"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail.

November 4, 2015 4:40 PM

"Do you know the young lady?" I asked.
"My Mary? Impossible!"
"Witness: I should prefer not to answer.
"Let us
"I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes."
"I trust that I am not intruding." I am well acquainted with the accused.
Well, she was just a-biling.
"Was you in my Room?"
"I always give too much to ladies." I am!
'Hold your tongue!' said the Queen, turning purple.
--I asked a computer to write a novel that it thought was similar to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Created for Nanogenmo
More generated novels here.

posted by Potomac Avenue (25 comments total)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a-biling.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:48 PM on November 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

Gwendolen, upon my word
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:50 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is more interesting to read for a bit than I expected, probably because the sentences themselves aren't pure Markovbabble, but are selected from other works. I want some kind of slider where I can select a sentence and shift over to the equivalent novel rendered from the source text.
posted by brennen at 4:50 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well, she was just a-biling.

"Tom, how could you be so noble!"

Some Mark Twain got in there.
posted by Miko at 4:52 PM on November 4, 2015

Not a-bilist.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:03 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you take away the line breaks and punctuation, you could probably pass it off as James Joyce.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:04 PM on November 4, 2015

"Was you in my Room?"

Well.....WAS YOU!?!?
posted by Fizz at 5:24 PM on November 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding. Although there is little recorded of the youth of Machiavelli, the Florence of those days is so well known that the early environment of this representative citizen may be easily imagined.

I love that you can sort of see the similarity, if you squint and turn your head. I want this done to other famous openings/passages.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:29 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Nice Lewis Carroll reference in post title.
posted by larrybob at 5:32 PM on November 4, 2015

"It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding."

One of the best first lines of a novel I've read in a while.
posted by naju at 5:35 PM on November 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

(Ah, and googling tells me that line is from Moby Dick)
posted by naju at 5:38 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

-I asked a computer to write a novel that it thought was similar to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

…and it didn’t.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:52 PM on November 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm thinking niche.

"It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding."

Well, if the spell casting Caesar has such a hold on social affairs that cannot be withstood, what's the point of sending in an SGC team.
posted by clavdivs at 6:55 PM on November 4, 2015

The Markov Bible is like that, too.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:19 PM on November 4, 2015

MetaFilter: It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding.
posted by oulipian at 7:37 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Some Mark Twain got in there

More like Markov Twain, amirite?


:crickets:
posted by cyclotronboy at 7:49 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Some Mark Twain got in there

More like Markov Twain, amirite?

Cortex runs naked into the street, crying “Eureka!”
posted by Going To Maine at 7:52 PM on November 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

George's, was much addicted to opium. It was very monotonous.
posted by honestcoyote at 7:58 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Please try to enjoy."
posted by anadem at 9:14 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Seems interesting to feed it at least one play and hope it will give you novel. Is there a list of the actual texts used? He says "top 50 novels" from PG but he must mean something else.
posted by howfar at 9:35 PM on November 4, 2015

Metafilter:I had feelings of affection, and they were requited with detestation and scorn

I want to see this computer try to copy Hunter S. Thompson's style. I suspect the results would be epic.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 9:48 PM on November 4, 2015

this reads just like a Ronald Firbank novel
posted by malpractice at 10:10 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

-I asked a computer to write a novel that it thought was similar to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

…and it didn’t.

But it wrote something much, much more glorious.
posted by rokusan at 3:10 AM on November 5, 2015

Markov Bible twitter account seems to be dead, but here's a Tumblr called King James Programming.
posted by larrybob at 2:41 PM on November 5, 2015

I lost it at "Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting."

Wow!
posted by TheLittlePrince at 5:07 PM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]