Eliot Peper
Novelist, author of twelve books including Foundry, Bandwidth and Cumulus. Sends a newsletter of monthly book recommendations.
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Latest Newsletter
What they believe
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The basic tools of storytelling remain timeless, but technology determines what form a story can take.
The fundamental tools of storytelling like character and plot are timeless, but technology governs the shape stories take.
eliotpeper.substack.comSaid 30 Aug 2026This on korrents
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Books endure alongside newer media because they have unique affordances that other media have not replicated.
Books have survived the arrival of radio, movies, tv, the internet, phones, and AI because they have unique affordances that newer mediums have yet to infringe upon
eliotpeper.substack.comSaid 2 Aug 2026This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Feed
As its own page →Hiding
27 September
30 August
From one piece Narrative technology 3 beliefs · eliotpeper.substack.com
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korrents.com
A story's quality depends on whether it engages and satisfies the reader, not on the tool used to write it.Their words
What makes a story good isn't whether it was written with a quill, a pen, a typewriter, a word processor, or Claude. What makes a story good is whether it entertains and moves the reader, whether they want to keep reading it and feel satisfied when they reach the end.
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Their words
Right now, we're in the "animated photographs" stage of AI. People are using it to bring characters to life, explore interactive fiction, and generate 3D worlds, but these are awkward first steps.
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korrents.com
The basic tools of storytelling remain timeless, but technology determines what form a story can take.Their words
The fundamental tools of storytelling like character and plot are timeless, but technology governs the shape stories take.
2 August
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korrents.com
Books endure alongside newer media because they have unique affordances that other media have not replicated.Their words
Books have survived the arrival of radio, movies, tv, the internet, phones, and AI because they have unique affordances that newer mediums have yet to infringe upon
28 June
From one piece Write what only you can write 2 beliefs · eliotpeper.substack.com
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Their words
The only new thing is that writing about anything else is less valuable than it used to be, and it was never that valuable in the first place.
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Their words
If we pretend to be normal, we doom all other weirdos to loneliness, forgetting that each of us is weird in our own way, and that what is weird about us is precisely what others find most interesting.
31 May
From one piece Television forgot how stories work 2 beliefs · eliotpeper.substack.com
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korrents.com
Science fiction's tendency to cast AI as a monster shapes how foundational AI models are trained and perceived.Their words
AIs have read every science-fiction story about AI, and most of those stories cast AI as a monster. It's hard to imagine that that framing doesn't influence foundational models, and fun to imagine how we might leverage narrative to reframe the relationship between humans and machines.
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Their words
A good story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end, and I'm sick of watching well-cast, beautifully shot, expensively produced series that are all middle.
26 April
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korrents.com
Acting on an idea reveals its true potential in a way that merely thinking about it cannot.Their words
Every good idea wants to set off a chain reaction, but can't do it from inside your head. Only by acting on an idea can you discover its true potential, and yours.
29 March
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Their words
When everyone else is chasing scale, choosing to make something singular is a powerful differentiator.
1 March
From one piece Chains of loving care 3 beliefs · eliotpeper.substack.com
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Their words
Doing so will unlock new levels of understanding and appreciation.
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Their words
When you read text, most of the time you don't actually look at each letter, instead your eye automatically recognizes the shape of the entire word or phrase.
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korrents.com
Every manufactured object embodies a long chain of decisions made by many different people.Their words
Manufactured objects are physical manifestations of long chains of decisions made by countless contributors.
25 January
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Their words
The internet may have disrupted newspapers, magazines, music, and Hollywood, and yet it's 2026 and book sales continue to slowly, steadily grow.
28 December 2025
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Lovedrcmnd.app
TrustTheir words
Trust by Hernan Diaz is an onion of a novel in which every chapter peels back a layer to reveal yet more beneath. Following the meteoric rise of a Wall Street financier in the early 20th century, the intricately plotted story will seduce you, transport you, stimulate you, mislead you, and, ultimately, move you.
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Lovedrcmnd.app
The Quantum ThiefTheir words
The Jean le Flambeur trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi—The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince, and The Causal Angel—may be the most ambitious science-fiction story I've ever read.
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
The Thursday Murder ClubTheir words
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman is a delightful whodunnit set at a retirement home in the English countryside. Great characters. Fun twists. An endearing sense of humor. Nothing fancy or experimental, just a pleasure to read (and what more can you ask from a book, really?). If, like me, you enjoy mysteries, you'll be in good hands with Osman.
+ 9 more
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Lovedrcmnd.app
PlaygroundTheir words
Playground by Richard Powers is a strange and wonderful novel set (mostly) on a remote atoll in French Polynesia that follows the tangled lives of an environmental advocate, a sculptor, a tech entrepreneur, and a brilliant bookworm trying to escape the grinding poverty of Chicago's South Side. The richly drawn characters drive the story, but what I love most about the book is that it's a love letter to the ocean with prose that comes closer than anything else I've read to capturing what it feels like to, for example, dive a thriving coral reef.
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Lovedrcmnd.app
GhostmanTheir words
Ghostman by Roger Hobbs is a crime thriller about robbing a Malaysian bank and an Atlantic City casino. Riveting characters. A gut-punch of a story. I love a good heist, and this one is bristling with technical details that make you wonder whether the author has some secrets of his own.
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Likedrcmnd.app
The Player of GamesTheir words
The Player of Games by Ian M. Banks is about a champion board-game player who gets roped into an espionage operation infiltrating an alien culture where political power is determined by the outcome of a uniquely complex strategy game. Set in a far-future human civilization run by a constellation of (mostly) benevolent and inscrutable AIs, Banks's science fiction is more relevant than ever.
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Lovedrcmnd.app
The Spy Who Came in From the ColdTheir words
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré is a perfect espionage novel: tight, taught, twisty, and thought-provoking. Le Carré brings the subtle machinations of intelligence operations to vivid life, illustrating their geopolitical ramifications and human cost with equal care.
-
Lovedrcmnd.app
Jonathan Livingston SeagullTheir words
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach is a beautiful fable about a seagull who wants to fly for the pure joy of flight, rather than simply to find food, as most gulls do. Ostracized from his flock for his eccentric behavior, Jonathan embarks on a quest for aerodynamic perfection that doubles as a moving spiritual allegory. You've never read a book quite like this one before, and it'll stick with you long after you reach the end.
-
Lovedrcmnd.app
BreakneckTheir words
Breakneck by Dan Wang takes you on a fascinating journey through China's engineering state, juxtaposing it against America's lawyerly society in an effort to reveal what each country should learn from the other. I've been a keen reader of Dan's personal blog for many years and am delighted to report that this book, his first, features everything I love most about his writing: his unbounded curiosity, thoughtful analysis, compelling storytelling, self-awareness, offbeat sense of humor, and insights born of lived experience.
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Likedrcmnd.app
Jurassic ParkTheir words
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton is a surprisingly weird and weirdly underrated novel given how many copies it sold and the popularity of the blockbuster franchise it spawned. The story weaves together many apparently disparate threads and there are extensive speculative digressions into the biotechnology, business interests, and institutional dynamics that make the park possible and its dissolution inevitable. If the movie is supremely entertaining, the book is supremely thought-provoking.
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Lovedrcmnd.app
There Is No Antimemetics DivisionTheir words
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm is a mind-bending psychological thriller about a secret agency tasked with fighting dangerous "antimemes"—ideas that refuse to be remembered. Plenty of stories start with a clever high-concept premise and just let it play out. This one pushes its premise to extremes I never imagined possible, ratcheting up an astonishing amount of tension along the way.
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Recommendstheir ownrcmnd.app
EnsorcelledTheir words
Ensorcelled is the best book I wrote in 2025, and if you enjoy this newsletter, you'll love it.
30 November 2025
26 October 2025
8 October 2025
28 September 2025
31 August 2025
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 14 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
The basic tools of storytelling remain timeless, but technology determines what form a story can take.
The fundamental tools of storytelling like character and plot are timeless, but technology governs the shape stories take.
Narrative technology Said 30 Aug 2026
AI-driven storytelling is currently in an early, experimental phase comparable to the first "animated photographs" of early cinema.
Right now, we're in the "animated photographs" stage of AI. People are using it to bring characters to life, explore interactive fiction, and generate 3D worlds, but these are awkward first steps.
Narrative technology Said 30 Aug 2026
A story's quality depends on whether it engages and satisfies the reader, not on the tool used to write it.
What makes a story good isn't whether it was written with a quill, a pen, a typewriter, a word processor, or Claude. What makes a story good is whether it entertains and moves the reader, whether they want to keep reading it and feel satisfied when they reach the end.
Narrative technology Said 30 Aug 2026
Show 11 more
Books endure alongside newer media because they have unique affordances that other media have not replicated.
Books have survived the arrival of radio, movies, tv, the internet, phones, and AI because they have unique affordances that newer mediums have yet to infringe upon
Make art that makes people make art Said 2 Aug 2026
What makes a person seem weird is exactly what makes their work interesting to others.
If we pretend to be normal, we doom all other weirdos to loneliness, forgetting that each of us is weird in our own way, and that what is weird about us is precisely what others find most interesting.
Write what only you can write Said 28 Jun 2026
Now that AI can produce competent generic prose, writing that isn't distinctively personal has become less valuable than before.
The only new thing is that writing about anything else is less valuable than it used to be, and it was never that valuable in the first place.
Write what only you can write Said 28 Jun 2026
A good story needs a clear beginning, middle, and end to be satisfying.
A good story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end, and I'm sick of watching well-cast, beautifully shot, expensively produced series that are all middle.
Television forgot how stories work Said 31 May 2026
Science fiction's tendency to cast AI as a monster shapes how foundational AI models are trained and perceived.
AIs have read every science-fiction story about AI, and most of those stories cast AI as a monster. It's hard to imagine that that framing doesn't influence foundational models, and fun to imagine how we might leverage narrative to reframe the relationship between humans and machines.
Television forgot how stories work Said 31 May 2026
Acting on an idea reveals its true potential in a way that merely thinking about it cannot.
Every good idea wants to set off a chain reaction, but can't do it from inside your head. Only by acting on an idea can you discover its true potential, and yours.
Ideas are for acting on Said 26 Apr 2026
Making something singular, rather than chasing scale, is a powerful differentiator.
When everyone else is chasing scale, choosing to make something singular is a powerful differentiator.
Tiny ports of human connection Said 29 Mar 2026
Every manufactured object embodies a long chain of decisions made by many different people.
Manufactured objects are physical manifestations of long chains of decisions made by countless contributors.
Chains of loving care Said 1 Mar 2026
When reading, people mostly recognize the shape of whole words and phrases rather than looking at each letter individually.
When you read text, most of the time you don't actually look at each letter, instead your eye automatically recognizes the shape of the entire word or phrase.
Chains of loving care Said 1 Mar 2026
Turning something you love to consume into something you create and share deepens your understanding and appreciation of it.
Doing so will unlock new levels of understanding and appreciation.
Chains of loving care Said 1 Mar 2026
Despite the internet disrupting other media industries, book sales continue to grow.
The internet may have disrupted newspapers, magazines, music, and Hollywood, and yet it's 2026 and book sales continue to slowly, steadily grow.
Solving weirdly specific problems Said 25 Jan 2026
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 21 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Recommends Ensorcelled
Ensorcelled is the best book I wrote in 2025, and if you enjoy this newsletter, you'll love it.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
their own
Loved There Is No Antimemetics Division
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm is a mind-bending psychological thriller about a secret agency tasked with fighting dangerous "antimemes"—ideas that refuse to be remembered. Plenty of stories start with a clever high-concept premise and just let it play out. This one pushes its premise to extremes I never imagined possible, ratcheting up an astonishing amount of tension along the way.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
Liked Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton is a surprisingly weird and weirdly underrated novel given how many copies it sold and the popularity of the blockbuster franchise it spawned. The story weaves together many apparently disparate threads and there are extensive speculative digressions into the biotechnology, business interests, and institutional dynamics that make the park possible and its dissolution inevitable. If the movie is supremely entertaining, the book is supremely thought-provoking.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
Show 18 more
Loved Breakneck
Breakneck by Dan Wang takes you on a fascinating journey through China's engineering state, juxtaposing it against America's lawyerly society in an effort to reveal what each country should learn from the other. I've been a keen reader of Dan's personal blog for many years and am delighted to report that this book, his first, features everything I love most about his writing: his unbounded curiosity, thoughtful analysis, compelling storytelling, self-awareness, offbeat sense of humor, and insights born of lived experience.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
Loved Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach is a beautiful fable about a seagull who wants to fly for the pure joy of flight, rather than simply to find food, as most gulls do. Ostracized from his flock for his eccentric behavior, Jonathan embarks on a quest for aerodynamic perfection that doubles as a moving spiritual allegory. You've never read a book quite like this one before, and it'll stick with you long after you reach the end.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
Loved The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré is a perfect espionage novel: tight, taught, twisty, and thought-provoking. Le Carré brings the subtle machinations of intelligence operations to vivid life, illustrating their geopolitical ramifications and human cost with equal care.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
Liked The Player of Games
The Player of Games by Ian M. Banks is about a champion board-game player who gets roped into an espionage operation infiltrating an alien culture where political power is determined by the outcome of a uniquely complex strategy game. Set in a far-future human civilization run by a constellation of (mostly) benevolent and inscrutable AIs, Banks's science fiction is more relevant than ever.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
Loved Ghostman
Ghostman by Roger Hobbs is a crime thriller about robbing a Malaysian bank and an Atlantic City casino. Riveting characters. A gut-punch of a story. I love a good heist, and this one is bristling with technical details that make you wonder whether the author has some secrets of his own.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
Loved Playground
Playground by Richard Powers is a strange and wonderful novel set (mostly) on a remote atoll in French Polynesia that follows the tangled lives of an environmental advocate, a sculptor, a tech entrepreneur, and a brilliant bookworm trying to escape the grinding poverty of Chicago's South Side. The richly drawn characters drive the story, but what I love most about the book is that it's a love letter to the ocean with prose that comes closer than anything else I've read to capturing what it feels like to, for example, dive a thriving coral reef.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
Recommends The Thursday Murder Club
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman is a delightful whodunnit set at a retirement home in the English countryside. Great characters. Fun twists. An endearing sense of humor. Nothing fancy or experimental, just a pleasure to read (and what more can you ask from a book, really?). If, like me, you enjoy mysteries, you'll be in good hands with Osman.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
Loved The Quantum Thief
The Jean le Flambeur trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi—The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince, and The Causal Angel—may be the most ambitious science-fiction story I've ever read.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
Loved Trust
Trust by Hernan Diaz is an onion of a novel in which every chapter peels back a layer to reveal yet more beneath. Following the meteoric rise of a Wall Street financier in the early 20th century, the intricately plotted story will seduce you, transport you, stimulate you, mislead you, and, ultimately, move you.
eliotpeper.substack.com 28 Dec 2025
Recommends Kneeling Bus
Drew notices anomalies others don't, and his newsletter will challenge you to look at the familiar world through fresh eyes.
eliotpeper.substack.com 16 Sept 2022
Recommends Cabinet of Wonders
Nobody follows their curiosity with the range, depth, and unbridled enthusiasm of Sam Arbesman.
eliotpeper.substack.com 12 Sept 2022
Recommends seasonal
Fascinating essays revealing the complex San Francisco Bay Area food system.
eliotpeper.substack.com 6 Sept 2022
Recommends Counter Craft
Grounded, deeply researched insights into writing and publishing fiction.
eliotpeper.substack.com 6 Sept 2022
Recommends Notes from a Small Press
Anne offers indispensable glimpses into the weird, wild, and sometimes wonderful world of book publishing.
eliotpeper.substack.com 6 Sept 2022
Recommends Austin Kleon
If you seek to make things you're proud of for people you care about, Austin's weekly notes and links about creativity will fuel your process.
eliotpeper.substack.com 6 Sept 2022
Recommends American Innocence by Anna Gát
Powerful, concise pieces of prose poetry to enliven your mind, heart, and soul.
eliotpeper.substack.com 6 Sept 2022
Recommends Noahpinion
Noah's wide-ranging curiosity provides a consistently thought-provoking lens on a changing world. Once you start reading his blog, you'll see the world differently.
eliotpeper.substack.com 6 Sept 2022
Recommends Exponential View
If you want to know what happens next in this age of acceleration, Azeem's newsletter is a field guide to the near future.
eliotpeper.substack.com 6 Sept 2022
Where they publish
Site eliotpeper.com His author site: novels, essays and interviews.
Link verified 5 Sept 2026.
Newsletter Eliot Peper's newsletter Monthly book recommendations plus notes on his own writing.
Recent
- The Island in the Sea 27 Sept 2026 A fairy tale about automation.
- Narrative technology 30 Aug 2026 The fundamental tools of storytelling like character and plot are timeless, but technology governs the shape stories take.
- Make art that makes people make art 2 Aug 2026 I just got back from our annual camping trip to the secret lake in the High Sierras that inspired Ensorcelled.
Show 17 more
- Write what only you can write 28 Jun 2026 If we pretend to be normal, we doom all other weirdos to loneliness, forgetting that each of us is weird in our own way, and that what is weird about us is precisely what others find most interesting.
- Television forgot how stories work 31 May 2026 I just cancelled Netflix, HBO, and Apple TV+.
- Ideas are for acting on 26 Apr 2026 Don’t betray your ideas by settling for merely thinking about them.
- Tiny ports of human connection 29 Mar 2026 I am delighted to report that, in its first year of operation, Eliot’s Cozy Little Internet Bookstore did $5,023 in sales.
- Chains of loving care 1 Mar 2026 Countless decisions are embedded in everything around you.
- Solving weirdly specific problems 25 Jan 2026 If you don't, who will?
- The Best Books I Read in 2025 28 Dec 2025 Every month, I recommend books I love that you might too. Every year, I collect them into a single post.
- Books Make Great Gifts 30 Nov 2025 When you give someone a book, you invite them into another mind, another heart, another world.
- Jurassic Park 26 Oct 2025 Thank you for Ensorcelled’s enthusiastic reception.
- Ensorcelled 8 Oct 2025 After two years of work, my new book is out today.
- Breakneck 28 Sept 2025 I can’t quite believe it, but Ensorcelled comes out in just 10 days.
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull 31 Aug 2025 Ensorcelled advance review copies are sneaking out into the wild.
- My new book 13 Aug 2025 Big news! I've got a new book coming out on October 8th.
- Masters of Illusion 27 Jul 2025 When wizards go to magic school, illusion is the easy part, the first skill you learn as a nascent mage.
- Fear's Opposite 29 Jun 2025 What is fear’s opposite?
- Ghostman 25 May 2025 I just published an essay about the lessons I’ve learned over the past year as head of story for Tolan. It’s been a wild ride using fast-evolving AI tools to bring a character to life as our app went from zero to over a…
- Playground 27 Apr 2025 I just finished the rough draft of a new novel.
Link verified 5 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.