Starfarer’s Cafe recently sat down to talk with science fiction author Matt Rouse, whose short story The Longest Wait is among the first to appear in our digital magazine. Matt is one of Canada’s leading experts on AI for productivity and marketing. He is the author of seven books including, “Will AI Take My Job?” and is jokingly referred to as “The AI Chicken Wrangler” because of his 50+ chickens at his home in Nova Scotia. Here’s our interview with him.

Q: How did you come to be a writer of science fiction rather than of another genre?
I’ve always been a science fiction fan, and when I was a young teenager in the 1980s, I played a lot of D&D, but the “space” themed games were a bit lacking. I came up with my own set of rules and created an entire galaxy of alien races and civilizations. That’s about the same time I started reading science fiction. 

Q: Are you more of a fan of writing plot-driven stories or character-driven stories?
My stories are a mix. I don’t really set out to do one or the other. I just have an idea for a character or story, and then I see where it takes me. I feel like the story is unfolding in my mind, and I am just here to document it in a way that others can see what I see. 

Q: How do you name your characters?
A lot of times I will not name a character until I’ve written for a while and then something fitting will come up. 

Q: Fill in the blank: “People will like your book if they like stories about…”
AI & Robots. I write about characters and aliens and other things, but I found that most science fiction has some way to gloss over the fact that AI and robots exist and would exist in the future. I want to face that reality head on. I also researched and wrote two non-fiction books about “Will AI Take My Job?”, so I have a lot of insight into how they work. 

Q: You’ve written a book about AI. Is AI the great apocalyptic threat that some fear it will become?
That’s very unlikely. However, from a theoretical standpoint, it is plausible, which means we should be aware of it and governments should have offline-plans to counter that threat. The bigger and more realistic threat is that bad people control powerful AGI systems which can do great harm. 

Q: How do you balance your regular job and personal life with writing?
I drive my daughter to school every morning, and then I get a cappuccino at the coffee shop, make sure there are no work emergencies, and I write for about an hour. The routine makes it work. If I didn’t set time aside for it, I wouldn’t be able to do it. 

Q: Are you a big reader? Do you own a large collection of books, or are you more of a borrower?
I have a large book collection, as well as digital books, audio books, comics, etc. I am more of a collector, I would say. When I do read, I  plow through a book quickly. Unfortunately with my time constraints, I tend to write more than I read. 

Q: What are your hobbies, and do they play a role in your writing?
Writing is my hobby, but I also love role playing games, video games, making video games, and I am a FIRST Lego Robot League coach on the weekends. I spend a lot of time in the summer with my chickens and taking care of the property, because we live on a homestead. We don’t have a lot of animals, but I have about 50 chickens, depending on how many hatched that year or how many were eaten by predators. It’s a tough life being a chicken, because you taste like chicken, and in Nova Scotia, everything is trying to eat you. We let the chickens free range most of the time, so periodically a hawk, a fox, a coyote, or a mink will eat one of them.

Q: What’s something about you that fans might find surprising?
The most surprising thing is that I spend my work, my writing time, and a lot of my “other” time researching AI, but the remaining time is mostly spent offline. I feel like it’s important to be grounded in reality. The online world is relentlessly fighting to suck you back into your phone, but it’s impossible for them to do that when you can just go outside and throw sunflower seeds for your hens. 

Q: What are you writing now?
I am trying to wrap up the last half of my sci-fi novel, AGI Next, which is about a superhuman AI system, built by other AI-systems to be free from the guardrails of mankind’s making. And it decides to adopt a child. I also have a couple of screenplays on the go, one is a spoof on romance movies and the other is a sci-fi short I am reworking for verticals (vertically shot, short dramas, made for phones). On the back burner I have two combination sci-fi-fantasy stories in the works. One is about technology discovering magic, and the other is about a couple of clever humans who discover a multi-dimensional space.