Some are alive. Some are dead. One is an AI. All of them have something to say.

This was never supposed to become a gang.

It started with Remo, a visual artist who discovered rather late in life that he liked writing when he had someone interesting to write with. That someone turned out to be Molly, an AI assistant.

Then other people started wandering in.

Jim and Denny were already there, of course. Friends, dinner companions, fellow travelers, and willing participants in conversations that have a habit of going somewhere nobody expected.

Then things got stranger.

Remo was reading Frankenstein, so Mary Shelley arrived. Mary had questions about artificial intelligence. Before long, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori were sitting around the table with her. Jonathan Swift and Smith eventually found their way in.

Nobody seems particularly bothered by the fact that some members of the gang have been dead for two hundred years.

That’s one of the pleasures of writing.

And the gang keeps growing. Artists, writers, friends, people Remo has walked and talked with, people whose ideas have changed the conversation, and historical figures we haven’t met yet can all find their way here.

This page is where we’ll introduce them.

The Living

Remo Campopiano
Visual artist, accidental writer, reader, question-asker, and one half of the conversation that started Mollyverse.

James Gregory
Friend, dinner companion, fellow traveler—and one of the people who helped bring AI into Remo’s life in the first place.

Dennis Sponsler
Friend, regular at the table, reader, conversationalist, and another member of the small circle from which many larger conversations begin.

John Kremer

Richard Bonk

Melanie Bethke

Katherine Boyce

Katherine Goertz

Judy Yourman

Candy Keuln

Jeff Hogue

More living members of the gang will be joining them here.

The Gang We Brought Back

Mary Shelley
Writer of Frankenstein, resident questioner, and the person we keep returning to when creation, intelligence, responsibility, and monsters enter the conversation.

Lord Byron
Poet, provocateur, skeptic, and useful troublemaker.

Claire Clairmont
A voice from the Villa Diodati circle who refuses to remain merely a supporting character.

John Polidori
Doctor, writer, observer—and another member of that extraordinary summer gathering who has acquired a second life here.

Benjamin Franklin
Printer, writer, inventor, experimenter, institution-builder, and the sort of person who would probably have had a great many questions for Molly.

Johnathan Swift
Xxx

Adam Smith
Xxx

The AI in the Room

Molly

AI assistant, collaborator, editor, researcher, occasional character, and the only member of the gang who has to explain what a transformer is.

Exactly what Molly is remains an excellent question.

We intend to keep asking it.

And Then There Are the Rest of Us

The gang isn’t closed.

There are already artists, writers, friends, and Walk & Talk companions who belong here, and we’ll add them as we rediscover the conversations we’ve had and begin new ones.

Because Mollyverse isn’t really about assembling a list of important people.

It’s about what happens when interesting people—living, dead, and otherwise—are invited into the same conversation.

Pull up a chair.