August 29, 2011
Freedom, Science Fiction and the Singularity: A conversation with author Vernor Vinge
August 15, 2011
Terry Pratchett’s views on assisted suicide
Terry Pratchett is considering the option of assisted suicide as his own early-onset Alzheimer’s is starting to degrade his ability to write:
“I believe everyone should have a good death,” he tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.”
Pratchett has become an advocate for legalized assisted suicide in Britain, making him one of many voices in a global debate. Many oppose the practice for religious reasons or because they fear a slippery slope to involuntary euthanasia; but Pratchett has turned the legalization of assisted suicide into something of a personal crusade.
“I prefer not to use the word ‘suicide’ because suicide is an irrational thing whereas I think that for some people asking for an assisted death is a very rational thing,” he says. “People who I have met who have opted for it are very rational in their thinking. And indeed so are their families, quite often, because they know they are in the grip of a terrible disease for which there is no cure and they do not want to spend any more time than necessary in the jaws of the beast.”
Pratchett says that’s why he’s considering assisted death — even though his diagnosis could make it hard to recognize the right time to go.
“[It’s] always a problem for someone with Alzheimer’s,” he says. “Regrettably, quite a few people go earlier than they might need to, to make certain that they are totally coherent when they are asked various questions and fill in the various forms that they have to fill in.”
August 11, 2011
NPR’s top 100 SF and Fantasy titles
They’ve tallied more than 60,000 votes from their fans on top science fiction and fantasy books. The rankings are a bit odd, in that they include votes for groups of books as well as votes for individual books from various series.
Given the voters were self-selected from among those who either listen to NPR or were directed to the voting by people who do, there were a few surprises in the results, like finding Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers clocking in at #31 and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress at #34 (Stranger In A Strange Land at #17 was less surprising).
There were a few books I’ve never even heard of, like The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss at #18 and The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson at #43.
I think it’s a pretty fair list overall, although I’d quibble about some of the individual rankings. On a quick count, I’ve read 16 of the top 20 (but only 50 of the entire list).
August 9, 2011
Fish. Barrel. Bang
If you’ve never seen these god-awful science fiction book covers, you’ll quickly understand why this website will have a long, long list of candidates for mockery:
Kelly Comments: Considering that later editions have an absolutely gorgeous cover by Michael Whelan, I’m always a bit horrified to see the travesty on my own copy of the book. It looks like a poster for some kind of low-budget 70s bondage. My poor eyes!
H/T to Lois McMaster Bujold, who said “SF covers more dire than my own. Some of these even make me feel better . . .”
August 7, 2011
The Guild, appearing in a Munchkin game near you
The Daily Illuminator had an interesting pre-announcement today:
As the delightful Felicia Day mentioned in her panel at San Diego Comic-Con, The Guild will have its very own Munchkin expansion next spring. We’re keeping the details under wraps for the moment, but you may want to watch The Guild‘s fifth season — airing now in a variety of places. Just sayin’.
(Also watch Felicia in Eureka on SyFy — not just for her rocket scientist character Dr. Holly Martin, but because Eureka is one of the geekiest shows on TV right now.)
You can see the entire panel on YouTube.* The Munchkin announcement is around the 6:00 mark . . . and if you were in that audience, thank you for the huge response!
July 26, 2011
Oh, Amazon, you temptress
I just noticed that the latest L. Neil Smith novel is available, so I clicked the Amazon.com link to find out more about it. While vampire stuff is pretty far out of my normal fiction reading tastes, this one sounds interesting enough to add it to my list: Sweeter Than Wine. The review by Rex F. May captures my normal disdain for the genre rather well:
I don’t like vampire novels. I don’t even like vampire stories. Never did. They lack verisimilitude if vampires have to bite people frequently, and the people they bite turn into vampires, why aren’t we all vampires by now? And what’s the deal with sunlight? And the garlic and the wooden stake? That all sounds like superstition. So to me, vampires belong in the realm of fantasy, not in science fiction at all, and, for the most part, I don’t enjoy fantasy very much. Now, there are some exceptions I like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld vampires, because the story is humorous, like all his stuff. But most vampire stories are dead serious, with all kinds of gothic, fifteen-year-old-girl orientation Twilight is nothing new, just a continuation of the old pattern. Same old same old rape fantasies porn for teeny-boppers.
Since it makes little sense to order a single book from Amazon, due to shipping costs, I clicked the Recommendations list to see what else is new, interesting, or Amazon’s algorithms consider might be appealing to me. Of the fifteen offerings on the first page, twelve of them are by Steven Brust. As I recently started reading his Vlad Taltos series, that kinda makes sense, but 12/15ths?
Page two of the recommendations were also heavily weighted to match a recent purchase, but this time the recommendations included The Iliad, The Odessey, Plato’s Republic, and works by Saint Augustine, Aristophanes, Euripides, Aeschylus, and Epictetus. The seed book for that seems to have been Peloponnesian War by Thucidides.
Page three appears to be an attempt to patch between the first two pages — Xenophon and several SF books by David Weber, John Ringo, George R.R. Martin, David Drake, and Tom Kratman.
July 22, 2011
On the Silver Anniversary of the publication of the Vorkosigan saga
The members of the Lois McMaster Bujold mailing list were delighted to present a special present to Lois on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first book in the series:
A Reader’s Companion to A Civil Campaign (PDF)
As John Lennard, co-editor of ARCACC wrote:
Ladies, Gentlemen, and all other persons, cats, dogs, squirrels, elephants, and butterbugs.
Yestermonth the Vorkosigan Saga turned 25 glorious years old. Yes, despite their own convictions on these matters, and relative fictional aliveness or otherwise, Aral, Cordelia, Konstantin Bothari, Barrayar itself, and even Miles (dating from a twinkle in Lois’s and Cordelia’s eyes) have hit their quarter-century. It also means that Lois has been putting up with our readerly burbles and spats for longer than seems possible.
[Fanfare. Extraordinary and prolonged fireworks spelling out an enormous THANK YOU, LOIS draw admiring oohs and aahs from all present.]
And by way of a less ephemeral thank-you to Lois for thus entertaining, challenging, amusing, delighting, instructing, and generally vivifying us all, I the Birthday Tixie hereby present to her on behalf of everyone who has been, is, or will be a member of this List, A Reader’s Companion to A Civil Campaign. This work of scholarly erudition and critical acumen has been compiled by many members, that they and the hordes of future Bujold readers may better understand the art, craft, wisdom, allusion, quotation, generic engineering, neologisms, and incomparable one-liners that make a Vorkosiverse novel an endless delight ; and it is presented with warm and fuzzy feelings of gratitude laced with admiration, awe, and a beverage of choice now held high in approbation.
Lois, legentes te salutant!
July 20, 2011
Heinlein’s influence on the evolution of the libertarian movement
In a post to correct an assertion by SF author David Brin, Eric S. Raymond shows just how influential the writings of Robert Heinlein were to the early libertarian movement:
Robert Heinlein was a complex man whose views evolved greatly over time. The Heinlein of 1942, who put into the mouth of one of his characters the line “Naturally food is free! What kind of people do you take us for?” was only five years on from having been enchanted by social credit theory, which underpins his “lost” novel For Us, The Living; in later years he was so embarrassed by this enthusiasm that he allowed that manuscript to molder in a drawer somewhere, and it was only published after his death.
Between 1942 and 1966 Heinlein’s politics evolved from New Deal left-liberalism towards what after 1971 would come to be called libertarianism. But that way of putting it is actually misleading, because Heinlein did not merely approach libertarianism, he played a significant part in defining it. His 1966 novel The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress was formative of the movement, with the “rational anarchist” Bernardo de la Paz becoming a role model for later libertarians. By 1978, we have direct evidence (from an interview in Samuel Edward Konkin’s New Libertarian magazine, among other sources) that Heinlein self-identified as a libertarian and regretted his earlier statism.
But if Heinlein’s overall politics changed considerably and wandered down some odd byways during his lifetime, his uncompromising support of civilian firearms rights was a constant on display throughout his life. Brin observes that was already true in 1942, but attempts to attribute this position to John W. Campbell. Multiple lines of evidence refute this claim.
[. . .]
(When time has given us perspective to write really good cultural histories of the 20th century, Heinlein is going to look implausibly gigantic. His achievements didn’t stop with co-inventing science fiction and all its consequences, framing post-1960s libertarianism, energizing the firearms-rights movement, or even merely inspiring me to become the kind of person who not only could write The Cathedral and the Bazaar but had to. No. Heinlein also invented much of the zeitgeist of the 1960s counterculture through his novel Stranger In A Strange Land; it has been aptly noted that he was the only human being ever to become a culture hero both to the hippies of Woodstock and the U.S. Marine Corps. I am told that to this day most Marine noncoms carry a well-thumbed copy of Starship Troopers in their rucksacks.)
July 12, 2011
Dealing with irritations: two varieties
First up, Charles Stross is questioned about his “credentials” by a budding scholar:
From: numpty#@gmail.comHello, I’m citing your work for a debate article I’m using about space colonization and how it is improbable. I do need credentials however, and I’ve yet to find them online. If you could reply with your credentials that’d be great.
(I assume he’s talking about this; it’s all over the internet, triggered a firestorm, and I keep getting gimme emails from content farms asking to reprint it.)
From: meI’m a novelist, not an academic. If you want credentials, go look me up in wikipedia.
From: numpty#@gmail.comYour time is clearly very valuable, as you would rather argue with me over this than simply take a minute or two to state your credentials. Furthermore, I have no need to know the extent of your writings, I simply need to know if you are indeed certified to be considered a credible source on the topic. For instance, if your credible knowledge is on the topic of slaads and borrowing from George R. R. Martin, you are not considered a credible source on space colonization. So let me just ask you this, why should I believe your article has any rational basis, when for all I know now is your true expertise lies in the githyanki.
And in another instance, Dark Water Muse has to deal with a clueless telephone solicitation:
I had the privilege today of being phoned by fraudsters phishing for access to my computer. This is the second time I’ve received this type of call and I’ve used the same response in both cases. Try it, it’s fun.
[The phone rings. callee answers the phone.]
Callee: Hello?
[several seconds pass before the background noises of a busy call centre can be heard]
Caller [affected by a thick South Asian accent]: Hello?
Callee: Hello??
Caller: can I speak to Mr…uhhh…Goon…please?
June 27, 2011
Bodyhacking is closer than you may think
An occasional meme in science fiction stories is someone being able to control the actions of another using remote control. We may be closer to that, um, “vision” than we expect:
Now that pacemakers are to be loaded with firewalls and bionic-man body parts are appearing on production lines, the concept of body hacking has become a spooky possibility. Researchers in Japan have begun to try to teach people how to play instruments by remotely controlling their hands.
Developed by the University of Tokyo and Sony Computer Science Labs, the aptly named PossessedHand stimulates muscles that move our digits, New Scientist reports.
A belt with 28 electrode pads is strapped to the arm, sending signals to the joints between the three bones of each finger, with two for the thumb.
June 24, 2011
Even with the Post Office on strike, deliveries must be made
Just before lunch, the UPS guy dropped off a couple of books from my latest Amazon.ca order:
That’s The Declaration of Independents: How libertarian politics can fix what’s wrong with America by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, and Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi. Now I’m just waiting for Rule 34 by Charles Stross to complete the order.
June 12, 2011
Second excerpt from Rule 34 by Charles Stross
Charles is posting a few excerpts from his soon-to-be-released new book Rule 34. This is the second in the series.
The first part included a definition of that obscure phrase “a two-wetsuit job”:
A two-wetsuit job means kinky beyond the call of duty. [. . .] Back in the naughty noughties a fifty-one-year-old Baptist minister was found dead in his Alabama home wearing not one but two wet suits and sundry bits of exotic rubber underwear, with a dildo up his arse. (The cover-up of the doubly-covered-up deceased finally fell before a Freedom of Information Act request.)
It’s not as if it’s like isnae well-known in Edinburgh, city of grey stone propriety and ministers stern and saturnine (with the most surprising personal habits). But propriety — and the exigencies of service under the mob of puritanical arseholes currently in the ascendant in Holyrood — dictates discretion. If Jase is calling it openly, it’s got to be pretty blatant. Excessively blatant. Tabloid grade, even.
June 7, 2011
Charles Stross previews Rule 34
It’s due in the stores soon, but if you want a quick preview, Charles Stross has posted the first chapter of his new novel Rule 34 on his personal website:
“Rule 34” should be showing up in shops in 33-35 days (depending where you live). By kind consent of the publishers, I’m able to give you a sneak preview of the first few chapters. So I’m going to roll them out on consecutive Fridays. Here’s the opening. (Note that this is carved out of the final manuscript; there will be some minor differences from the published text — typos fixed in the proof stage, mainly.)
June 2, 2011
It actually does explain why the “prequels” sucked
H/T to Cory Doctorow for the link.
May 16, 2011
A disturbing possible future: nanolaw
Paul Ford writes about a morning in the near future:
My daughter was first sued in the womb. It was all very new then. I’d posted ultrasound scans online for friends and family. I didn’t know the scans had steganographic thumbprints. A giant electronics company that made ultrasound machines acquired a speculative law firm for many tens of millions of dollars. The new legal division cut a deal with all five Big Socials to dig out contact information for anyone who’d posted pictures of their babies in-utero. It turns out the ultrasounds had no clear rights story; I didn’t actually own mine. It sounds stupid now but we didn’t know. The first backsuits named millions of people, and the Big Socials just caved, ripped up their privacy policies in exchange for a cut. So five months after I posted the ultrasounds, one month before my daughter was born, we received a letter (back then a paper letter) naming myself, my wife, and one or more unidentified fetal defendants in a suit. We faced, I learned, unspecified penalties for copyright violation and theft of trade secrets, and risked, it was implied, that my daughter would be born bankrupt.
But for $50.00 and processing fees the ultrasound shots I’d posted (copies attached) were mine forever, as long as I didn’t republish without permission.
H/T to Kevin Marks, retweeted by Cory Doctorow for the link.
