The Author is the Journal of the Society of Authors, the invaluable trade union for writers (since 1884). This piece about The Universal Turing Machine appeared in the Spring 2026 edition. Ill-served by story Richard Beard on harnessing new technology using experimental narrative forms My first encounter with digital fiction, back in 2011, was with […]
This is a longer piece with some of the thinking behind The Universal Turing Machine. Everyone who embarks on a Turing Machine memoir notices at some stage that it’s fun. It’s a fun way to write, when writing is often difficult. It’s also important. Our memories are something we have to share, and one of […]
Here’s the Guardian obituary I wrote for Ian, who will be remembered and missed by many.
Everyone has memories. And according to the old saying, we all have a book in us. Put these thoughts together and everyone has a memoir in them. UTM feature Scotsman
My version of the Universal Turing Machine is only the beginning. The idea is that writers everywhere can use the thousand-words-a-year format to add their own memoir to an ever-growing chessboard, which will eventually become a neural network of memories of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a Domesday Book recording individual human experience […]
Georges, Georges Perec, is that you? No. Come on, Georges, this is the first time I’ve summoned spirits from the dead. Would you consider giving me an interview? No. Georges, I have a Ouija board here on a small table in front of me, and my Reading Group holding hands in a deep trance. I […]
The first phase of the Universal Turing Machine is now available to read free online. ‘Utterly humane and utterly brilliant,’ Lily Dunn, author of Into Being; The Radical Craft of Memoir and its Power to Transform. ‘There are many clever people out there, doing clever things, but it takes great skill to capture the true […]
‘Utterly humane and utterly brilliant, outwitting computer technology by remaining one step ahead, always, in what can be read and in what order. There are many clever people out there, doing clever things, but it takes great skill to capture the true magic of memory and of lived experience. The Universal Turing Machine does that.’ […]
For as long as boarding school survivors govern Britain, they will inflict their own pain on the nation. New Statesman, 12 March 2024 Charles Spencer has a memoir out, and famously, when given a pulpit, Charles Spencer tells it like it is. His new book, A Very Private School, is about his experience in the […]
Becoming Prime Minister wasn’t the first significant position Sunak was handed – Winchester College taught him a thing or two about prestige without power, writes Richard Beard Byline Times, March 2024 Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak was identified by the Conservative Party as the safest available pair of hands. He was a Prime Minister who could […]