Science Fiction Updates!

A majority of recent postings have to do with either our dire political landscape or else updates on many aspects of science that show how wondrous it is to be part of a real civilization, looking ahead to the future.

Which of course is always pioneered by science fiction!  And so, with the Seattle World Science Fiction Convention looming in August... and COMICON even sooner (!)... let's dive into that pioneering realm. Starting with this acceptance speech by deservedly installed SFWA Grand Master Nicola Griffith, in which she relates how SF -- always more enlightened in any decade than other genres of a given time -- persuaded her that ancient injustices can be overcome. 

... And leading off the same recording, Nebulas MC Erin Roberts amazed with perspectives that were passionate, amusing, unpolemical and insightful. She's the real deal that's needed now, more than ever. 

Though speaking of the real deal, amazing rising star Martha Wells will be Author Guest of Honor at the Seattle Worldcon. A genuine Kwizats Haderach... in the best interpretation of the term.

...though maybe I shouldn't apply DUNE references so blithely! Because wow. Damien Walter offers a fantastic video exploring implications and messages of DUNE. And how Frank Herbert’s message - against dark age feudalism - got buried under Frank’s spectacular mastery of point-of-view, resulting in millions actually yearning for one of the most oppressive and nasty societies ever depicted in a human mythology. This is one of the best pod-videos I've seen all year and hugely important for our time.

Though maybe I am biased.

And now we veer into my own corner....

     == News from the Briniverse ==

Long-awaited! My 1st novel -SUNDIVER - never had a hardcover edition, till now!

Phantasia Press has issued a special, limited edition, finely-bound with interiors and gorgeous cover, all by the epic artist Jim Burns! Not cheap. But if you want a lovely edition with quality to survive several geological epochs...;-) 

And more terrific sci fi news!  A Thrilling new Time-Travel Adventure from Amazing Selects - an imprint of Amazing Stories…  Boondoggle by Tom Easton and Torion Oey.

The year 2340 was looking pretty good—by 2346, not so much. Saboteurs are running wild on a distant space station, threatening a fragile interstellar alliance. To stop them, Project Hourglass reaches back through time to assemble an unlikely team of problem solvers.

Meet 14-year-old Artie Conan Doyle, snatched from 1879 before he ever dreams up Sherlock Holmes. Irene Kennealy, pulled from 2025 in the middle of her science fair project. Twins Siondra and Tony Pantala, yanked from 2029—along with, by accident, three teenage roughnecks and a fearless beagle pup named Tuffy. Their mission? Uncover the truth behind the sabotage, navigate whispers of alien conspiracies, and survive as members of their team start disappearing. Can a band of time-traveling teens (and one scrappy dog) prevent an all-out war?

The game is afoot, and the future is at stake!  

And soon MORE Out of Time novels for teen readers... or those who held onto their inner teen!  Like Raising The Roof, by R. James Doyle (teens plus a smart octopus explore and save the day, deep under the ice of a Europa-type ocean moon!) 

     

And Snowdance by the legendary Allen Steele and newcomer Robin Orm Hansen (youths from across space and especially TIME must save an Earthling colony that's been hit hard by unexpected winter plus raids by mysterious beings. 

With two more in queue - bringing us to nine books - you have your full meal of thoughtful adventures and cool characters from both past and future!

== More sci fi news! ==

Of course this movie ‘trailer for STARTIDE RISING is amateurish, but still way-fun.

We already made (much more impressive and fun) 'trailers' for EXISTENCE, Glory Season, Heart of the Comet, Life Eaters, Otherness and others. These could be given AI animation and voices pretty easily. See them on my website. Now? Working with my agent etc. on animated storyboards for KILN PEOPLE and 'The Tumbledowns'!

The gorgeous collector's hardcover of DUNE, by Earthling Publications, features my - well - perspicacious introduction.

And a new, special hardcover edition of the 1959 classic novel about nuclear aftermath ALAS BABYLON has been published by Centipede Press, with a new introduction by yours truly. Only 50 of 500 copies remain.

And Centipede will soon publish a magnificent edition of GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE, also with an extensive introduction by yours, truly.

From The Portalist: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the 1990s. "The '90s were a special time for speculative fiction."  Earth made the list, along with Snowcrash, The Difference Engine and Doomsday Book. 

== And more news? ==

One some of you cited THE UPLIFT WAR, in sending in this news!  Field workers had long reported on chimps seeking and sharing slightly fermented/alcoholic fruit in the wild. Lubricating social interactions with a slight buzz. Anyone recall my character Fiben and the dance-party scene in The Uplift War? ;-) Which BTW is a Hugo winner.

We just watched on Netflix an animated miniseries by my brilliant colleague Ken Liu – Pantheon.  It posits that AI – the current fad – will be superseded by UI – Uploaded human minds. Good writing and layered. With some of the nuance about uploading that are in Robin Hanson’s nonfiction (sort of) book THE AGE OF EM.

Astronomer Andrew Fraknoi penned an interesting and well-written story about asteroid miners encountering a ‘lurker’ alien probe in the Belt.  If you’d like a cool scenario totally consistent with my novel EXISTENCE.  

OH! If you missed my serialized sci fi comedy novel entitled THE ANCIENT ONES… here’s a link to the first 8 or so chapters with lovely illustrations. Come by for light puns, or despicable ones!  Or just to smile.

And finally... the best for last... see inteviewed one of the finest young scholars of sci fi, having resurrected from obscurity one of the greatest technology storyists of the 1880s, for everyone to enjoy once more.

If you won't listen to Paine, or Adam Smith, or Marx, or history - this fellow might scare the Dickens... And Are There ANY Republican stand-ups?

 I've long urged friends and acquaintances who are on the more privileged side of life – specifically those who rationalize that today’s Republican Party still bears even a vestigial connection to patriotism, or market competition, or even sanity – to reconsider the wisdom of killing the goose that has laid all of their golden eggs: a mixed society that’s been vested – ever since the WWII generation – in science, infrastructure, rule-of-law, rising-tolerance, pragmatic negotiation, respect-for-facts and - above all - a thriving/dominant middle class. 

Is a return to 6000 years of feudalism, as pushed by heirs of Stalin -- plus a world cabal of inheritance brats – truly in their long term interest?

 

These fellows – who seem to think the American Revolution was inspired by Edmund Burke or Dr. Phil, instead of Thomas Paine – deem themselves to be smart guys. Yet my parents – and even laborers and cabbies of the 1940s – had more vocabulary and understanding of Adam Smith, or Karl Marx, or John Locke, or the U.S. Founders than any of the tech-bros or ‘investment economists’ I know. 

 

Having grown up in a Rooseveltean society that carefully dispelled the incantations of Marx, by use of science, infrastructure, rule-of-law, tolerance, and a thriving/dominant middle class, many rich fools now assume they can reverse all of those miracles – and the greatest wealth-generation the world ever saw -- yet somehow remain safe from Old Karl’s revived spectre.

 

They can’t. But it seems they must learn it the hard way...

... by waging all-out war vs. the one clade that stands in the way of their lordly ambitions – all of the fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. 

 

The very same professional castes who know bio, nano, cyber, nuclear and all the rest. And who will not take kindly to being oppressed and immiserated, along with a working class that is driven to proletarian wrath. Those are the millions who are targeted, beyond headlined travesties toward poor immigrants.

 

As if absolutely determined to hire a tumbrel ride, these 'elite' fools seem incapable – and too incurious – ever to study basic things that my parents’ generation discussed in detail, while working with the Greatest Generation’s hero – FDR – to cancel what then seemed an inevitable communist revolution. Veering society instead toward something more complex and successful and diverse and responsible and free. 

Alas, the hedge parasites, petro princes, monopolists, tech-bros, inheritance brats and kremlin "ex" commissars wallow in flatterers, rather than lifting their heads to study what worked.

 

And so, as nest-trashing greed sends wealth disparities skyrocketing past French Revolution levels, we must seek another voice who might be persuasive.

 Charles Dickens had the right of this:

Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six
tumbrils carry the day’s wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and
insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are
fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France,
with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a
peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain
than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape
once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same
tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression
over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.
...

Shall I put it in simpler language? When flatterers persuade you to close off every civilized form of redress, then what do you expect to be the reaction? 

That we’ll go meekly to the concentration camps? Here’s a musical riff for you that pre-dates Les Miserables:

 

Allons enfants de la patrie… 

…do you hear across the land those 

who would engorge upon our children?

 

Watch that scene in Casablanca. 

Then look up the words behind the anger! 

Leading to the second stanza’s fulmination… 

It’s us who they’d dare to 
Return to ancient slavery!

 

Stanza, schmanza. 

If it ever truly comes to the refrain… Aux armes, citoyens!...

... it will be too late for you would-be lords to negotiate, or to win a deal. 

 

We know the location and schematics of every prepper bunker. 

 

And your Uber-Tumbrels driver is almost there.

 

 ----

----

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== An important lagniappe: Do the Re-Register Gambit! ==

 

 Following up on a perennial question.  Are there ANY high Rrepublicans who are clearly NOT blackmailed Kremlin agents, but have tried to stand up to the madness that has taken over the Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan? 

Here is the comprehensive alphabetical list of all U.S. Senators and House Republicans since 2015 who either voted against Trump in key moments (impeachment, election certification, Jan 6 commission) or retired/resigned rather than face MAGA pressure—covering every state with at least one such member:

---

 Senators

Bill Cassidy (LA) – Voted to convict Trump (2021)

Bob Corker (TN) – Retired post-Trump clashes

Ben Sasse (NE) – Resigned to academia

Lisa Murkowski (AK) – Survived, rank-choice  Still independent critic

Mitt Romney (UT) – Retiring, impeachment votes  Continues open criticism

Pat Toomey (PA) – Voted to convict (2021)

Richard Burr (NC) – Voted to convict (2021)

Susan Collins (ME) – Voted to convict, survived

Thom Tillis (NC) – Retired post-clashes

---

 House of Representatives

Adam Kinzinger (IL) – Retired post-impeachment  Still fighting Trump publicly

Anthony Gonzalez (OH) – Voted to impeach (2021)

Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) – Remained, dissenting votes

Dave Trott (MI) – Retired, became Independent

Fred Upton (MI) – Retired post-impeachment  Occasional public critic

Jeff Flake (AZ) – Retired anti-Trump  Occasional public critic

John Katko (NY) – Retired post-impeachment

Justin Amash (MI) – Left GOP, retired, Independent run  Independent-minded

Ken Buck (CO) – Resigned early dissent  Continues criticism of Trump

Liz Cheney (WY) – Ousted, primary loss  Actively fighting Trump

Mike Gallagher (WI) – Resigned impeachment dissent

Paul Mitchell (MI) – Left GOP, retired 2021

Peter Meijer (MI) – Primaryed post-impeachment

 

Notice how how many have been driven out of office? And this doesn't include the THREE Republican Congressmen who declared or alluded that their party is rife with "orgies" - (think the film Eyes Wide Shut) - that lead inevitably to blackmail. (And blackmail is the ONLY theory that explains 20 years of Republican behavior.)

Will these folks join Romney and GOP former Crown Prince Paul Ryan in finally, finally gathering a True Republican Party? Or else (shudder) join Elon's latest whimsey?

Not likely.  

FAR better? If millions of Dems and Independents who live in gerrymandered GOP districts should re-register as Republicans!  Hold your nose and do it! It would:

- protect you from being accidentally purged from voter rolls before November 2026!

- utterly mess up their calculations!

- let you vote in the only election that matters in your district - the Republican primary. And thus give a chance to some moderate adult, reducing gerrymander-induced radicalization.

Hold your nose and do it!  And spread word.

 

 

To make next July 4 a true Independence Day - How About a Little Paine? Thomas Paine.

==  Americans hate history ==

Half of us are too future-obsessed to care much about dusty past dates and dustier past 'heroes.' The other half wrap themselves in nostalgic just-so stories, in order to justify their present-day obsessions. That divide crosses party lines, though more one or the other. But that's not the point, which is that...

 

...modern Americans tend to be ignoramuses about stuff that really matters. My parents - and laborers and taxi drivers - could quote Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Adam Smith and Marx. Today, do young folks even know Groucho?

 

It really does matter, as to whether we can save the American Experiment. Because you will help the current struggle better - in this era of benighted, shallow education - if you actually know something. 

For example, can any of you call to mind words by Thomas Paine, who almost single-handedly rallied the dispirited American Revolutionaries amid their deepest despair, during times that try men's souls?*

(Here you go, making the assignment just a bit easier to swallow.)

And yes... this could be practically useful. Maybe Paine will help you to slap sense into those 'summer soldiers' you know. Supposed liberals who are throwing up their hands and wailing in smug resignation that all-is-lost!

Again, we need reminders that today’s crises ‘rhyme’ with the past. 

Because none of this is without precedent. The very same cultural/psychological rift has riven the USA since 1778, when Cornwallis knew he'd find more romantics - more loyalists to the King - down south. 

The 1860s "Civil War" was only Phase Four out of eight or nine times this basic culture rift has erupted. See Civil War Phases. 

This current phase differs in some ways -- former issues of independence or slavery are now replaced by immigration, and zillionaire lucre-grabbing, and KGB puppetry... but above-all anti-modernist hatred toward every single fact-using profession, from science and law all the way to the US military officer corps. (Watch any evening of Fox and you'll see; the main theme is spite toward smartaleck professionals.) 

Moreover, this time the confederates have found the foreign backers that Jeff Davis couldn’t, back in the 1860s. In their pal, “ex” commissar Putin and his “ex” KGB and “ex” commie oligarchs and their petro-prince and inheritance-brat allies. 

Oh, and sure, the Union's nadir is deeper, this time, than it was even in 1862, as this time the Confederacy captured Washington D.C. -- and is now dismantling every single strength that made America, since 1945, the greatest nation of all ages.

Of course, it will not stand. Whether our path ahead starts with a General Strike by all of the nation's smart people -- and 100 million others who are wise enough to value smart people...

 

...or else a critical mass of vestigially-loyal conservatives wake up to realize that they are killing the goose that laid all their golden eggs... 

 

...or leaks gush from the mountain of blackmail kompromat that keeps GOP politicians in-line... 

 

... however it happens, we'll be back! (As one of those vestigially loyal Rebublicans would say)...

 

...  though it must begin with the Union getting new generals, as it did in 1863. Leaders capable of devising fresh tactics.

 

It could start by rediscovering Thomas Paine! If any of you have any spine, curiosity, attention span or ANY sense of history, go now and read The American Crisis and Common Sense! The two short pamphlets that inspired those first US revolutionaries -- wet and shivering by a frozen river -- to stand back up and shout "No Kings!" 

 

You might also rediscover Frederick Douglass, while you are at it... before it's too late and we must (alas) rediscover John Brown.

== Or rediscover the same spirit in sci fi! ==

Or start with Robert Heinlein, who denounced precisely this exact same recurring cult madness! 

 “It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is Communism or Holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue."

Do follow the link and see more about how Heinlein -- too long maligned as some kind of right-winger fanatic -- was keenly aware -- and worried -- about the fascist/confederate/know-nothing, modernity-hating side of America's deeply rifted character. Its forever cultural schism!

"Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negrosim, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening – particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington."

Jiminy!  Heinlein wrote that in the early 1950s! Is there anything he did not hit right on the head? Heck, he even nailed the dominionist "Prosperity Gospel" so popular among Ted Cruz types, promising fervid followers that their "material heaven here on earth" will come by righteously seizing the property of unbelievers. (Late note: a prosperity gospel preacher keynotes Donald Trump's inauguration.)

In Heinlein's Future History, America's "Crazy Years" were followed by a vicious theocracy. One that Margaret Atwood directly cribbed for The Handmaid's Tale. One that - in his SF timeline - we only manage to escape through a REVOLT IN 2100.

Oh, I have confidence it won't take that long. Though now we must gird ourselves for a tough fight.

== But it will happen ==

Right now, the confederate side of American nature -- anti-modernity since the 1770s -- cannot conceive that their blue neighbors have any gumption or guts. But they should consider what Sam Houston said, when he urged Texans not to join the Confederacy, in 1861. That:

 “Our Northern cousins are cooler in spirit and slower to anger, but when finally roused will respond with implacable momentum.”

Texans ignored his wisdom, as today’s MAGAs ignore the utter illogic of waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.

 But you can point this out: 

"Hey neighbors. Fact folks – (call us ‘nerds’) – are cooler in spirit. (And those who own guns keep them locked-up.) But fortunately, America won most civil war phases, when confederate fevers raged… and after winning, delivered ‘malice toward none and charity for all.’ 

A neighborly kindness that will NOT be shown to us, if the Project 2025 Trumpist brownshirts win.

So go ahead and march and chant and wave signs. 

Perhaps spread word about the coming, inevitable, General Strike by every fact using profession of folks who actually know stuff.

 

 The confeds'll sneer: "So? who will process and deliver your food?"

 

 And you'll answer: "A doctor can drive a truck and the folks sending you electricity can kill and pluck chickens. Let's see you do the opposite."

 

Still, we will never win without new generals, as when the Union moved from 1862 to 1863. 

 

And YOU will play no role in devising new tactics, till you try. Please try. Start by actually studying the context, the history, the basis for it all.

== Pictures are more persuasive ==

Look at the faces of Trump & Lavrov & Kisliak in January 2017, Trump's first guests in the Oval Office, long before any ally, giggling that the USA had fallen to them. Read the caption. And remember Trump raving that he "fell in love' with Kim Jong Un. And none of you can name - on a bet - any serious action by old Two Scoops that ever set back even a single interest or desire or command of Vladimir Putin, as he steadily rebuilds the USSR.

 

What would Reagan think?

This is why almost all of DT's former national security folks, from Defense and State to intel agencies to serving officers called him a direct threat to the nation. 

Those folks will all be arrested, across the next year. And already, among all of Trump's appointments, there will be no further 'adults in the room.

The adults will have to be us. In a coalition that values the pragmatic return of law and facts and tolerance and progress... but also grit. The grit that's always core to being Blue.

====

====

====

* Or were you so triggered that I quoted Paine using the word "men's" that it drove all else from your mind? Proving that you... yes exactly you... are the problem that shattered Kamala's coalition and put us in this mess.  Exactly you.

Missing contexts for AI: The context of mental damage

Okay, the secret is out. David Brin is writing a book about AI. In fact, it is 3/4 done, enough to offer it to publishers. But more crucially, to start posting bits on-blog, getting feedback from the smartest community online.

And hence, here is a small portion of my chapter on the missing contexts that are (almost) never mentioned in discussions about these new life forms we're creating. I mean:

- The context of Natural Ecosystems and Evolution across the last four billion years...

- The context of a million years of human evolution out of pre-sapience, to become what's still the only known exemplar of 'intelligent life'...

- The context of 6000 years of human agricultural civilization with cities... during which nearly every society fell into a pattern of governance called feudalism, which almost always ensured grotesque stupidity...

- The context of our own, very recent and tenuous escape from that trap, called the 200 year Enlightenment Experiment...

- The context of science itself and how it works. So well that we got to this critical phase of veritable co-creation.

- The context of parenthood...

- and for tonight's posting. The context of human mental illness.

== Just one example of 'hallucination' gone wild ==

 Researchers at Anthropic and AI safety company Andon Labs performed a fascinating experiment recently. They put an instance of Claude Sonnet 3.7 in charge of an office vending machine, with a mission to make a profit, equipped it with a web browser capable of placing product orders and where customers could request items. It had what it thought was contract human workers to come and physically stock its shelves (which was actually a small fridge). 

While most customers were ordering snacks or drinks — as you’d expect from a snack vending machine — one requested a tungsten cube. Claudius loved that idea and went on a tungsten-cube stocking spree, filling its snack fridge with metal cubes. It also tried to sell Coke Zero for $3 when employees told it they could get that from the office for free. It hallucinated a Venmo address to accept payment. 

Then things got weirder. And then way-weirder.

== What can these weirdnesses tell us? ==

 

The thing about these hallucinatory episodes with Large Language Models is that we have yet another seldom-discussed context.  That of Mental Illness.

 

Most of you readers have experienced interaction with human beings who are behaving in remarkably similar ways.  Many of us had friends or family members who have gone through harsh drug trips, or suffered concussions, or strokes. It is very common – and often tragically so – that the victim retains full abilities to vocalize proper, even erudite, sentences. Only, those sentences tend to wander. And the drug-addled or concussed or stroke victim can sense that something is very wrong. So they fabulate. They make up back-stories to support the most recent sentences. They speak of nonexistent people, who might be 'standing' just out of view, even though long dead. And they create ‘logical’ chains to support those back-stories. 

Alas, there is never much consistency. more than a few sentences deep…

 

…which is exactly what we see in LLM fabulation. Articulate language skill and what seem to be consistent chains, from one statement to the next. Often aimed at placating or mollifying or persuading the real questioner. But no overall awareness that they are building a house of tottering cards.

 

Except that – just like a stroke victim – there often does seem to be awareness that something is very wrong. For the fabulations and hallucinations begin to take on an urgency -- even a sense of desperation. One all-too similar to the debilitated humans so many of us have known.

 

What does this mean? 

Well, it suggests that we are creating damaged entities. Damaged from the outset. Lacking enough supervisory capacity to realize that the overall, big picture doesn’t make sense. Worse – and most tragic-seeming – they exhibit the same inability to stop and say: “Something is wrong with me, right now. Won’t somebody help?”

Let me be clear. One of the core human traits has always been our propensity for personal delusion, for confusing subjectivity for objective reality. We all do it. And when it is done in art or entertainement, it can be among our greatest gifts! But when humans make policy decisions based solely on their own warped perceptions, you starts to get real problems. Like the grand litany of horrors that occurred across 6000 years of rule by kings or feudal lords, who suppressed the one way wise people correct mistakes. Through reciprocal criticism.

A theme we will return-to repeatedly, across this book.

 

Oh, some of the LLM builders can see that there’s a serious problem. That their ‘hyper-autocomplete’ systems lack any supervisorial oversight, to notice and correct errors. 

And so… since a man with a hammer will see every problem as a nail… they have begun layering “supervisory LLMs” atop the hallucinating LLMs! 

And so far – as of July 2025 – the result has been to increase rates of fabulation and error!

 

And hence we come away with two tentative conclusions.

 

First, that one of the great Missing Contexts in looking at AI is that of human mental failure modes!

 

And second, that maybe the language system of a functioning brain works best when it serves -- and is supervised by -- an entirely different kind of capability. One that provides common sense.

Later, I'll refer to my guess about that.  That two former rivals and giants in 'computers' may join forces to provide exactly the thing that LLMs cannot, by their fundamental nature, give us.

Something akin to sanity.