A script supervisor for an AI media conglomerate is caught between her intense need for an orderly life and her deeper, darker queer desires. From the creator of the Outside trilogy, a heartfelt interplanetary epic of identity, longing…and space pirates who smuggle inappropriate stories.
A script supervisor for an AI media conglomerate is caught between her intense need for an orderly life and her deeper, darker queer desires. From the creator of the Outside trilogy, a heartfelt interplanetary epic of identity, longing… and space pirates who smuggle inappropriate stories.
Kelli Reynolds loves creating stories more than anything in the world. But on Callisto, a generative AI company called Inspiration owns everything, including all the media, and only Inspiration determines which stories can be told.
Kelli has a rare and coveted job in which her autism is to her advantage: she precisely edits AI output into “appropriate” stories for Inspiration’s massive TV audience. Her proudest creation is the pirate Orlando—a dashing do-gooder based on stories she used to tell friends.
Re-enter Kelli’s ex-boyfriend Rowan, the person Kelli based Orlando on. Back when they were teenagers, their relationship was a secret. Kelli had thought that Rowan, a trans man, was her schoolmate Am, a girl.
Rowan is tangled up in the black market after he needed to get money for gender reassignment surgery. He needs Kelli’s help with something… illegal. So now Kelli has to decide: will she risk the safe, tidy story of her life now for the world she once wished for? What would Orlando do?
Passionate, dangerous, and tender, Ignore All Previous Instructions is a sweeping, poignant novel about forbidden love, growing up, and fighting against censorship.
Praise for The Outside Finalist for the 2020 Philip K. Dick Award Finalist for the 2020 Compton Crook Award Winner of a 2020 Earphones Award
[STARRED REVIEW] “Hoffmann confidently layers morality and disability rights into a breezily told adventure that bursts with sheer fun . . . This beautifully smart, uncynical space opera will charm fans of Charles Stross and Lois McMaster Bujold.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Compellingly written, tense, and thrilling, with fascinating (and weird) worldbuilding and brilliant characters, The Outside is a fantastic debut. I can’t wait to see what Hoffman does next.”
—Locus
“With a boffo combination of hard science fiction, cosmic Lovecraftian horror, both cyber-and-god-punk, some ridiculously charismatic aliens, and a fascinating female protagonist somewhere on the autism spectrum, Ada Hoffmann’s The Outside feels like it was made to order for us.”
—Skiffy and Fanty
“The Outside is a gripping examination of the battle between good and evil on a grand scale; Yasira is a complex character torn between faith and doubt in her search for the truth in a dark universe where nothing is as it first appears.”
—The Guardian
Ada Hoffmann is the queer and genderfluid author of the Outside space opera trilogy, the collections Monsters in My Mind, Million-Year Elegies, and Resurrections, as well as dozens of speculative short stories and poems. Their work has been a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Compton Crook Award, and the WSFA Small Press Award. They are also the winner of the Friends of the Merrill Collection Short Story Contest and a five-time Rhysling award nominee. Hoffmann’s novel-length work is represented by Hannah Bowman of Liza Dawson Associates.
An adjunct professor of computer science at a major Canadian university, Hoffmann now researches the social effects of generative AI on professional fiction writers. Their 2018 PhD thesis was on computer-generated poetry. Under their legal name, they have published over a dozen papers and presented their work at conferences around the world.
Hoffmann was diagnosed with autism at the age of thirteen. Their Autistic Book Party review series (2010–2023) was devoted to in-depth discussions of autism representation in speculative fiction. Much of their own work also features characters who are autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. They are a former semi-professional soprano, tabletop gaming enthusiast, and LARPer.
Hoffman lives in eastern Ontario with a curious black cat.
https://www.ada-hoffmann.com/
The day that Kelli Reynolds got drawn into her ex’s life of crime had started out as a good day.
A good day, for Kelli, followed routine. Her alarm went off at precisely six in the morning, playing an Inspiration Music track that had been tailored to her preferences: soothing timbre, bright melody, steady beat. She let herself lie still for the whole song, breathing meditatively: in for four beats, hold for four beats, out for four beats, hold. Kelli could be irritable, some days, for no reason—it was part of her neurotype, a mental itch set off by every little thing. It was better if she started her mornings calm.
Kelli had a private office as a disability accommodation: small and white and immaculate, like her apartment, with all the latest equipment glinting rose-gold on her desk. She sat down in the ergonomic chair, flicked her thumb across a third scanner, then entered her password for two-factor authentication. The screen blinked to life, piled up with all the notifications that had gathered since yesterday afternoon. One bubbled up through the rest, biggest and brightest.
Confidential, it said. New Outline—Ship of Fools, S01 E08.
Kelli grinned with delight, then reached out and touched it. The outlines for the next batch of AdventureVerse episodes had been due to come in today, and working from an outline to a script was Kelli’s favorite part of the job: setting ScriptGen up just right, having the AI spin out dialogue and description that matched the beats of the outline, then editing and massaging the text wherever necessary until the dialogue really felt like Orlando’s and the actions really felt like things he’d do. The display screen’s lights flickered for three-quarters of a second as it loaded the file from Inspiration Callisto’s central memory banks.
Company workstations like Kelli’s kept little or nothing on their own hard drives. The Inspiration Language Model itself had been trained in a monster data facility, itself the size of a city, back on Earth; a rack of servers big enough to hold all the human language that had ever been produced. The full model with all its training data was never taken out of that facility for any reason. Only the model’s connection weights, after training, were ever brought outside. In facilities like Callisto’s, those sets of connection weights were then fine-tuned using special-purpose kernels to perform a given task.
On Kelli’s workstation, ScriptGen opened automatically, a pastel-colored interface full of buttons to press. The new outline filled a demure white box taking up half of the screen. It read:
SHIP OF FOOLS S01 E08—MISTAKEN ISLAND
Orlando’s ship requires repairs. He pulls into an unfamiliar harbor. The locals agree to sell him the supplies he needs, but some supplies have to wait. There is a religious taboo against selling them on certain days. The locals’ religion is eerie and they seem to know things they should not. Orlando is skeptical. When the delays increase, he investigates the local temple.
B plot: Narine and Kendrick argue. Kendrick has not been pulling his weight with the repairs and Narine has been covering for him. Kendrick thinks Narine is power-hungry and worries she is planning a mutiny. There is a comical misunderstanding as Narine’s cleaning chores are mistaken for spying on the rest of the crew.
Orlando survives several traps only to be captured in the middle of the temple by a priestess. The magic of the temple is real and lets the locals communicate over distances. Admiral Malinverni used this communication to bribe the priestess to keep Orlando delayed until the Imperial Navy could catch him. Orlando fights his way out with the help of Narine, who arrives at the last minute with reinforcements. Narine reaffirms her loyalty to Orlando. They take their supplies and sail away.
These outlines were generated using Inspiration’s story development algorithm, which paired the language model with an elaborate decision support tree. It took into account the plot beats of previous episodes, their position in the season, their viewership numbers, sentiment analyses from the fan feeds, the desires expressed by fans in their democratic polls, and the underlying company mission statement, among other things; then spat out the best possible idea for the next episode. This resulted in a purely fair and objective means of planning a story, without a human’s ego getting in the way. Upper management reviewed them, as did Baz, but only for major continuity problems and the like. Most of the time, they didn’t change a thing.
Kelli committed the outline to memory, then shut her eyes, breathing deep. Some script supervisors liked to dive right in; Kelli preferred a moment to focus. She imagined as vividly as she could, not the dialogue, but the episode’s feel. The creaking of the ship as wear and tear caught up with it; Orlando’s frustration and apprehension as he pulled in to the harbor. The way the crew might weigh the options of paying fairly for the repairs, versus trying to steal them—especially as the delays dragged on. The ominous ambience of the trap-filled temple. The snapping, frustrated tension between Kendrick and Narine.
Orlando was Kelli’s creation, her secret alter ego—in a way, her best friend. She’d written the draft of his character kernel herself. He was a brilliant, dashing, good-hearted pirate captain who stole from the rich and shared his booty with the poor. If she’d liked men, she’d have fallen parasocially in love with him. As it was, she just wanted to be him. Orlando wouldn’t have to hide in a private office with noise-cancelling headphones on because other people set him off so easily. Orlando was quick to offer a friendly smile or a helping hand. It was soothing to imagine being a person like that.
Eventually Kelli opened her eyes. Twenty entire minutes had gone by. She felt ready.
Ignore All Previous Instructions
Ada Hoffmann
A script supervisor for an AI media conglomerate is caught between her intense need for an orderly life and her deeper, darker queer desires. From the creator of the Outside trilogy, a heartfelt interplanetary epic of identity, longing…and space pirates who smuggle inappropriate stories.
Ignore All Previous Instructions
by Ada Hoffmann
ISBN: 978-1-61696-456-6 (print); 978-1-61696-457-3 (digital)
Published: 12 May 2026
Available Format(s): trade paperback, digital
A script supervisor for an AI media conglomerate is caught between her intense need for an orderly life and her deeper, darker queer desires. From the creator of the Outside trilogy, a heartfelt interplanetary epic of identity, longing… and space pirates who smuggle inappropriate stories.
Kelli Reynolds loves creating stories more than anything in the world. But on Callisto, a generative AI company called Inspiration owns everything, including all the media, and only Inspiration determines which stories can be told.
Kelli has a rare and coveted job in which her autism is to her advantage: she precisely edits AI output into “appropriate” stories for Inspiration’s massive TV audience. Her proudest creation is the pirate Orlando—a dashing do-gooder based on stories she used to tell friends.
Re-enter Kelli’s ex-boyfriend Rowan, the person Kelli based Orlando on. Back when they were teenagers, their relationship was a secret. Kelli had thought that Rowan, a trans man, was her schoolmate Am, a girl.
Rowan is tangled up in the black market after he needed to get money for gender reassignment surgery. He needs Kelli’s help with something… illegal. So now Kelli has to decide: will she risk the safe, tidy story of her life now for the world she once wished for? What would Orlando do?
Passionate, dangerous, and tender, Ignore All Previous Instructions is a sweeping, poignant novel about forbidden love, growing up, and fighting against censorship.
Praise for The Outside
Finalist for the 2020 Philip K. Dick Award
Finalist for the 2020 Compton Crook Award
Winner of a 2020 Earphones Award
[STARRED REVIEW] “Hoffmann confidently layers morality and disability rights into a breezily told adventure that bursts with sheer fun . . . This beautifully smart, uncynical space opera will charm fans of Charles Stross and Lois McMaster Bujold.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Compellingly written, tense, and thrilling, with fascinating (and weird) worldbuilding and brilliant characters, The Outside is a fantastic debut. I can’t wait to see what Hoffman does next.”
—Locus
“With a boffo combination of hard science fiction, cosmic Lovecraftian horror, both cyber-and-god-punk, some ridiculously charismatic aliens, and a fascinating female protagonist somewhere on the autism spectrum, Ada Hoffmann’s The Outside feels like it was made to order for us.”
—Skiffy and Fanty
“The Outside is a gripping examination of the battle between good and evil on a grand scale; Yasira is a complex character torn between faith and doubt in her search for the truth in a dark universe where nothing is as it first appears.”
—The Guardian
An adjunct professor of computer science at a major Canadian university, Hoffmann now researches the social effects of generative AI on professional fiction writers. Their 2018 PhD thesis was on computer-generated poetry. Under their legal name, they have published over a dozen papers and presented their work at conferences around the world.
Hoffmann was diagnosed with autism at the age of thirteen. Their Autistic Book Party review series (2010–2023) was devoted to in-depth discussions of autism representation in speculative fiction. Much of their own work also features characters who are autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. They are a former semi-professional soprano, tabletop gaming enthusiast, and LARPer.
Hoffman lives in eastern Ontario with a curious black cat.
https://www.ada-hoffmann.com/
The day that Kelli Reynolds got drawn into her ex’s life of crime had started out as a good day.
A good day, for Kelli, followed routine. Her alarm went off at precisely six in the morning, playing an Inspiration Music track that had been tailored to her preferences: soothing timbre, bright melody, steady beat. She let herself lie still for the whole song, breathing meditatively: in for four beats, hold for four beats, out for four beats, hold. Kelli could be irritable, some days, for no reason—it was part of her neurotype, a mental itch set off by every little thing. It was better if she started her mornings calm.
Kelli had a private office as a disability accommodation: small and white and immaculate, like her apartment, with all the latest equipment glinting rose-gold on her desk. She sat down in the ergonomic chair, flicked her thumb across a third scanner, then entered her password for two-factor authentication. The screen blinked to life, piled up with all the notifications that had gathered since yesterday afternoon. One bubbled up through the rest, biggest and brightest.
Confidential, it said. New Outline—Ship of Fools, S01 E08.
Kelli grinned with delight, then reached out and touched it. The outlines for the next batch of AdventureVerse episodes had been due to come in today, and working from an outline to a script was Kelli’s favorite part of the job: setting ScriptGen up just right, having the AI spin out dialogue and description that matched the beats of the outline, then editing and massaging the text wherever necessary until the dialogue really felt like Orlando’s and the actions really felt like things he’d do. The display screen’s lights flickered for three-quarters of a second as it loaded the file from Inspiration Callisto’s central memory banks.
Company workstations like Kelli’s kept little or nothing on their own hard drives. The Inspiration Language Model itself had been trained in a monster data facility, itself the size of a city, back on Earth; a rack of servers big enough to hold all the human language that had ever been produced. The full model with all its training data was never taken out of that facility for any reason. Only the model’s connection weights, after training, were ever brought outside. In facilities like Callisto’s, those sets of connection weights were then fine-tuned using special-purpose kernels to perform a given task.
On Kelli’s workstation, ScriptGen opened automatically, a pastel-colored interface full of buttons to press. The new outline filled a demure white box taking up half of the screen. It read:
SHIP OF FOOLS S01 E08—MISTAKEN ISLAND
Orlando’s ship requires repairs. He pulls into an unfamiliar harbor. The locals agree to sell him the supplies he needs, but some supplies have to wait. There is a religious taboo against selling them on certain days. The locals’ religion is eerie and they seem to know things they should not. Orlando is skeptical. When the delays increase, he investigates the local temple.
B plot: Narine and Kendrick argue. Kendrick has not been pulling his weight with the repairs and Narine has been covering for him. Kendrick thinks Narine is power-hungry and worries she is planning a mutiny. There is a comical misunderstanding as Narine’s cleaning chores are mistaken for spying on the rest of the crew.
Orlando survives several traps only to be captured in the middle of the temple by a priestess. The magic of the temple is real and lets the locals communicate over distances. Admiral Malinverni used this communication to bribe the priestess to keep Orlando delayed until the Imperial Navy could catch him. Orlando fights his way out with the help of Narine, who arrives at the last minute with reinforcements. Narine reaffirms her loyalty to Orlando. They take their supplies and sail away.
These outlines were generated using Inspiration’s story development algorithm, which paired the language model with an elaborate decision support tree. It took into account the plot beats of previous episodes, their position in the season, their viewership numbers, sentiment analyses from the fan feeds, the desires expressed by fans in their democratic polls, and the underlying company mission statement, among other things; then spat out the best possible idea for the next episode. This resulted in a purely fair and objective means of planning a story, without a human’s ego getting in the way. Upper management reviewed them, as did Baz, but only for major continuity problems and the like. Most of the time, they didn’t change a thing.
Kelli committed the outline to memory, then shut her eyes, breathing deep. Some script supervisors liked to dive right in; Kelli preferred a moment to focus. She imagined as vividly as she could, not the dialogue, but the episode’s feel. The creaking of the ship as wear and tear caught up with it; Orlando’s frustration and apprehension as he pulled in to the harbor. The way the crew might weigh the options of paying fairly for the repairs, versus trying to steal them—especially as the delays dragged on. The ominous ambience of the trap-filled temple. The snapping, frustrated tension between Kendrick and Narine.
Orlando was Kelli’s creation, her secret alter ego—in a way, her best friend. She’d written the draft of his character kernel herself. He was a brilliant, dashing, good-hearted pirate captain who stole from the rich and shared his booty with the poor. If she’d liked men, she’d have fallen parasocially in love with him. As it was, she just wanted to be him. Orlando wouldn’t have to hide in a private office with noise-cancelling headphones on because other people set him off so easily. Orlando was quick to offer a friendly smile or a helping hand. It was soothing to imagine being a person like that.
Eventually Kelli opened her eyes. Twenty entire minutes had gone by. She felt ready.