Filed under: Art, Emergency, movies, Pandemic, Preparedness, Science Fiction, Society, Survival | Tags: jim downey, post-apocalyptic, predictions, Science Fiction, video, Zombies
A small confession: I’ve never been ‘into’ Zombies. Not with the first wave of movies back when I was a kid. Not with the small revival when I was in college and then grad school. And certainly not with the whole Zombie craze of the last few years. Yes, I understand what it is all about, and the important things it says about our society, the human condition, and the stories it can tell. But it’s just not my cuppa.
This, however, is brilliant and very effectively done:
{applause} Now, *that’s* how to have a whole new twist on the genre. {/applause}
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Government, movies, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: blogging, Enlightenment, jim downey, literature, MIB, politics, predictions, science, Science Fiction, Surowiecki, Tommy Lee Jones, video, writing, www youtube
This is the third and final part of a series. The first installment can be found here, the second here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Last Sunday, I used a quote from Kay:
“Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
I did so to make a point. But it was a little unfair of me to do so, because I cut out the first part of his whole statement:
Catch that? Here’s the first part of his reply: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”
I laughed heartily when I first heard that. I still get a good chuckle when I re-watch it. It’s a good bit of writing, delivered perfectly by Tommy Lee Jones.
But I no longer think that it’s right.
No, I’m not talking about “The Wisdom of Crowds.” Not exactly, anyway. Surowiecki makes a good case for his notion that truth (or more accurately, optimization) can be an emergent quality of a large enough group of people. After all, this is the basis for democracy. But this can still lead to gross errors of judgment, in particular mass hysteria of one form or another.
Rather, what I’m talking about is that a *system* of knowledge is critical to avoiding the trap of thinking that you know more than you actually do. This can mean using the ‘wisdom of crowds’ intelligently, ranging from just making sure that you have a large enough group, which has good information on the topic, and that the wisdom is presented in a useable way — think modern polling, with good statistical models and rigorous attention to the elimination of bias.
Another application is brilliantly set forth in the Constitution of the United States, where the competing checks & balances between interest groups and governmental entities helps mitigate the worst aspects of human nature.
And more generally, the development of the scientific method as a tool to understand knowledge – as well as ignorance – has been a great boon for us. Through it we have been able to accomplish much, and to begin to avoid the dangers inherent in thinking that we know more than we actually do.
The elimination of bias, the development of the scientific method, the application of something like logic to philosophy — these are all very characteristic of the Enlightenment, and in as far as we deviate from these things, we slip back into the darkness a little.
Perhaps this will ring a bell:
“That which emerges from darkness gives definition to the light.”
* * * * * * *
I’ve said many times that Communion of Dreams was intended to ‘work’ on multiple levels. At the risk of sounding too much like a graduate writing instructor, or perhaps simply coming across that I think I’m smart, this is one good example of that: the whole book can be understood as an extended metaphor on the subject of a system of knowledge, of progress.
Human knowledge, that is.
[Mild spoiler alert.]
From the very end of Communion of Dreams, this exchange between the main protagonist and his daughter sums it up:
“What did you learn from seeing it?”
Her brow furrowed a moment. “You mean from just looking at the [Rosetta] stone? Nothing.”
“Then why is it important?”
“Because it gave us a clue to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs.”
“Right. But that clue was only worthwhile to people who knew what the other languages said, right?”
She gave him a bit of a dirty look. “You didn’t know anything about the artifact, or healing, or any of those things before you touched it.”
“True,” he agreed. “But think how much more people will be able to understand, be able to do, when they have learned those things.”
“Oh.”
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Emergency, Failure, Heinlein, ISS, NASA, National Geographic, Preparedness, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Space X, Survival, tech, Weather | Tags: blogging, Diane Rehm, Everest, health, Heinlein, ISS, jim downey, NASA, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, SpaceX, stupidity, survival, technology
Following up from Sunday…
“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
* * * * * * *
There was a very interesting discussion on the Diane Rehm show the other day with Stuart Firestein, who is the chairman of the Department of Biology at Columbia University as well as a professor of neuroscience. The whole thing is worth a listen, but in particular there were a couple of particular bits I wanted to share. Here’s the first:
So in your brain cells, one of the ways your brain cells communicate with each other is using a kind of electricity, bioelectricity or voltages. And we’re very good at recording electrical signals. I mean, your brain is also a chemical. Like the rest of your body it’s a kind of chemical plant. But part of the chemistry produces electrical responses.
And because our technology is very good at recording electrical responses we’ve spent the last 70 or 80 years looking at the electrical side of the brain and we’ve learned a lot but it steered us in very distinct directions, much — and we wound up ignoring much of the biochemical side of the brain as a result of it. And as it now turns out, seems to be a huge mistake in some of our ideas about learning and memory and how it works.
* * * * * * *
I stared at the body, blinking in disbelief. We were in the shadow of the First Step, so the light was dull. The body lay about 10 metres from where I stood and was angled away from me. It jerked – a horrible movement, like a puppet being pulled savagely by its strings.
We had been on a well-organised and, so far, successful trail towards the summit of Everest, worrying only about ourselves. Now a stranger lay across our path, moaning. Lhakpa shouted down at me and waved me to move on, to follow him up onto the Step. I looked back at the raggedly jerking figure.
* * * * * * *
From about halfway through Chapter 6 in Communion of Dreams:
“But smart how?”
Jon looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there are lots of kinds of intelligence, and I’m not just talking about the reasoning/emotional/spatial/mechanical sorts of distinctions that we sometimes make. More fundamentally, how are they smart? Are they super-geniuses, able to easily figure out problems that stump us? Or maybe they’re very slow, but have been at this a very long time. Perhaps some sort of collective or racial intelligence, while each individual member of their species can barely put two and two together. There are a lot of different ways they can be intelligent.”
* * * * * * *
(Warning – the page from which the following comes contains gruesome images and text.)
Above a certain altitude, no human can ever acclimatize. Known as the Death Zone, only on 14 mountains worldwide can one step beyond the 8000 meter mark and know that no amount of training or conditioning will ever allow you to spend more than 48 hours there. The oxygen level in the Death Zone is only one third of the sea level value, which in simple terms means the body will use up its store of oxygen faster than breathing can replenish it.
In such conditions, odd things happen to human physical and mental states. A National Geographic climber originally on Everest to document Brian Blessed’s (ultimately botched) attempt at summiting, described the unsettling hallucinogenic effects of running out of oxygen in the Death Zone. The insides of his tent seemed to rise above him, taking on cathedral-like dimensions, robbing him of all strength, clouding his judgement. Any stay in the Death Zone without supplementary oxygen is like being slowly choked, all the while having to perform one of the hardest physical feats imaginable.
It makes you stupid.
* * * * * * *
Again, Stuart Firestein:
And in neuroscience, I can give you an example in the mid-1800s, phrenology. This idea that the bumps on your head, everybody has slightly different bumps on their head due to the shape of their skull. And you could tell something about a person’s personality by the bumps on their head. Now, we joke about it now. You can buy these phrenology busts in stores that show you where love is and where compassion is and where violence is and all that. It’s absolutely silly, but for 50 years it existed as a real science. And there are papers from learned scientists on it in the literature.
* * * * * * *
Update at 12:10 p.m. ET. Dragon Has Docked:
Dragon has finished docking with the International Space Station. That makes SpaceX the first private company to dock a cargo spacecraft to the space station.
That happened at exactly 12:02 p.m. ET, according to NASA.
* * * * * * *
“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
Last weekend four more people died attempting to summit Everest. Partly, this seems to have been due to the traffic on the mountain. Yeah, so many people are now attempting to climb the mountain that there are bottlenecks which occur, which can throw off calculations about how long a climb will take, how much supplemental oxygen is necessary, and whether weather will move in before climbers can reach safety.
In theory, everyone who attempts such a climb should know the odds. One in ten people who attempted the summit have died.
But we live in an age of accepted wonders. We think we’re smart enough to beat the odds.
Jim Downey
(PS: I hope to wrap up the third & final part of this set, get it posted this weekend.)
Filed under: Apollo program, Buzz Aldrin, Charlie Stross, Failure, Government, Man Conquers Space, NASA, Neil Armstrong, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Survival, tech, Travel | Tags: Apollo, Buzz Aldrin, jim downey, Michael Collins, Moon, NASA, Neil Armstrong, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, travel, xkcd
As something of a follow-up to yesterday’s post, first a quote:
The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space — each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
That’s the “roll over” text of this xkcd cartoon:
Can you name the nine who are left?*
And related to that, here is an excellent hour-long item you really should check out when you get a chance:
An Audience with Neil Armstrong
It’s in four parts, so you can watch them in chunks. And it really is very good. Armstrong has given very few interviews over the years, and has always been remarkably self-effacing. This is an informal discussion with the man, and it provides some wonderful insight into the whole NASA program in addition to the mindset which led to the Apollo 11 mission.
Jim Downey
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: 2nd Amendment, Guns, Humor, movies, Reproduction, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube | Tags: Adam Savage, firearms, guns, Guns.com, humor, movies, Science Fiction, technology, The Fifth Element, video, www youtube, ZF-1
Some of my readers here may not know it, but there’s another aspect of my writing life: I’m a regular contributor to Guns.com. And because of that I tend to keep an eye on what pops up on the site.
That scrutiny paid off with this delightful little item:
The Adam Savage Amazing ZF-1 Replica from “The Fifth Element” (VIDEO)
Adam Savage of Mythbusters is working on a perfect replica of the gun from the science fiction movie “The Fifth Element,” which stars Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman and little known actor by the name of Luke Perry.
For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, the Zorg ZF-1 is the end-all, beat-all king of weapons. It’s an assault rifle complete with homing bullets, a rocket launcher, arrow shooters (with explosive and poisonous tips), a net launcher, a flame thrower and the “ice cube system” (freeze gas). To top it all off, it’s ambidextrous. Who wouldn’t want a toy like that?
There’s more, but the real treat is this video:
Have I mentioned recently that I love The Fifth Element? Serious geekin’ here.
Working on a second part to Sunday’s post. Probably have that tomorrow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: General Musings, Mark Twain, movies, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, jim downey, literature, Mark Twain, MIB, Science Fiction, Will Rogers, writing, Zen
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” – Mark Twain.
* * * * * * *
I have a secret I’d like to share. It’s something that almost everyone thinks they know. But it is something which we all think doesn’t apply to us.
The secret? Just nine words: You’re not as smart as you think you are.
* * * * * * *
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you; it’s what you think you know that ain’t so.” -Will Rogers
* * * * * * *
I don’t care who you are. We’re all prone to making this mistake. To ignoring this thing we know – which has been common wisdom for millenia, and across almost all human cultures as far as I can tell.
Why do we do this?
* * * * * * *
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?” *
* * * * * * *
I think that we do it because we have to. Trusting our knowledge, our experience, is the only thing that allows us to make sense of the world.
It starts with the most basic things. Breath. Life. Light.
Then it grows upon those, builds with knowledge accumulated and shared.
* * * * * * *
“Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.” Kay
* * * * * * *
“That which emerges from darkness gives definition to the light.”
It’s the central mystery at the heart of Communion of Dreams.
What does it mean?
* * * * * * *
From Communion of Dreams, Chapter 16:
Jon shook his head. “I still don’t see where it really makes that much difference to us.”
“Perhaps not to us. We’re inside the bubble. But to the crew of the Hawking, it made a very big difference. They got on the other side of the bubble.”
There was a moment, a heartbeat, as the implications of this sank in. And then the universe changed. “Sweet Jesus . . . ”
* * * * * * *
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” – Mark Twain.
Actually, it’s just attributed to Twain, thanks to a Reader’s Digest entry from 1939. It sounds like the sort of thing he would have said, but Twain scholars haven’t been able to document it as actually having been his.
Nine words: You’re not as smart as you think you are.
Neither am I. None of us are.
More later.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, direct publishing, game theory, jim downey, Kindle, literature, reviews, Science Fiction, writing
Dear Agent-person,
Earlier this year I self-published a book. Said book sold about 100 copies in the first month. About 200 copies the second month. 300 copies last month. It broke that number in the first two weeks of this month. And the rate of increase is still growing. And that’s just with my feeble efforts to promote the book.
People love the thing. The reviews are excellent. Don’t take my word for it – see for yourself.
I’d love to get this book in the hands of a large publisher. With even a half-way decent promotional campaign this book could be a mega-seller. And I’m not talking within the confines of genre-fiction. Please note in those reviews that a number of people have said that they don’t usually read Science Fiction. This has mass-market appeal. This could easily be turned into a blockbuster movie.
There’s nothing that needs to be done to the book – it is finished, popular, and ready to be handed over to a large publisher. If they move fast, they can have the damned thing in stores before the holiday season.
Further, I have at least two more books in this series I want to write, and that people want to read. I can have the first manuscript done in 18 months, perhaps sooner. If I have a decent advance to live on so I can concentrate on writing it.
I’ve thought about doing a Kickstarter to accomplish that. And there’s a chance that sales will just continue to grow on their own accord. But I’d rather not have to mess with all of this, and concentrate on my writing.
Do you see where I’m going with this? I need an agent. Not just any agent. One with the right connections. One who can cut through the crap and land a package deal to turn this book, and then the others in the series, into best-sellers. So I’m contacting you. You’re not the only one I’m contacting. The first one who gets back to me and shows me what they can do for me gets to take their cut of the proceeds.
Don’t delay.
Jim Downey
* * * * * * * *
I must admit, that I’m seriously tempted to send that kind of a query letter out. No, it is not at all my personality to say or do such a thing, but I sold artwork long enough to know that sometimes, it’s all about attitude. Having the hutzpah, the brashness, to claim success long before the race starts.
And what the hell, it’s not like my previous efforts to get the attention of a decent agent were any more successful.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Arthur C. Clarke, Feedback, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, jim downey, Kindle, literature, reviews, Science Fiction, Thomas Evans, writing
So, for some time now I’ve been following Thomas Evans’ The Archaeologist’s Guide to the Galaxy. He offers very intelligent, insightful, and sometimes biting reviews of a lot of books – but it was his writing about Science Fiction which caught my eye and got me reading him regularly. I haven’t mentioned it here, for one very simple reason: I wanted him to read, and hopefully review, Communion of Dreams. And I didn’t want there to be any doubt about whether or not my comments biased him.
Well, now that concern is moot. Because he just posted a full, formal review of Communion.
Now, the usual thing would be for me to excerpt some of the things he says about my book, and tout it all over the place. Like the title of this post. Yeah, he basically says that one aspect of my novel is better than one aspect of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I could justifiably paraphrase him to claim that this was the summation of his review. Well, were I a press agent for a big publishing house, I could. Or would, rather, regardless of whether it was actually justified or not.
The actual passage from his review says this:
The topic of possible ancient alien contact is brilliantly handled and to my mind, makes perfect sense (within the context of the book that is). Indeed, it has quite the opposite effect that most such stories have on me, and is one of only two such conclusions that I actually liked. The other was Arthur C. Clark’s 2001, so that is very august company to keep, and to be honest, I thought the way that Downey handled it in this book was superior. I won’t go into any further details, for the question of whether or not there even was contact is one of the most interesting and intentionally downplayed elements of this book. Suffice it to say that the way this book addresses the whole concept of the ‘object’ is well worth the read.
See? There’s more nuance there than just a pull-quote.
Just as there is in the entire review. Which is why I like this fellow’s reviews. He’s a SF writer himself, and thoroughly understands the genre. He knows its ins and outs, understands the strengths and weaknesses of a given author or story line, identifies the tropes and traditions. He doesn’t pull punches, has his own quirks and preferences. Above all, he has intelligent reasons for the things he says about books, and explains those reasons.
So I was flattered that he would take the time to read Communion, let alone write such a complete review of the book.
And it is an excellent review. No, not in the sense that he thinks the book is excellent. In the sense that he clearly says what he likes and dislikes about the book, and offers his opinion on to whom it might appeal. Yes, there are a lot of positive things he says about CoD, and that gives me a nice ego-boost. And I don’t agree with some of his criticisms of the book. But those criticisms are honest and fair – he makes a strong case for why he says what he says, and on that basis I have no complaint with his conclusions.
See for yourself. Go read the review. Leave a comment about what you think of it there on his site. Or not. But do yourself a favor and add him to your regular reading list. I have.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Blade Runner, Failure, Feedback, Health, Hospice, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Promotion, Publishing, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, Society, XCOR | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, banking, blogging, care-giving, direct publishing, free, health, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, literature, memoir, Mother's Day, reviews, Science Fiction, TSA, writing
A couple weeks ago I quipped that I was thankful for the TSA, because they are always good fodder for a blog post when things were otherwise slow. Well, likewise, I’m glad that the big multinational banks are around to put my own mistakes in some perspective:
A billion here, a billion there
JPMORGAN, widely considered the best run of all the large banks in America, if not the world, on May 10th provided the kind of news that has become all too common in the financial industry: a $2 billion charge for errant trades. The markets responded within seconds of the opening on May 11th, sending Morgan’s share price down 9%, and its value by $14 billion. Late on May 11th, Standard & Poor’s announced it was downgrading the outlook for the company, and Fitch knocked down its ratings.
* * *
The bluntest criticism of Morgan’s failure came from the bank’s own chief executive, Jamie Dimon. He said the losses were the result of self-inflicted “sloppiness”, “poor judgment” and “stupidity”, for which “we are accountable”.
And the news this morning is that a number of the executives involved in the losses have ‘retired’. No, not in the Blade Runner sense. But in the sense that they’ll not be drawing a salary of more than a million bucks a month. Though I imagine that these people have more than a bit of savings and contractual retirement income to cushion the blow.
Anyway.
Yesterday’s Kindle promotion for Communion of Dreams wasn’t a huge mistake, but it also wasn’t a stunning success. A total of 1,571 copies of the book were downloaded. Chances are it wasn’t what was needed to kick us up to the next orbital level, but neither did it crash & burn.
What *was* surprising was that our care-giving memoir Her Final Year proved to be very successful, with a total of 3,112 downloads. Wow.
I find it hard to explain just how happy this makes me. As I had noted previously, I was very disappointed with the response to Her Final Year. Only recently have I come to understand that it was about more than just simple sales.
See, I have been very pleased with the response to Communion of Dreams. The sales are nice, and the income helps. The reviews and ratings are rewarding. But what really makes me happy is that the book has found an audience, a home in people’s lives, a place in their imaginations.
That Her Final Year hadn’t found such a home was what bugged me. Because I have a lot of faith in the book. Faith that it can help others, if they would just read the damned thing. But that faith had been betrayed by my inability to get any attention for the book. Or, rather, I felt like I had betrayed my faith – and the book – by my inability to promote it.
Now, just because 3,112 people downloaded the book yesterday that doesn’t mean that the book will be read. But it sure as hell is a lot more likely that it’ll be read than just having the thing sit forgotten on Amazon’s servers. We’ll just have to see.
But no longer do I feel like I have betrayed the promise of the book. That gives me a happiness, and a hope, which I haven’t felt for a long time.
Thanks, everyone.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the HFY blog.)
Communion Of Dreams 