the real genius of this book is found. For all the hilarity and absurdity, it asks profound questions about the relationship between humans and machines. What are the boundaries between human agency and that of the tools we use, in any creative process?”

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.

You can also listen to the audiobook, narrated by the hilarious duo Andy Stanton (Andy Stanton) and Nish Kumar (ChatGPT). Buy yours here now.

Follow him @AndyStanton1