Lovecraftian-overtones. Ada Hoffman's debut novel The Outside seemingly has it all! We asked her about writing autistic characters and why the development of AI's is causing so much fear in society today. Why did you want to include an autistic character in your novel and how did you approach accurately and sensitively tackling this? For THE OUTSIDE, I was hesitant to make Yasira autistic, given how dark of some of the story's elements are, but once I had a first draft I knew that autism was integral to the story I was telling. It was a story that came from a surprisingly personal place and it revolved around the idea of perceiving reality differently than others, of being overwhelmed by one's perceptions, and of whose perceptions are considered real or true and why.