Filed under: Charlie Stross, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, New Horizons, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, Singularity, Society, Steampunk, Survival, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Charlie Stross, jim downey, literature, predictions, reviews, Science Fiction, space, technology, writing
I’ve mentioned Charlie Stross several times here. As I’ve said previously: smart guy, good writer. I disagree with his belief in mundane science fiction, because I think that it is too limited in imagination. Which leads almost inevitably to this formulation on his blog today (and yes, you should go read the whole thing):
We people of the SF-reading ghetto have stumbled blinking into the future, and our dirty little secret is that we don’t much like it. And so we retreat into the comfort zones of brass goggles and zeppelins (hey, weren’t airships big in the 1910s-1930s? Why, then, are they such a powerful signifier for Victorian-era alternate fictions?), of sexy vampire-run nightclubs and starship-riding knights-errant. Opening the pages of a modern near-future SF novel now invites a neck-chillingly cold draft of wind from the world we’re trying to escape, rather than a warm narcotic vision of a better place and time.
And so I conclude: we will not inspire anyone with grand visions of a viable future through the medium of escapism. If we want to write inspirational literature with grand visions we need to dive into to the literary mainstream (which is finally rediscovering fabulism) and, adding a light admixture of Enlightenment ideology along the way, start writing the equivalent of those earnest and plausible hyper-realistic tales of Progress through cotton-planting on the shores of the Aral sea.
But do you really want us to do that? I don’t think so. In fact, the traditional response of traditional-minded SF readers to the rigorous exercise of extrapolative vision tends to be denial, disorientation, and distaste. So let me pose for you a different question, which has been exercising me for some time: If SF’s core message (to the extent that it ever had one) is obsolete, what do we do next?
Well, I dunno about Charlie, but I plan on writing a couple of prequels to Communion of Dreams, which I understand have touched something of a nerve in people precisely *because* it is hopeful in the face of a harsh reality.
Jim Downey
(PS: sometime today we should break through the level of 500 total sales/loans of CoD so far this month. Which is almost twice the previous month’s tally. Thanks for affirming my vision, folks!)
Filed under: Amazon, Failure, Gardening, Health, Marketing, Music, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Survival, Violence | Tags: Amazon, David Bowie, Deathworld, direct publishing, gardening, Habaneros, Harry Harrison, health, jim downey, Kindle, literature, music, NPR, Pyrrus, Science Fiction, Thomas Jefferson, tomatoes
This ain’t Pyrrus.
* * * * * * *
About two weeks ago I mentioned this:
Oh, I know the reality of modern publishing well enough to realize that I would still have to do a lot of work to promote the book(s). But being able to hand most of that over to others would be worthwhile. And getting a sufficient amount of money in advance to take off some of the financial pressure of needing to earn money day in and day out would be a big help as well.
* * * * * * *
HATCH: For Jefferson’s to come out into this garden was sort of an affirmation of his vigor in so many different ways. And even at the age of 83, Jefferson read about giant cucumbers in a Cleveland, Ohio newspaper. And he wrote to the governor of Ohio and asked him for seeds of this cucumber, and passed them around to his friends in Charlottesville; grew them in his garden; typically measured how long each one was that came out of his garden. And Jefferson once wrote that although I’m an old man, I am but a young gardener.
* * * * * * *
It was a difficult year. A painful year. And while that pain has lessened over the months, it still causes difficulties for me in terms of limiting my energy and ability to focus on what I need to do.
I’m 53. Be 54 in July. Overall, I’m in much better health than I could be, as my doc reminded me at my recent annual physical. I don’t like to think of myself as being limited in what I can do. Oh, I have no illusions that I’m still 20 or anything, but still I find it frustrating that there is this factor which intrudes on my ability to accomplish things.
* * * * * * *
This ain’t Pyrrus. The gravity isn’t twice Earth normal. All the flora and fauna isn’t dedicated to the notion that it should kill me as quickly as possible, and I don’t have to be in peak physical condition at all times to just have a *chance* to survive each day.
That’s what most people remember about Harry Harrison’s classic novel Deathworld, if they remember anything at all. What is too often forgotten is that the real story was one of adaptation and learning to live with the environment of Pyrrus rather than just battling it in a forever war.
And out of necessity, that is the lessen I am going to attempt with my garden this year. Where for most of the last decade I have put a huge amount of effort into trying to keep the local critters out of my substantial garden, I just don’t have the time or energy for that now.
I’m scaling back the whole garden – yeah, a bunch of hot peppers, but other than that I’m just going to plant a half dozen or so tomato plants. Enough to provide us fresh toms this summer and fall, perhaps with some extra for a couple batches of sauce. But I’m not going to try and set up to can my usual 60 pints of chopped tomatoes and a couple dozen pints of sauce. And I’m not going to put down a double layer of landscape fabric to keep down weeds. Perhaps most importantly, I’m not going to set up a 200′ perimeter deer fence 7′ tall with a 2′ chicken wire base to try and keep out all the critters. I’ll take some other steps to try and keep the individual plants safe, but that’s it.
This is a big change for me. I really enjoyed gardening the way I have for the last few years. But I just don’t have the necessary energy to do it, given the other things I have to see to.
But everyone makes those decisions. You have to change, or you die.
Maybe this place is more like Pyrrus than I thought.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Carl Sagan, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Emergency, Failure, Gardening, General Musings, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Terrorism, Travel, Violence | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Carl Sagan, evolution, game theory, jim downey, Milgram, politics, predictions, psychology, science, Science Fiction, travel, TSA
I was doing a little maintenance weeding on my asparagus bed this morning. It was the perfect time for it – cool and grey, two days after long soaking rains. The weeds were coming up root and all.
A couple doors down I could hear sounds of construction work. Seems like they’re always doing something to that house. My small grey cat weaved between the stalks of asparagus, wanting my attention. My dog sat in the grass nearby, paying attention to the construction sounds.
Neither the cat nor the dog saw the lovely red fox.
* * * * * * *
A friend reacted to something I had posted elsewhere, which involved one of the instances cited in this recent blog post:
I have worked with the TSA screeners in [town]. I have worked with the management team that leads them. I know them personally, and I can tell you this is patently false, disjointed, prejudiced, half-assed reporting of the situation.
* * * * * * *
There was a fascinating long-form segment on NPR’s All Things Considered last night, looking into the “Psychology of Fraud.” The entire thing is worth reading/listening to when you get a chance, but basically it was the case study of how one otherwise ethical man wound up engaging in a series of financial frauds – and how he drew in multiple different people to help him do so.
Like I said, the whole thing is worth your time, but the thing which got me thinking was this bit:
Chapter 5: We Lie Because We Care
Typically when we hear about large frauds, we assume the perpetrators were driven by financial incentives. But psychologists and economists say financial incentives don’t fully explain it. They’re interested in another possible explanation: Human beings commit fraud because human beings like each other.
We like to help each other, especially people we identify with. And when we are helping people, we really don’t see what we are doing as unethical.
Lamar Pierce, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis, points to the case of emissions testers. Emissions testers are supposed to test whether or not your car is too polluting to stay on the road. If it is, they’re supposed to fail you. But in many cases, emissions testers lie.
And what’s critical in this case is that we help those we identify with. Those emissions testers? They’re much more prone to help someone who is driving an older, inexpensive model car. Because those emissions testers don’t make a whole lot of money themselves, and have cars like that. Someone comes in with a high-end car, they’re less likely to identify with the owner and cut them some slack with the emissions tests.
* * * * * * *
A (different) friend asked me this morning whether I still spend much time reading up on game theory. It was something new to him when he saw it in Communion of Dreams, and my recent posts about it had again piqued his interest.
I replied that I don’t really follow the current scholarship on the topic specifically, but that I saw it in terms of a larger psychological dynamic. I then recommended that he should read Carl Sagan’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Why? Because it would provide an insight into how humans are very similar to other primates in how we exist in hierarchical groups, and how we act because of our identity to a group – how that we look to our authority figures for cues on how to behave. He’s currently serving in Afghanistan, and I told him that it would forever change how he would see the military as well as those local tribes he’s dealing with.
* * * * * * *
A passage from Wikipedia:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.[4]
* * * * * * *
I was doing a little maintenance weeding on my asparagus bed this morning. It was the perfect time for it – cool and grey, two days after long soaking rains. The weeds were coming up root and all.
A couple doors down I could hear sounds of construction work. Seems like they’re always doing something to that house. My small grey cat weaved between the stalks of asparagus, wanting my attention. My dog sat in the grass nearby, paying attention to the construction sounds.
Neither the cat nor the dog saw the lovely red fox. It cut across the back of our large yard, disappeared into some heavy brush in the adjacent empty lot.
“Alwyn,” I said, and pointed towards the back of the lot. My dog dutifully jumped up, trotted around the raised bed, and started sniffing the ground. Quickly he caught the scent of the fox, and rushed off to the edge of the yard where it had disappeared.
But he stopped there. He’s well trained, well behaved.
I petted the cat, then headed back towards the house.
My dog followed.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Flu, NYT, Predictions, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: bison, buffalo, flu, jim downey, literature, New York Times, News, Science Fiction, writing
Got a note from a friend, with a link to an article. The note said “Yet another shade of Communion of Dreams.” Here’s the start of the article:
As Bison Return to Prairie, Some Rejoice, Others Worry
WOLF POINT, Mont. — Sioux and Assiniboine tribe members wailed a welcome song last month as around 60 bison from Yellowstone National Park stormed onto a prairie pasture that had not felt a bison’s hoof for almost 140 years.
That historic homecoming came just 11 days after 71 pureblood bison, descended from one of Montana’s last wild herds, were released nearby onto untilled grassland owned by a charity with a vision of building a haven for prairie wildlife. Some hunters and conservationists are now calling for bison to be reintroduced to a million-acre wildlife refuge spanning this remote region.
This is from the first page of Communion of Dreams:
He could see four or five thousand buffalo, one of the small herds. They stretched out in a long line below him, wide enough to fill the shallow valley along this side of the river, coming partway up the sides of the hill, not fifty meters from where he stood. The sky was its perpetual blue-grey, as clear as it ever got at this latitude, though the sun was almost bright. Late winter snow, churned into a dull brown mass by the buffalo where they trekked along the valley floor, nonetheless glinted along the tops of the hills. Weather forecasts said more snow was coming. It was Friday, April 12.
He leaned on the railing, looking down, the windows of the research station behind him. He liked the solitude of the open sky of the National Buffalo Commons. Though he had many painful memories associated with these plains, they could fill the void inside him in a way that no place else could. He had grown up not too far away, back when people used to live out here. Now there were only the stations – small shelters where scientists could study the herds as they migrated, or where people with enough connections could escape for a few days.
The Commons had been borne of the fire-flu, with so few people left out in the great northern plains after it was finally all over that it was a relatively simple matter to just turn things back over to nature.
Every writing instructor or book out there will tell you that the opening sentences/paragraphs of a novel has a huge job: to establish the set and setting, introduce tone, and intrigue the reader enough that they want to keep reading. I think the opening page of Communion does that.
And so does the release of two small herds of bison.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, DARPA, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Titan, Writing stuff | Tags: augmented reality, DARPA, jim downey, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, Titan
A friend who recently read Communion of Dreams sent me a link to this item this morning:
DARPA sets sights on high-tech contact lenses
(Phys.org) — A Bellevue, Washington, company specializing in display technology based on eyewear and contact lenses has sealed a deal with DARPA. Innovega, which says its technology can open a “new dimension to virtual and augmented reality applications,” told the BBC earlier this week that it has signed a contract to deliver a prototype of its iOptik display system to DARPA. That system consists of special contact lenses and eyeglasses. The product is touted to be a better solution than bulky heads-up display systems of the past. Screens sit directly on users’ eyeballs and work with a pair of special lightweight glasses.* * *
Users can look at two things at once, both the information projected and the more distant view. The retina receives each image in focus. The engineers used nanoscale techniques to develop the lenses, so that they can work as a focusing device with the glasses. The ability to focus the near-eye image is achieved by embedding optical elements inside the iOptik contact lens, according to Innovega. The micro-components do not interfere with the wearer’s normal vision.
* * *
The company says its system affords the human eye to see near-to-eye micro-display information simultaneously with the surrounding environment. Beyond DARPA, the company anticipates its technology can be used by the general public, but it will take a few years for that to happen. The product is undergoing clinical trials as part of the US FDA approval process. Possible applications might be gaming, watching big-screen 3-D movies, and future augmented reality devices superimposing images on reality. According to Innovega, the technology may be available to the public towards the end of 2014.
There’s also video of how the technology works, using a camera with one of these contacts mounted on the surface of the lens. It’s pretty cool.
Four years ago I wrote about the first big breakthrough with this kind of technology, and noted that the article I was referring to said the technology should reach the stage where DARPA would be able to start testing a functional version in “three to five years.”
Just for fun, here’s a passage from the beginning of Chapter 8 of Communion of Dreams when the main character first descends to the surface of Titan:
Jon nodded, slipped between the seats, through the door of the airlock. Locking it, he started the cycle. He felt a crinkling of his environment suit as it compensated for the increasing pressure, then the indicator light turned green and the hatch opened. He looked out into a thick, dull red fog. In the distance a strobe flashed. Sidwell’s compound.
Jon went out the hatch, down a couple of steps to the ground. As he cleared the small craft, his pc connected to Sidwell’s datastream broadcast. An overlay appeared before his eyes, pale lines of light outlining buildings in the distance. Nodding to the two guards waiting, he followed them toward the compound.
As I’ve said many times before, it’s always fun to see these technologies I envisioned becoming reality.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Failure, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech | Tags: jim downey
As noted, Sunday is the actual 40th ‘pre-anniversary’ of the discovery of the artifact on Titan. And as noted in that blog post, I had intended on having a free Kindle edition promotion all day to celebrate that, but had also decided to add in tomorrow just in case someone thought that the Sunday listing might be some kind of April Fool’s prank.
Well, it looks like the joke is on me. Or I’m the Fool. Take your pick.
See, because of some glitches in the Amazon scheduling system back on March 4 when last I did a promotion, Amazon decided to give me an additional promotion day (you get 5 such days during each quarter you’re signed up with KDP Select). That’s cool – so I intended to use it this weekend.
Except I screwed up and didn’t note that said additional promotion day needed to go through Amazon’s bureaucracy, rather than just being scheduled directly by yours truly. Oops.
So I have contacted said bureaucracy, and submitted said request. But whether they’ll get it in place by Sunday is an open question.
So let’s just assume that tomorrow may be the only day this weekend for you to get your free copy of the book, and plan accordingly. Should Amazon get the extra day in place, I’ll let people know. But for now, help to share news of Communion of Dreams being *FREE* all day tomorrow! And remember, you don’t even need to own a Kindle to get your copy: there is a Kindle emulator available for just about any computer/tablet/mobile device – ALSO for FREE!
This was my screw-up. And I’ll make it up with another free weekend sometime in the next quarter. But for now, spread the word that Communion of Dreams is going to be free all day tomorrow (and maybe Sunday!) We had over 5,000 downloads last time – and I keep hearing that people really love the book – so let’s make the world a little better for others who would enjoy it!
Thanks.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Guns, Predictions, Publishing, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Writing stuff
For whatever reason, recently I’ve had an interest in pickled eggs.
* * * * * * *
Bits & pieces:
“It is late, and things are not getting better.”
“A gun don’t make you bulletproof.”
“Tribal groups who all have their chieftains.”
* * * * * * *
I’ve had false starts, and false hope, before. In some ways, “false hope” is something of a summary of my life.
Anyway, I’ve been doing a *lot* of thinking about the prequel to Communion of Dreams, titled St. Cybi’s Well. I think this is the fourth of fifth time that I’ve started writing it. Before I’ve gotten as far as a chapter or two, outlines for more of the book. Or sometimes just making notes.
This time? We’ll see. At least some people are asking about it after reading Communion. That helps.
* * * * * * *
Yeah, bits & pieces. But none of those . . . fragments . . . necessarily means what it might seem. As I work through a story, I get these summations, these insights into something a character might think or do. I’ve been thinking a lot about Darnell Sidwell, who is the main character of St. Cybi’s Well. That much I’ve known all along.
And thinking about Darnell is risky. Why? Because he and I are tied together in some ways. Well, more than just occupying too much space in my head, I mean. He’s not an alter-ego of mine or anything, but we are close enough in age and cultural experience that I can’t help but compare myself to him at times. And the comparisons don’t always make me particularly happy.
* * * * * * *
For whatever reason, recently I’ve had an interest in pickled eggs.
Not sure why. I don’t remember eating them as a kid or anything. Frankly, I don’t remember ever having eaten one, though I’m sure I must have.
Eggs. Vinegar. Sugar, salt, spices. I like the way the kitchen smells now.
Sometimes you have to experiment.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Expert systems, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff
Via my Her Final Year co-author, this fairly light but interesting look at the current tech which is very much the precursors of what I envision in Communion of Dreams:
5 Exciting Innovations That Will Change Computing in 2012
Technical innovations are incoming in the next year or so that promise to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds like never before, whether that’s controlling your computer with gestures, opening programs with your eyes or extending the menu options for touchscreens with wearable devices.
There are a number of things they feature in the slideshow which gave me a chuckle, they’re so clearly direct ancestors of what is in Communion. Such as the Keyglove:
The Keyglove is a wearable, wireless, open source input device that boasts unprecedented flexibility and convenience for all kinds of computer applications.
With exciting potential for gaming, design, art, music, device control and even data entry, the glove-based system’s multi-sensor combinations mean it could be programmed to offer one-handed operation of many systems and software.
But this had me laughing right out loud, from the last of the five entries:
We predict that the press-a-button-and-speak method will become outdated as smart virtual assistants — which offer an AI-powered, conversational style solution — emerge.
Gee . . . a smart virtual assistant. Now, *there’s* an idea I never considered for the future. Well, maybe this passage from page 6 does sort of hint at that:
“Hi Seth.” Jon just talked to the not-quite thin air next to him. It was common enough to see people walking through the halls, or sitting at their desks, chatting with someone invisible. He could have Seth give him the feed for the images of the other experts, and see their ghostly manifestations, if he wanted.
His expert was one of best, one of only a few hundred based on the new semifluid CPU technology that surpassed the best thin-film computers made by the Israelis. But it was a quirky technology, just a few years old, subject to problems that conventional computers didn’t have, and still not entirely understood. Even less settled was whether the experts based on this technology could finally be considered to be true AI. The superconducting gel that was the basis of the semifluid CPU was more alive than not, and the computer was largely self-determining once the projected energy matrix surrounding the gel was initiated by another computer. Building on the initial subsistence program, the computer would learn how to refine and control the matrix to improve its own ‘thinking’. The thin-film computers had long since passed the Turing test, and these semifluid systems seemed to be almost human. But did that constitute sentience? Jon considered it to be a moot point, of interest only to philosophers and ethicists.
Heh. You know, reading that again, I’m pleased with just how much of the entire story of the book is foreshadowed in those couple of paragraphs. It’s almost like I planned it or something.
Anyway, another countdown of a sort: this coming Saturday and Sunday, all day both days, the Kindle edition of Communion of Dreams will be available for free to any and all who want to read it. And in preparation for that, I would ask that anyone who has had a chance to read the book to please go post a review on Amazon, or at least give the book a “Like” there. Building that sort of recommendation base will really help – thank you very much!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Constitution, Government, NPR, Politics, Predictions, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Terrorism
That’s the sound of your privacy melting:
U.S. To Keep Data On Americans With No Terror Ties
The U.S. intelligence community will now be able to store information about Americans with no ties to terrorism for up to five years under new Obama administration guidelines.
Until now, the National Counterterrorism Center had to immediately destroy information about Americans that was already stored in other government databases when there were no clear ties to terrorism.
Giving the NCTC expanded record-retention authority had been called for by members of Congress who said the intelligence community did not connect strands of intelligence held by multiple agencies leading up to the failed bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas 2009.
Remember, it’s all about data mining. And the government is getting ready to mine *all* your data. Regardless of whether or not you have any ties to terrorism. And that new 5-year limit? I’m sure even that modest limitation will just melt away.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 