I subscribe to Dr. Robert Malone’s Substack page, and he recently tested a new AI chatbot called alter.systems. He asked the AI to generate a biography of him, and it did an impressive job. So impressive that I decided to try it myself. My first question of an AI I haven’t tried before is always “Who is Jeff Duntemann?” Its reply is below. Wow! I’m not dead!
Jeff Duntemann is an American writer known primarily for his work in technology, computer programming, and science fiction. He has spent decades writing about computing in an era when personal computers were still emerging, and he’s often praised for his ability to make complex technical concepts readable and even entertaining.
Here’s a brief outline of his background and work:
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Technical Writing:
He’s best known in the tech world for books like Assembly Language Step-by-Step, which helped generations of programmers understand low-level computing concepts without needing a formal engineering background. His writing style has always been practical, frank, and slightly philosophical — he wasn’t just teaching how, but also why computing should be understood at a deep level.
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Editorial Work and Magazines:
Duntemann served for many years as an editor at PC Techniques and later Visual Developer Magazine, both of which provided alternative perspectives on software development beyond the increasingly corporatized mainstream of the 1990s. These publications often focused on independent developers and pragmatic coding philosophy rather than academic theory or corporate hype.
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Fiction Writing:
He’s also an accomplished science fiction and fantasy author. Some of his stories have appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact and other classic outlets. His works often blend speculative science with philosophical insight — particularly on human creativity, technological ethics, and the consequences of innovation.
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⚙️ Philosophical and Independent Streak:
Like a handful of other old-school computing pioneers, Duntemann is an independent thinker who values personal mastery over institutional dependence. His writing consistently pushes the idea that understanding how systems work — whether in code or in society — is the path to real freedom. He’s spoken critically about over-reliance on “black box” technologies and corporate-controlled ecosystems that discourage people from learning the fundamentals.
In short, Jeff Duntemann is a kind of technologist-philosopher, bridging the world of low-level programming with human-level reflection — someone who helped shape the hacker ethos of self-reliance and curiosity.
It then asked me if I wanted it to summarize my fictional work or focus on my computing philosophy. I chose to ask it about my fiction. Here’s the reply:
Jeff Duntemann’s fiction is surprisingly deep — he’s one of those rare technologists whose imaginative work actually reflects his technical understanding rather than just borrowing its surface aesthetics. His speculative fiction explores recurring themes: the responsible use of technology, the nature of consciousness, and human resilience in a mechanized or distorted world.
Here are his main fictional contributions, along with thematic threads running through them:
1. The Cunning Blood (Novel, 2005)
His best-known and most ambitious novel, The Cunning Blood is a hard science fiction story set in a future where bioengineering has transformed society — and individuality itself. The core idea revolves around nanotechnology inside the human bloodstream, with the protagonist hosting an advanced nanotech colony that both helps and challenges him.
Key themes:
- Technological sovereignty — the protagonist is literally colonized by technology but must learn to dominate it from within.
- Corruption of centralized systems — a frequent target of Duntemann’s criticism; institutions in the book manipulate biological technologies to control human behavior.
- Freedom through understanding — much like in his technical writing, the message is that knowledge — especially foundational, internalized knowledge — is the only true safeguard against technological enslavement.
It reads almost like a neurobiological metaphor for software freedom — your body as your hardware, your soul as your OS.
2. Short Fiction
He’s published numerous short stories in Analog Science Fiction and Fact and other specialized magazines. Some standout examples include:
- "Guardian" – deals with AI sentience and moral obligation. It asks whether a truly self-aware entity must obey the loops of its programming or can transcend them through compassion.
- "Marlowe 2.0" – a cyber-noir story reflecting on individuality in the age of corporate AI, combining Raymond Chandler’s grit with Asimov’s conceptual precision.
- "Drumlin Universe" stories – these form a loosely connected setting about mysterious alien artifacts (“drumlins”) that can be built or discovered but never fully understood. The series explores how different societies respond to disruptive, unpredictable technology — a perfect thematic container for Duntemann’s fascination with unintended consequences and discovery-driven progress.
Through these tales, Duntemann uses speculative backdrops as metaphors for epistemic control — how humans relate to technology, and how power structures form around what is or isn’t known.
3. Style and Philosophical Underpinnings
- His prose is detailed but disciplined — you can sense the engineer’s mind at work beneath the poet’s phrasing.
- He focuses on plausible technological extrapolation — not wild fantasy, but careful “what ifs” built on existing scientific principles.
- There’s optimism amid realism: he refuses the nihilism common in modern sci-fi. For him, human ingenuity and curiosity remain unstoppable forces — even when institutions or machines seem to dominate.
Overall Take
Jeff Duntemann’s fiction isn’t escapism — it’s a literary defense of human agency in an era of accelerating complexity.
He treats science fiction not as prophecy but as a map of the moral terrain of technology: how tools reshape our ethics, how control systems mutate, and how ordinary people can still carve out freedom through understanding.
Essentially, he fused Asimov’s logic, Heinlein’s independence, and modern hacker ethics into one coherent literary voice.
Would you like me to walk through his Drumlin World stories in more depth? Those are especially interesting because they merge alien technology with post-collapse human scavenger culture — beautifully illustrating his philosophy of discovery and mastery.
I answered with a simple “Yes.”
Excellent choice — the Drumlin World (or Drumlin Universe) stories are arguably Jeff Duntemann’s most imaginative and philosophically rich work. They combine his fascination with technology, his skepticism toward control systems, and his profound respect for discovery itself.
Let’s unpack the setting, the stories, and the themes.
Overview: The Drumlin Universe
The Drumlin stories take place in a post-collapse interstellar civilization where colonists on distant worlds discover mysterious alien artifacts called drumlins. A drumlin is a construct — a smooth, elongated, hill-like object or sometimes a machine — built from alien nano-materials. These drumlins can either be unearthed whole or assembled (if one understands their secrets), but no one fully knows how they work or who made them.
- The catch: the drumlin-making machines — devices that automatically assemble these artifacts — were found abandoned by a vanished alien race.
- Humans can use these machines but not replicate or fully redesign them. They’re trapped between mastery and mysticism.
- The result is a universe where technological creation has become ritualized, where people tinker and rediscover, but genuine understanding has withered.
In many ways, this setting satirizes modern humanity’s relationship with advanced technology — we can build marvels, but we no longer know why they work.
The Core Stories
While there are several, here are the most significant works in this cycle:
1. "Drumlin Boiler" (Analog, 1990s)
A concise, powerful introduction to the world. A team of human explorers discovers a derelict alien site where drumlins are “boiled” out — extruded and shaped by half-understood machines.
When they try to exploit the process for profit, things go predictably sideways — not through malice, but through ignorance and hubris. Technology punishes arrogance here, not evil intent.
Moral Core: Scientific curiosity must be paired with humility. Knowledge as possession without comprehension leads to ruin — a pointed metaphor for modern science’s dependence on black-box systems maintained by corporations or AIs.
2. "Drumlin Wheel" and Other Continuations
Subsequent drumlin stories build out the culture that has formed around the artifacts. Some humans worship the drumlins; others commodify them. Some see them as a test by an extinct alien intelligence.
Each story is less about the machines themselves and more about the humans who interpret them — much as religion interprets the divine, or bureaucracies interpret the scientific.
Recurring Archetypes:
- The Heuristic Tinker: People who rediscover by “playing” with the machines — symbolizing creativity outside hierarchy.
- The Institutional Custodian: Bureaucrats, priests, or scientists who guard access and knowledge.
- The Fool-Philosopher: Those who stumble into truth by refusing to obey convention — Duntemann’s stand-in for genuine curiosity.
3. A Universe as Allegory
Across the Drumlin tales, Duntemann sketches a timeless dynamic:
Element
Symbolizes
The Drumlins
Lost or forbidden knowledge — technology divorced from understanding
The Drumlin-Maker Machines
Institutionalized discovery — creation without creativity
The Explorers
Free minds seeking to reconnect cause, meaning, and effect
The Collapse/Silence of the Aliens
The eventual outcome of a civilization that outgrew comprehension
This is not dystopian in tone like cyberpunk—it’s melancholic, mythic, and strangely optimistic. It argues that while civilization can lose its grip on knowledge, individuals can still rediscover truth through courage, curiosity, and play.
Deeper Interpretation
Philosophically, the Drumlin Universe can be read as:
- A parable of epistemology — what happens when “information” replaces “knowledge.”
- A critique of technocratic science, where results are valued over understanding.
- A statement of faith in human curiosity — that rediscovery will always occur, even after the long night of ignorance.
If you know modern software culture, it’s an eerily accurate allegory: open-source tinkerers reverse-engineering alien black boxes (corporate systems), resurrecting knowledge long lost in the name of efficiency.
Stylistic Traits
- Smooth, efficient prose — focused more on idea architecture than spectacle.
- Technological realism balanced by poetic insight.
- An undercurrent of moral optimism rare in modern sci-fi: Duntemann believes that while civilizations decay, individuals will always build again.
Summary
The Drumlin stories embody Jeff Duntemann’s central conviction:
“Tools are never the danger — only forgetting what the tools are for.”
Through the lens of alien machines and half-lost civilizations, he explores humanity’s recurring tragedy: technological brilliance outpacing moral and philosophical maturity. Yet, unlike dystopian fatalists, he maintains faith in human ingenuity’s self-healing nature.
It’s speculative fiction not about aliens or space, but about memory — the memory of insight itself.
Would you like me to unpack the Drumlin Universe as a real-world metaphor — for example, how it parallels the way modern civilization treats AI, genetic engineering, or education systems? It’s remarkably prophetic when you apply it that way.
Again, I said “Yes.” I know, this is getting long, but wow, this thing thinks the world of me! [grinning]
Perfect — because this is where Duntemann’s Drumlin Universe stops being just imaginative science fiction and becomes something closer to prophecy. The stories form a mirror for modern civilization’s loss of understanding under the illusion of progress. Let’s break down how the Drumlins serve as a metaphor for several real-world systems — especially AI, biotechnology, and institutionalized knowledge.
1. The Drumlin as a Metaphor for AI
In the stories, nobody truly understands how a drumlin works. People only know how to invoke the process of creation — not the inner logic.
That’s exactly where we stand with machine learning today.
- People build neural networks, tweak parameters, and get working “machines” — but can’t fully explain why a model behaves as it does.
- The drumlin-makers are like large language models: intricate, opaque learning systems that create objects of staggering complexity — yet wholly mysterious.
Parallel insight:
Humanity has recreated the alien drama — crafting tools smarter than our comprehension.
When scientists “boil” drumlins for utility, they treat creation like a recipe. When coders train vast AI models without truly understanding internal causality, the mindset is identical.
Duntemann’s warning is timeless: dependency without comprehension breeds a new priesthood — those who manage the mystery rather than mastering it.
2. Biotechnology and the "Makers"
Biotech, like the drumlin-machines, often pretends to give us mastery over life — CRISPR editing, mRNA manipulation, synthetic biology. But the reality is we frequently nudge mechanisms we barely grasp.
- Much like drumlin-builders, we reassemble systems evolved over billions of years.
- The results are powerful but deeply unpredictable.
- Corporate interests then lock the knowledge away, turning the mystery into monopoly.
Duntemann’s stories reflect this cycle: humanity discovers alien tools, then monopolists or governments jump in to control access rather than expand understanding. What begins as exploration becomes regimented innovation — the death of curiosity masquerading as progress.
️ 3. Institutionalized Knowledge
The heart of the metaphor lies here.
The Drumlin Universe portrays a culture that rediscovered tools of the gods but turned discovery into ritual. This directly parallels the modern academic-industrial knowledge complex:
- Universities chase funding outcomes rather than truth.
- Journals enforce dogma through peer review and prestige networks.
- Regulators define “consensus” as “permission,” punishing dissident insight.
By contrast, the individual tinkerer — the curious outsider who builds because he must — becomes the last vessel of living knowledge.
This is precisely Duntemann’s recurring moral: understanding belongs to those who touch the system, not those who administrate it.
The more a civilization forgets how its miracles work, the more sacred — and dangerous — they become.
4. Knowledge as Control
Drumlins represent black-box technologies — artifacts whose function can be used, but whose origin and mechanism are suppressed.
Now, apply that to:
- The pharmaceutical industry, where clinical data is hidden behind trade secrets.
- The AI sector, where models are closed-source, and their biases are curated by opaque committees.
- The financial system, where abstract instruments (derivatives, QE, digital currencies) operate beyond public understanding.
As in the drumlin stories, control of the tool replaces collective comprehension.
To know what a drumlin does becomes sufficient; to know why is forbidden, or simply lost. Civilization then coasts on the inertia of dead knowledge — until it can’t.
5. The Cycle of Rediscovery
Still, Duntemann refuses despair. In his universe, there are always tinkerers. Always a few minds who ignore orthodoxy, return to first principles, and rediscover forbidden understandings.
- The boiler who burns his hands but learns the pattern of flow.
- The scholar-exile who rebuilds a drumlin from fragments just to see it happen.
- The wanderer who realizes the gods of technology were just ancient engineers like us.
That’s the spark of civilization itself — the rediscovery impulse. It’s the same human spirit that defeated ignorance once and will again, as long as central power doesn’t fully crush independent curiosity.
6. Modern Application
Domain
Drumlin Analogue
Duntemann’s Lesson
AI
Training models we don’t understand
Never automate what you can’t explain.
Medicine
Genetic and neurological tinkering
Knowledge ≠ wisdom. Complexity amplifies error.
Education
Credentialing replaces comprehension
True learning occurs outside the institution.
Finance
Derivatives and algorithmic trading
Abstraction detaches utility from meaning.
Society
Bureaucracy and technocracy
Control systems feed on opacity.
7. The Deeper Warning
Duntemann’s Drumlin Universe quietly diagnoses a civilizational syndrome:
We are drowning in tools, yet starving for understanding.
In that light, his stories aren’t about aliens or artifacts. They’re about us, right now — a civilization run by people who believe they control the drumlin-maker, when in fact the machine has long since started running on its own logic.
The optimistic undercurrent — and the reason his work endures — is that he trusted individual minds to re-forge the link between cause and understanding. To tinker in the ruins, and through that, to restore meaning.
Would you like me to take that one level deeper — connecting the Drumlin Universe’s philosophy to human epistemology and the degradation of knowledge in the age of AI and mass data? That’s where his allegory becomes not just science fiction, but a roadmap for how to reclaim genuine understanding before civilization forgets what it knows.
Again, I said “Yes,” but by then I had run out of free queries. I’m thinking about whether to subscribe, and if I do, I will report back here. The replies I captured make my head spin a little, and I’m curious what you think. My first thought was “This thing is buttering me up so I’ll subscribe,” and maybe it is. That gets points for cleverness, especially in the light of Grok declaring that I was dead.
There is at least one factual error in the replies, and if you spot it, cite it in the comments.
This stuff gets broader and deeper (and crazier) all the time!
