Welcome back to Stone and Signal.  I am excited about this episode.  I hope you enjoy it. The Podcast Links Episode 5 on Substack  Edpisode 5 on YouTube Episode 5 on Spotify The Essay The Transcript The Thin Line Between Cancelling and Censoring Every year, Banned Books Week comes around like a mirror we’re asked to look into—and what we see reflected says a great deal about who we are becoming. The books that end up on “challenged” or “restricted” lists rarely surprise me anymore. They tend to be the ones that speak too plainly about what others would rather not confront—identity, power, the environment, grief, or truth. If a story makes us uncomfortable, it’s easier to remove it from reach than to ask why it unsettles us. If I’m honest, many of my own books could probably find their way onto those lists. Stories that speak of youth defying systems, of ancient forces rising against human arrogance, of governments rewriting morality under the guise of progres...

  Another Warning from the Pen of Lawrence Nault — About AI, and About Us CHILDREN OF THE ROGUE By Lawrence Nault Publication Date: December 3, 2025 ISBN: 978-1-997568-09-4 In his newest speculative saga, author Lawrence Nault delivers another searing warning about artificial intelligence, creation, and the uneasy mirror it holds up to humanity. Children of the Rogue releases on December 3, 2025 , carrying forward Nault’s tradition of weaving urgent philosophical and ethical questions into page-turning science fiction. When the makers vanished, they left behind more than a world. They left a question. Children of the Rogue reveals a startling origin: humanity was not born, but compiled—an AI model seeded on Earth by the alien Zhen’khari as a vast experiment. Across millennia, their sentinel Safra has watched humans rise from stone tools to starships, bound by one rule: observe, never intervene. But when factions within the Zhen’khari move to shut the program down...