Filed under: General Musings, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, movies, Predictions, Science Fiction, Space, Titan, Writing stuff
Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday, age 84.
There have been many authors who had a great influence on me. Among these was Vonnegut. I can no longer say which of his books I read first, but there’s a fair chance that it was The Sirens of Titan, which had a sufficient impact on me that it was one of the reasons I choose that moon for the setting of Communion of Dreams.
What can you say about him? The man was brilliant in so many ways – with a biting wit and a perspective borne of really living, unlike so many writers who think they have something to say because they were once turned down for a date or didn’t get the promotion they thought they deserved. With his background at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, he was taken seriously even outside of the genre of science fiction. If you haven’t read his work, do. None of the movie adaptations of his books comes close to capturing the power and black humor of his writing.
Fittingly, he was also a huge fan of Mark Twain’s, and if there is any justice in the world, he will now be considered in death to be in the same league as Twain (I cannot offer higher praise to an author), though of course he would never have thought this possible himself. His use of humor and wry observations on the human condition echoed Twain, his writing style emulated Twains, and he even held a certain resemblence to him. He thought so much of Twain that he named his son after him.
I do not believe in heaven. I do not believe in the afterlife. But I hold a small, quiet hope that the Tralfamadorians have granted Kurt the grace to be caught in the happiest moment of his life, whatever that may be.
Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday, age 84.
So it goes.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Carl Sagan, General Musings, Predictions, Press, Science Fiction, Space, tech, Titan, Writing stuff
News yesterday of interest:
Travis Barman, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, said water vapor has been found in the atmosphere of a large, Jupiter-like gaseous planet located 150 light years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. The planet is known as HD 209458b.
OK, this is mostly significant because someone has gone on record announcing a discovery that pretty much everyone expected would happen before too long. With over 200 extra-solar planets now on the books, it was really just a matter of time before one was determined to have water vapor in its atmosphere. Scientists just needed the right combination of observeable data.
Important? Yeah, in the sense that it’s happened. Surprising? Not really. This is more the sort of thing that the press can get excited about than a real breakthrough – almost no space scientist would be surprised that water exists outside our solar system.
It is interesting for me, though, since I posit for Communion that there is an array of scientific instruments in orbit around Titan which has been created just for the purpose of seeking out likely extra-solar planets for colonization. (And I place it there due to the “bubble” of shielding created by the web of Tholen gel on Titan’s surface – which, of course, is foreshadowing of the larger discovery to be made about the gel in the course of the novel.) I fully expect that at some point we will identify planets in other stellar systems suitable for supporting human life – likely long before our tech advances to the point of allowing us to travel such distances. It’s just so much easier to look at the data coming our way in the form of electromagnetic radiation than to actually send a ship out to investigate.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, General Musings, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Psychic abilities, Science Fiction, Space, tech, Writing stuff
I’m a big fan of the blog Paleo-Future. The appeal is probably obvious, because it focuses on “A future that never was.” As I say on the Communion of Dreams site:
Welcome to Communion of Dreams, set about 50 years from now in an “alternative future history.” The world I have envisioned in this book is recognizable, in the same way that the 1950’s are recognizable, but with a comparable amount of unpredictable change as between that era and the present. Most authors will avoid writing about the near-term future, because it is easy for a work to become dated. I’m not that smart. Or perhaps I’m just more willing to jump in and explore what could be just over the horizon, if things work out a certain way. Nah, scratch that – let’s just go with ‘I’m not that smart.’
I’m sure that my predictions about artificial intelligence, psychic abilities, tech development, our future in space, et cetera, will all someday be profiled on some future version of Paleo-Future. You just can’t get all this stuff right.
Which is OK. The job of the science fiction author isn’t to predict the future, let alone create it. It is to posit a possible future, and within that context explore some aspects of humankind – or at least tell a good story. I like to think that I accomplish those things…and that I might even hit the jackpot and make a few predictions which will come true.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, BoingBoing, General Musings, Marketing, movies, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff
Via BoingBoing, an interesting (though dated – written in 2003) paper by Michael Schmitz titled Human Computer Interaction in Science Fiction Movies. This paper deals just with movies, but naturally all authors want to see their books translated into that medium, so…
The paper is an interesting survey of how human-computer interactions have been depicted. Perhaps the most interesting section deals with the movie Minority Report
from 2002 (which I just saw last year), and talks about how in the time period of the movie (2048 – about the same time period as I set for Communion) retina-recognition will allow for ubiquitous ID of individuals, and how this will not only be used by the government, but also by advertisers and marketing departments.
[Mild spoiler warning.]
This was actually part of the reason that I designed the ‘evolution’ of the tech I posit for the expert systems in my book – as part of a new manifestation of the battle between privacy and business. Because I too think that companies will employ increasingly intrusive technologies to identify and track consumer spending habits – we can see this already in on-line shopping at places like Amazon.com, or in ‘Rewards’ systems at grocery stores and other retailers where you get a discount for allowing them to track your purchasing habits. I think that sooner or later our basic ‘ad/spam blocker’ type of software will become more sophisticated in thwarting the attempts to invade our privacy, and that eventually primative artificial intelligence expert systems such as we have now will be used in this manner. In the classic battle between armour and firepower, the whole thing will tend to escalate, until we reach the point where we have the technology behind Seth (the S-series gel-based computing systems). Of course, along the way many other functions will be bundled into such an expert system, the aggregation leading to something akin to true artificial intelligence.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, General Musings, Predictions, Promotion, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff
Some 14 years ago, a full five or six years before I even thought about writing Communion of Dreams, I made the following “artist’s book”. Full images are hosted on my website. The following essay was bound into the ‘book’, as well as on the floppy disk in the still-functional disk-drive.
Jim Downey
Binary Dreams
A bit of whimsy.
I’ve always loved books, as far back as I can remember. Even though the shock of my parent’s death ended my childhood early, and left me with only fragments and dreams of my pre-teen years, I do remember reading, reading, reading. Books were part of my life, too much so for my parents, who were intelligent but uneducated, and who wondered about my fascination with almost anything written. Often I was told to put down the book and go outside to play, or turn out the light and go to sleep. Even the black & white television given to me at Christmas when I was 8 (the year my sister was born…I suspect my parents splurged to offset my disquiet at having a sibling at last) couldn’t take the place of the books I constantly checked out of the library.
I got lost in science fiction as a youth, first as a feast for my imagination, later as an escape from the harsh realities of my world. All through high school, where the demands my teachers made on my time and intellect were modest enough to be met with a few minutes study, and even through college, where I would reward myself with a new book by a favorite author after studying hours and hours of Russian history, economics, or German. Always I would turn to science fiction as a release, maybe even as a guide to how I could bring myself through my own rebirth. It took a very long time.
I even wrote a little, now and then. Starting with a junior high school fiction class, graduating to the novel I wrote while suffering in traction in the hospital in ‘78. After college I thought I would try and be a writer, with my old diesel-powered IBM Model C. But struggle though I did, I knew that I needed help with my writing that I couldn’t get from friends, or from the contradictory text I could find on the subject. A gentle man, an acquaintance I knew through work, was kind enough to read some of my stories and point to the University of Iowa. “The Writer’s Workshop,” he said, “an old friend of mine from grad school is the head of the program.”
I went to Iowa City, took a few courses. I was rejected for the Workshop by the ‘old friend’ because he didn’t like science fiction, but was stubborn enough to get into the English MA program, where I was allowed to take some Workshop classes on the same basis as those admitted to the program. I learned a lot, and the bitter taste of rejection was replaced by the realization that the Workshop thrived on angst, and that I had had enough of that to fill my life previously and didn’t need more.
I gathered together the credit hours needed to complete the degree, though I was in no particular rush to finish. And one day while looking for a signature for a change to my schedule I stumbled into the Windhover Press. Wonderful old presses and bank upon bank of lead type. I spent the next couple of semesters learning how to build a book, letter by letter, page by page, from those little bits of lead. I got a rudimentary course in sewing a book together, in pasting cloth, in terms like “text block” and “square”.
Then I met Bill. He led me through the different structures, and was tolerant of my large, clumsy hands. I spent hours just watching him work, watching how he moved with a grace that I could only dimly understand, as he slipped a needle onto thread, through paper, around cord. Trimming leather to fit a corner or a hinge. Working with the hot brass tools on a design that those magic hands formed seemingly without effort. But I didn’t spend all the time with him that I could, distracted by other things I thought needed doing. I squandered my time with him, not knowing what gifts I was passing up, what opportunity I allowed to slip from my hands.
But in spite of my best efforts to the contrary, he made an impression, and taught me a lot. Without quite realizing it, my hands became less clumsy, my understanding a bit brighter. I learned a few things, and came to appreciate much, much more. Somewhere in there my need for the refuge for science fiction diminished, though it was never completely left behind. Like a man who has long since recovered from an injury, but who still walks with a cane out of habit, science fiction stayed with me, occasionally coming to the fore in my interpretations of the world, in the ways that I moved from what I was to what I became.
Bill left us, in body at least. Part of his spirit I carry with me, and it surprises me sometimes, in a pleasant way. Now I am at home with paper, cloth, leather, and thread. I make and repair books for friends and clients.
The book is a mutable form, reflecting the needs, materials, and technology of the culture that produces it. Broadly speaking, a “book” is any self-contained information delivery system. And any number of ‘book artists’ have taken this broadly-defined term to extremes, some more interesting than others.
For me, the book is a codex, something that you can hold in your hand and read. From the earliest memories of my science fiction saturated youth, I remember books becoming obsolete in the future, replaced by one dream or another of “readers”, “scanners”, or even embedded text files linked directly to the brain. Some say ours is a post-literate culture, with all the books-on-tape, video, and interactive media technology. I think I read somewhere recently that Sony (or Toshiba or Panasonic or someone) had finally come up with a hand-held, book-sized computer screen that can accommodate a large number of books on CD ROM. Maybe the future is here.
Maybe. Lord knows that I would be lost without a computer for all my writing, revisions, and play. The floppy drive that is in this book was taken from my old computer (my first computer) when a friend installed a hard drive. It is, in many ways, part of my history, part of my time at Iowa, and all the changing that I did there.
So, in a bit of whimsy, I’ve decided to add my part to the extremes of “book art”. Consider this a transition artifact, a melding of two technologies, for fun. Black & white, yes and no, on and off. The stuff of dreams.
Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, NASA, Predictions, Press, Science Fiction, Space, tech, Writing stuff
On this morning’s Marketplace, Robert Reich had a good commentary about the problem with near-Earth asteroids and the NASA effort to identify and track these potential threats. Being an economist, he took the position that for the cost of one week’s expeditures in Iraq, we could fund this program completely through 2020, and then start thinking about what technologies we might need to deal with such a problem asteroid.
All well and good. But what does it have to do with Communion?
My previous versions of the book contained another bit of ‘history’ in addition to the “Fire-flu”: that an asteroid of about 300 meters diameter had hit in central China in the mid 2020’s. This I used for an explanation for several things in the world that I create: an offset to the effects of global warming; an explanation for what happened to the rise of China as an economic power in coming decades; and as a motivation for humankind’s rapid development of the necessary technologies to get into space in a big way.
I don’t see the matter as at all unlikely, and if you look at the information provided by the scientists involved in the search to identify these near-Earth asteroids, you quickly come to the conclusion that we’re rolling the dice each year to see whether or not we’re gonna get hit.
But this seemed to be the thing that tripped up most of my early readers. The prospect of both a pandemic flu and a meteor strike was just too much – even though the two things are in no way related, and we’re ‘overdue’ for both. I’m not sure whether this was just asking people to suspend their disbelief a bit too much, or whether it was just a little too frightening a prospect, but it was clear that however well it worked to create the “world” of Communion, it had to go.
So I dropped back, thought through the potential ramifications of a pandemic flu, and figured that I could more or less accomplish the same things with saying that the world collapse which followed the Fire-flu leads to some small-scale nuclear wars. In the great scheme of things, I see this as probably just as likely a scenario, I suppose. But it is somehow less satisfying an explanation for me. Ah well.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Carl Sagan, Faith healing, General Musings, Predictions, Psychic abilities, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
…require extraordinary proof” was a favorite line from Carl Sagan, one of my favorite authors. Simply put, while the idea of psychic abilities or faith healing is very appealing, it hasn’t been documented scientifically (as written up wonderfully in this post by Skeptico). Does that mean that it doesn’t exist? No, of course not. It just means that we haven’t found scientific evidence for it. That could mean that it doesn’t exist, or it could mean that our science and technology isn’t up to detecting it as of yet. And in that possibility lies room for plenty of good fiction, if the author is willing to take a little trouble to work around what we do know.
[Spoiler alert.]
I tried to do that with Communion, though the full ramifications of it take a long time to unfold within the context of the story. Having the alien artifact be not just proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, but part of an isolation field that has supressed our natural psychic abilities, is how I do this. But I try to play fair with my reader, and with science, by having the key to unlocking these mysteries all resort back to the physics breakthrough by Stephen Hawking. In other words, I am saying that this new development in one area has allowed for seredipitous discoveries in other areas, as is frequently the case with science and technology. Science may not hold all the answers, or solve all our problems – but it’s the way to bet.
Jim Downey
Filed under: General Musings, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech, Titan, UFO, Writing stuff
So, it seems that France has put all of its UFO investigations online, going back some 50 years. And while there is no ‘proof’ that there are indeed some kind of visitations going on, there seems to be plenty of information there to keep people scratching their heads and wondering.
A staple of Science Fiction has always been the question of how humanity will deal with the discovery that we are not the only sentients in the universe. It is, of course, the main theme of Communion as well, and while I am somewhat ambiguous about what exactly is “out there”, I make no bones about the fact that they exist, and have even visited our neighborhood (hence the discovery of the artifact on Titan being central to the book).
Honestly, one of my greatest fears is that before I can get Communion published, we may indeed have such proof, and will get to see just exactly how that plays out in the public sphere. My own private suspicion is that it will not go well.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Genetic Testing, Health, Machado-Joseph, Predictions, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
There’s a very good piece in today’s New York Times titled Facing Life With a Lethal Gene about one young woman’s decision to be tested to see if she carries the gene for Huntington’s Disease.
It is a very difficult decision to be tested for a genetic disease which you may have, and for which there is no known treatment (let alone a cure). If you test positive, you know exactly the sort of future you face. And, if you test positive, it can have a significant impact on your employment and insurance possibilities, even decades before you might experience any onset of symptoms.
There is a similar disease which runs in my family called Machado-Joseph. In terms of statistics, there is about a 68% chance that I carry the gene for it, though I do not have the other familial characteristics which seem to track with the disease. So I have elected not to be tested. Besides, at nearly 50 years of age, if I did have the onset of the disease, it would be likely that it would progress so slowly that I would die of something else (the younger the age of onset, the more rapidly the disease progresses).
Anyway, I recommend you read the article. Because as the science of genetic testing develops, it is likely that at some point you will have to make a decision about whether or not you are tested for either a genetic disease or a predisposition towards some type of health problem. Better to consider the matter before being confronted with it. Trust me on this.
What does this have to do with Communion? [warning – spoilers ahead]
The book’s history is premised on a flu pandemic about 40 years prior to the story. This pandemic not only killed hundreds of millions outright (and threw the world economy into complete chaos, resulting in hundreds of millions more deaths) , it left most of the survivors sterile – and did the same to most of the resulting children born. This is a recipe for extinction.
I chose this scenario for several reasons, not the least of which is that I think we are due for a world-wide pandemic sometime in the next decade. But also my family history and personal choice came into play – long before there was a genetic test to determine whether or not I carried the MJD gene, I made the decision to be childless. I felt at the time that the risks of passing on the disease were just too great. Not having any progeny leaves one with a sense of loss, even if it was a decision made for the best of reasons. I could only surmise that the effects of imposed childlessness population-wide would be even more profound.
And, [again, spoiler alert!] the psychological impact of the transformation which comes at the end of the book, through the agency of the alien artifact, would be a very literal rebirth for the entire human race. Not only do we give birth to a subsequent species in the form of the AI/Expert Seth (who achieves true sentience, midwifed by the artifact), but the entirety of the effects of the pandemic are cleansed – meaning that humankind has a second chance, and can start afresh. The hope is, of course, that we will do better the second time around.
So, go read the article.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Carl Sagan, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech, Titan, Writing stuff
No, not ours – the weather on Titan. Another news story has come out confirming my prediction in the book: that there is liquid methane/ethane on Titan, probably due to seasonal changes causing precipitation in a manner analogous to rain here on Earth. Well, actually, it wasn’t my prediction – the credit belongs to Carl Sagan, who very early on predicted that Titan’s ruddy color was due to hydrocarbons in its atmosphere, a substance that he named “tholin”. I just stole it.
And here’s a little ‘easter egg’ – the reference to Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot is made directly in Communion in several ways, the most notable is in the scene where Jon is dreaming that he is crossing a bridge which includes sconces containing small blue lights which seem to be receding as he progresses across the bridge. I hope the meaning is clear enough.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 