‘A resistance to AI’: The author inviting readers to contribute to a mass memoir

<p>Richard Beard says he’s got ‘better at telling the truth’ by arranging his life story on a grid – and invites others to do the same</p><p>Richard Beard, award-winning author of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/06/the-day-that-went-missing-by-richard-beard-facing-up-to-a-familys-tragedy">The Day That Went Missing</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/aug/08/public-schoolboys-boris-johnson-sad-little-boys-richard-beard">Sad Little Men</a>, thought he was writing his next book, a whole life memoir. In the event, he has written his way off the page and into an entirely new publishing model. The Universal Turing Machine is the title both of Beard’s memoir and the <a href="https://universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/">mass memoir project</a> he hopes others will help him to build.</p><p>Organised as a chessboard, each of the 64 squares narrates one year of Beard’s life, in 1,000 words per year. (He’s 58, so the last five years are fictionalised.) The reader moves around the “board” as if they were a knight, picking the next year to read from options limited by the knight’s L-shaped ambulation.</p><p>Contributions to The Universal Turing Machine can be made at <a href="https://universalturingmachine.co.uk/contact-contribute/">universalturingmachine.co.uk</a></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/22/richard-beard-universal-turing-machine">Continue reading...</a>