R.P.L. Johnson - Blog

p(doom)

11/9/2025

What does p(doom) mean?

Simply put, it’s the probability of doom, a percentage estimate of the chance of human extinction by AI. Ask an AI researcher what their p(doom) is, and the answer might surprise you.

Geoffrey Hinton (the Godfather of modern AI) says we have “a better than even” chance of avoiding extinction. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has a p(doom) of 10 to 25 percent which is close to Elon Musk’s estimate of 20 to 30 percent. The most prominent voices in AI development right now say humanity’s chances of surviving its creation are slightly worse than a game of Russian Roulette!

But how might that doom come about? If AI becomes a problem, won't we just turn it off?

Well, this short story (or rather collection of 4 short-shorts) first appeared in SNAFU: AI Insurrection last year and lays out a few possibilities why that might not be possible.

I try not to write stories with a “message” because they often become preachy and boring, but in this case I’m making an exception. Please read the story and ask yourself, “What’s my p(doom)?”

Cover art by Ivan Zanchetta at Bookcoversart.com

Congratulations Connor

6/4/2024

Congratulations to fellow antipodean, Connor Chamberlain, who was a winner in the 40th anniversary Writers and Illustrators of the Future earlier this year.

Connor is a visual artist and self-proclaimed 'fantasy nerd' from Dunedin, New Zealand. Connor says he draws inspiration from the natural landscape around him and looking through his work on his Instagram page, you can really see that come through.

If you're familiar with my back-story, I won the writers side of this international competition back in 2011, in fact that was my first professional sale. That story earned a cash prize and a trip to Hollywood for a week-long workshop with professional writers like Kevin J Anderson, Tim Powers, Robert J Sawyer and the late, great Mike Resnick, culminating an a genuine, honest to goodness Hollywood black-tie award ceremony!

It looks like the competition is still going strong as Connor got similar treatment complete with flights, ceremony and a workshop with professional illustrators.

The great thing about the competition is that it's only open to new talent. If you've already published a novel or (if memory serves) three professionally-paid short stories, then sorry you can't enter. In that way it promotes new writers and illustrators and is still the best venue for finding and promoting new talent.

Anyway, congratulations Connor. I hope this is the start of a long and creative career. And to any other budding writers and illustrators, you can check out the competition at www.writersofthefuture.com/

More SNAFU

7/1/2023

It's SNAFU time again and this time it's even more FU than normal.

If you know about these great anthologies from Cohesion Press you know that they're always packed full of action and feature short stories from some of the best names in the business and this next outing is no exception. In fact, the previous books have done so well that they've even caught the eye of Hollywood with several stories being picked up by Blur Studios for their Emmy Award Winning Netflix series Love Death + Robots.

I've been lucky enough to feature in four of the previous books along with a couple of repeats in best-of and charity collections. This time I'm on the cover, and sharing it with none other than such big names as Alan Baxter and James A Moore.

My Story, King Rat, is a cyberpunk tale with a side of body horror in keeping with the 'Punk'd' theme. Here comes the pitch:

A cybernetic mercenary endowed with all the aspects of the Chinese zodiac discovers a link between his own past and his latest quarry: a shared history that offers the chance to right a decades-old wrong. But is there also the chance for something more than just revenge?

If that sounds intriguing, or maybe you want to check out some of the other stories, SNAFU: Punk'd is already available for presale and will be coming out at Halloween.

SALE Time!

2/20/2023

The semi-finalists in Hugh Howey's 2nd Annual Self Published Science Fiction Competition (#SPSFC) have got together this week to promote their books.

All books will be 99 cents or less at some point this week. Deals vary, but you can check them all out on The Escapist Book Co. at the link below and maybe find your new favorite author.

My book, The View from Infinity Beach, will be FREE this weekend from 24th to 26th Feb as part of this promotion. I'll send out some reminders when that drops.

Thanks to Drew Melbourne for putting this all together.

A bit quiet isn't it...?

7/23/2022

Hi All... I realize it's been a bit quiet here lately despite quite a lot going on in my writing life at the moment. If you want to keep in touch, I suggest checking out my Facebook page. I will try and keep this website updated, but if history is any guide, I probably won't.

RPL Johnson

Want a free ebook?

2/2/2021

You might have seen me posting about my new science fiction novel The View from Infinity Beach featuring the awesome cover art below by Andrew Dobell at Creative Edge Designs.

It's going live on Amazon in a few weeks but you can get a free copy ahead of time. Just contact me at [email protected] and tell me the best e-mail to send it to and it's yours. The only catch is that I will send you a follow up e-mail asking for a review on Amazon when it launches.

Reviews are really important, especially for indie authors. Amazon works on an algorithm that takes account of the number of reviews. No reviews means the book will never make it to the first page of search results and will never be recommended, and without exposure it will disappear among the hundreds of new books released every month. And of course new readers will consider reviews when making their buying choices so a few good ones would really help me out.

And as well as helping me out, you score a free book. The View from Infinity Beach is a science fiction adventure that follows Kade, a young man from Earth who becomes an unlikely hero in a mining colony's war of independence. It's fast-paced and has got great characters and some epic scenes of destruction but is generally PG13 so would be great for teenagers too. If you like The Expanse on Amazon Prime, you'll probably like this.

Anyway, drop me a PM if you're interested and I'll put you on the list. And don't worry, other than one or two reminders about leaving a review, you won't get spammed by e-mails and won't get added to any other campaigns.

Thanks in Advance
Rich

Update on Infinity Beach

1/30/2021

Getting pretty excited about the next book launch. I've pushed the boat out a bit on this one with custom artwork for the cover and its turned out better than I could have imagined.

I can't share it just yet as we're still working through some final tweaks, but I hope to be able to do a cover reveal pretty soon. After that there will be a chance to get a free advance copy through BookFunnel. But more on that later.

There is no part of this book that I'm not happy with and proud of. I can't wait to get it out there and hopefully into the hands of plenty of new readers.

Watch this space...

The Expanding Universe

9/17/2020

The Expanding Universe is out now featuring my story 'Cog'.

Craig Martelle of 20Booksto50K fame has brought together a fantastic collection of sci-fi short stories from some great authors. Whatever your taste, you're bound to find something in here to enjoy.

Craig is a machine when it comes to self-publishing. It was great to have front row seat to watch the book come together and learn a few tricks from an expert.

You can grab a copy in ebook or paperback HERE.

UFOs... For Real?

5/2/2020

On 29th April, the Pentagon officially released footage of three unidentified arial phenomena, or what are colloquially known as UFOs. The three short video clips had been previously leaked and already widely reported and show various fuzzy blobs as seen from cameras mounted on military aircraft and taken between 2004 and 2015.

One eye witness, Commander David Fravor, has even appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast and he certainly sounds compelling.

The FLIR video from 2004 shows an oval shape with no visible means of propulsion holding position for about a minute before accelerating out of frame to the left.

The Go Fast video from 2015 shows a smaller object (or a similar object at greater distance) traveling rapidly.

The Gimbal video shows another irregularly oval object holding position and rotating.

These videos and others can be downloaded direct from the website of the US Navy www.navair.navy.mil/foia/documents

So what are these things? Are they evidence of extraterrestrial visitation or something more mundane?

How to write a synopsis

4/25/2020

This post came about after a conversation on Reddit. A user had asked how on Earth were they supposed to boil their whole novel down to a short synopsis? It is difficult, that's true. Sometimes as an author you don't want to discard characters and lovingly-crafted sub-plots in order to describe your story to some arbitrary 300 word limit. It's also true that brevity tends to make every story sound fairly generic: A hero struggles against impossible odds to achieve some goal... So what? Stripped of all the little details that make your story unique, what makes your story stand out from a thousand others.

As usual, I'm not saying I have all the answers, but I have gone through this process before and maybe my example will help you out...