How to write a science fiction short story using Claude 2

The making of “The Matter of Exclusion,” a short sci-fi story

Do you want to know how to prompt Anthropic’s Claude 2 to write science fiction in your favorite style? Then read on…

Like many writers, I have more ideas than I have time to write them. Enter: Large Language Models (LLMs).

I have been experimenting with Chat GPT3 and 4 for some time, but it has been hard to get a specific style out of it, requiring careful prompt engineering aided by multiple prompts in sequence. Claude 2 makes this a walk in the park (with a piece of cake and a slurpee).

Claude 2 can match a specific style because it can ingest an entire book as its prompt.

I recently used this trick to write a short science fiction story (full story here). My initial prompt to Claude 2 was:

in the style of the attached file, please write a story using the following prompt:

Anti-matter need not apply: All beings made of matter are special. Laws are passed to codify this. These laws are the basis for fascist leadership that unites the entire planet under a xenophobic belief that only matter, matters.

Anti-matter must not exist. Anti-matter is the non-matter. Anywhere in the universe where non-matter is…