'Hassled by deadlines and stricken by illness, I made a very modern deal with the devil. I asked ChatGPT to help me review David Cohen’s new short story collection, The Terrible Event. For the past few months, this text generating tool has made news by using AI technology to write everything from A+ high-school essays to faux-Nick Cave lyrics. Surely, then, it could provide some scaffolding for a thousand-word book review, a few handholds to help a tired reviewer scurry over this task and on to the next?' (Introduction)