We test AI’s translation of the opening lines in popular literature… surprisingly it sets the scenes up quite nicely

By creammagazine, June 23, 2025

A.I. almost did a good digi-job of this pretty stack of books, except what’s that redundant bit of board between the top and second one? It often stuffs up with some very minor but totally unnecessary detail. Funnily enough, it actually did well in positing us into the setting of these popular literary texts. Read on.

I find it difficult to imagine a life without books. Even amid a relentless digital world – one with ongoing media everywhere we turn – if I didn’t have a physical book in my hands on occasion whose pages invite me to dive into, I think I’d go mad.

Seemingly infinite genres of literature at cool new bookstore Boundless Books

In celebration of all things physical lit, the 23rd of April is actually World Book Day. Initially having started out as a charity event held annually in the United Kingdom and Ireland on the first Thursday in March, it somehow bookwormed its way into the month of April is now celebrated pretty much all around the world.

On World Book Day, every child in full-time education in the UK and Ireland is provided with a voucher to be spent on books – now that’s pretty neat. And a great idea that might take off in Australia some day.

Anyway, to celebrate this special day, Cream has turned to classic literature and roped in that modern menace – AI – to see what it has to say about the classics.

Basically, I wondered if AI would be clever enough to set scenes by ‘reading’ the opening lines only from popular novels.

I utilised the app Deep Dream Generator and fed the following books’ opening sentences to see what images would come out of it. To test it, I first keyed in the opening paragraph to HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds which reads (sorry, bit of a long one but skip if you know it):

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

The image generator picked up key nouns, verbs and descriptions, turning them into a ‘collage’ (or ‘montage’) featuring (usually literal) descriptions. It’s when metaphors have been used in writing that the scene starts to get a little trippy.

Since you can opt for a particular style model – ‘photo real’, ‘artistic’, ‘fantasy’ and so on – I thought I’d try two. ‘Artistic’ translated visually to this:

When I swapped the AI model from ‘artistic’ to ‘cyberspace’, things suddenly got a little scary (rather Orwellian, actually). Instead of a landscape picture or composite portrait, I got a regurgitation of gobbledygook that looked unnervingly alien. It’s like the artificial intelligence was trying to send me a message about the sentences I’d just keyed in. Creepy, really.

Anyway, sticking to two styles – here are 13 more famous texts fed through the Deep Dream AI image generator (in ‘photo real’ and ‘artistic’ modes).

Whether artful landscapes or picture-perfect portraits, most of the AI output was pretty much on the mark… but you be the judge.

Antonino Tati

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

3 May. Bistritz. — Left Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late.

Critique: It’s pretty spot-on, except we don’t think the original Dracula would have had his streets lit up so brightly.

Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives

The Welcome Wagon lady, sixty if she was a day but working at youth and vivacity (ginger hair, red lips, a sunshine-yellow dress), twinkled her eyes and teeth at Joanna and said, “You’re really going to like it here! It’s a nice town with nice people! You couldn’t have made a better choice!”

Critique: Close to what you’d imagine when reading the words on the page. And yes, that is a sunshine-yellow dress beneath her coat.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Chapter 1. I am by birth a Genevese, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years counsellors and syndics, and my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation.

Critique: It’s like she’s jumped straight off the page!

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Act I, Scene I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle. Francisco at his post. Enter to him Bernardo. Bernardo: Who’s there? Francisco: Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself. Bernardo: Long live the king! Francisco: Bernardo? Bernardo: He.

Critique: Yasssss, very ye olde Shakespearean.

Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking.

Critique: This looks like a reject shot from a Strokes’ photo shoot circa 1999.

THE CREAM MAGAZINE MASTHEAD

Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Critique: I see the Light, I see the Darkness, I see the despair. Especially in those cushions.

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning – fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

Critique: They’ve done a bang-up job with the Virginia Woolf nose – even better than Nicole Kidman’s prosthetics in ‘The Hours’.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince

Once when I was six years old I saw a beautiful picture in a book about the primeval forest called True Stories. It showed a boa constrictor swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.

Critique: Can’t spot the boa constrictor but it’s amazing they got some boab-looking trees in there considering these are not mentioned in the intro.

Dr Seuss’ Green Eggs And Ham

That Sam-I-am, That Sam-I-am, I do not like that Sam-I-am; Do you like Green Eggs and Ham?

Critique: Steady on, bit of a wide gutter…

Which Celebrities Have the Most Fake Followers on Social Media? Katy Perry tops the list

James Joyce’s Ulysses

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

Critique: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan best be careful shaving that moustache. Seriously, that mouth and mo’ montage is freaky.

Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach

Until he was four years old, James Henry Trotter had a happy life. He lived peacefully with his mother and father in a beautiful house beside the sea. There were always plenty of other children for him to play with, and there was the sandy beach for him to run about on, and the ocean to paddle in.

Critique: Fairly plain and simple, like the prose itself.

Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time: The Eye of the World

There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning. Born below the ever cloud-capped peaks that gave the mountains their name, the wind blew east, out across the Sand Hills, once the shore of a great ocean, before the Breaking of the World.

Critique: Very much how fantasy readers would have expected the setting to look like. All that’s missing is the two rivers, though these aren’t mentioned in the intro.

Walking Through Italy: Immersive Local Experiences Along the Way

Interview with Jeff Lindsay: author of the ‘Dexter’ novels and consultant to the series

https://creammagazine.com/?author=0

The Devil’s Lettuce: 100 years of cannabis campaigns

Once deemed the bringer of evil, marijuana has had a long journey from rejection to acceptance as a beneficial natural medicine and respected relaxation tool.

Keilah Keiser looks at a 100-plus-year history of marijuana representation, from archaic campaigns that demonised cannabis users, to today’s slick packaging and bright billboards that promote the drug as if it were craft beer.

In 2025, it’s hard not to smirk at the wildly dramatic name for marijuana, ‘The Devil’s Lettuce’, but in the twin-set wearing age where wholesome families gathered around televisions to watch Leave It To Beaver, anti-cannabis propaganda was widely accepted.

A conservative stance on marijuana use had actually been going on for decades. During the 1920s and 1930s, marijuana was already largely associated with minority groups. When massive unemployment during the Great Depression increased the public’s resentment towards Mexican and African-American communities, the government and conservative campaigners used anti-cannabis propaganda as a way to capitalise on this fear.

Fear-mongering became an effective tactic that lead to the social construction of cannabis as one of the most dangerous drugs of our time. It has been 83 years since the Reefer Madness era, but much like the aftershock of an earthquake, there’s damage that follows.

We’ve made some great strides in correcting the common misconceptions of generations past, but in order to alter the perception of marijuana and understand the wealth of benefits this plant offers, both medicinally and recreationally, we need to look at what happened throughout the course of cannabis use.

Consumers come in all forms: entrepreneurs, business executives, artists, tradespeople, grandparents, millennials … But with the traditional stigma around pot, many of these folks are largely under-represented in current cannabis culture.

There is nothing like looking at history from a visual perspective. Most museums today hold old art and artifacts that tell more about the history of a place than our history books can. These things can virtually take us back to a particular period or era by helping us understand how life was back then. Through this visual guide, we’ll highlight the evolution of cannabis campaigns, to get a better understanding of the complicated history that is marijuana, and in particular, the representation of marijuana in what up until now has been considered the centre of the free world, the U.S.

The Rise of Reefer Madness

In the 1930s, American parents were in a state of panic. The propaganda film Reefer Madness suggested evil marijuana dealers lurked in public schools, waiting to entice children into a life of crime and degeneration. The film was started by Harry Anslinger, a government employee eager to make a name for himself after alcohol prohibition ended. And much to his surprise, the campaign succeeded beyond his aims, making him the head of the Bureau of Narcotics for 30 years.

In the decades prior to the 1930s, many American households had cannabis in their medicine cabinets in tincture form. But marijuana began to decline in the eyes of “proper” society when Mexican immigrants and African-American jazz musicians openly smoked marijuana. Anslinger’s played on the racist attitudes of white America in the early 20th century and used the fear of marijuana as an “assassin of youth”. His tactics included racist accusations that linked marijuana to Mexican immigrants, many of whom had fled danger during the Mexican Revolution. His campaign also included stories of black men who enticed young white women to become sex-crazed and instantly addicted to marijuana.

Anslinger and his Reefer Madness film were wildly successful in demonising marijuana, creating stereotypes that we’re still trying to shake to this day.

There’s no better example than Hemp For Victory, an educational film produced by the USDA in 1942 that encouraged farmers to grow hemp. During World War II, imports of hemp and other materials crucial for producing marine cordage, parachutes and other military necessities became scarce and needed by the allies. In response to the demand, the United States briefly reversed its stance on hemp and encouraged farmers to grow it.

After the war, hemp was once again deemed illegal and the government tried to hide all records of the campaign until pro-cannabis activists pressured them to bring it back into the light. Today, you can find Hemp For Victory in the U.S. National Archives, under record number ‘1682’.

“Hemp for Victory” is important not only because it highlights the true benefits and concise history of hemp that has been largely censored from textbooks, but in less than a decade after the war on drugs began, the government had the remarkable ability to flip-flop on a core drug policy overnight.

Despite marijuana’s deep roots in the U.S., the 1960s and 1970s counterculture movement became the face of cannabis that many of us know today. Marijuana became associated with hippies, political activism and the rejection of social, economic and mainstream society. On television and in films, stoner stereotypes were those of jobless and careless characters such as Cheech and Chong, beach bums and beatniks who loathed work and authority. To many people, being a pothead became an insult, ranging from dirty hippies to lazy stoners.

Marijuana’s controversial image was followed by Richard Nixon’s ‘War on Drugs’ in 1971, which placed cannabis, in all its forms, as a Schedule 1 drug, alongside ecstasy, heroin, and cocaine. Furthering Nixon’s initiative, Ronald Reagan increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and proposed strict measures, such as mandatory prison sentencing, for drug crimes, and who could forget Nancy Reagan’s tired slogan ‘Just Say No’ which eventually became a political joke among pro-marijuana / anti-Reagan voting groups.

After two decades as America’s public enemy number one, marijuana was in desperate need of a new image, which is exactly what it would get in 1996 when California voters legalised marijuana for recreational use. Medical marijuana not only helped change the way we view cannabis but opened the doors to recreational legalisation.

Nowadays, we’re seeing everything from anti-stoner campaigns to sleek, modern packaging and billboards that promote small batch, local brands — as if cannabis was a craft beer.

Fast-forward decades later and the way we view cannabis, in an era of legalisation, is a shocking black and white comparison to generations past. Today there are millions of adults who choose to enjoy cannabis both recreationally, and medicinally. Some use it socially with friends, and others to unwind after a stressful day at work, or just to think more creatively. Consumers come in all forms: entrepreneurs, business executives, artists, tradespeople, grandparents, millennials… But with the traditional stigma around pot, many of these folks are largely under-represented in current cannabis culture.

Modern marijuana campaigns aim to change that, starting with busting the 1970s-era, Cheech-and-Chong stereotypes of cannabis users. With regulations around cannabis advertising, determined individually by states, brands have to be extra creative with their marketing efforts, and they’re doing so with flair. Nowadays, we’re seeing everything from anti-stoner campaigns to sleek, modern packaging and billboards that promote small batch, local brands — as if cannabis was a craft beer.

There’s no denying the rich history of cannabis in popular culture and marketing, going right back to the Reefer Madness era. By evaluating cannabis campaigns of the past, we can better understand how to reshape those of the future. The way we view marijuana is not only maturing but celebrating the diversity of its consumers.

Note: No information in this article should be used to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any disease or condition. See your doctor for further advice.