I've been mentioning that the TASAT Project is now up and running! A way that the very nerdiest readers of sci fi tales from the last 100 years might someday use their story-citing powers to save the world! Drop by to learn how. Or see my blip about it at-bottom.
And another classic updated and refreshed. Not genre, but akin.....John Perlin’s newly re-issued tome is a classic. A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization* is a deeply-moving and persuasive elegy to the vital importance of the natural world - the groves and prairies and seas. Not as alternatives to civilization, but as the lungs and sinews and beating heart that allow us - especially our glittering cities - to stand and gaze upward.
*I cited this one in Earth.
== Sci fi updates ==
SF epic poetry! Homer may be dead but not his spirit, as the mighty literary form of poetical epics lives on. The greatest such living bard would be Frederick Turner, whose topics include Genesis: the terraforming of Mars, or the rise of Artificial Intelligence, or the genetic engineering of our organic successors.
Another: Epoch: A Poetic Psy-Phi Saga, by Dave Jilk, is science fiction in the form of an epic poem, with the first fully human-level artificial intelligence telling its own story as a sort of memoir. The book turns much of current thinking on existential AI risk on its head, and raises some uncomfortable questions about humanity even as it lauds our accomplishments.
(Another mini epic poem by Ray Bradbury and J.V. Post is in Project Solar Sail!)
And there are updated movies. Oooh. The original is fine, but... I'm okay with plans afoot to remake the fine 80s sci fi flick Enemy Mine, based on Barry Longyear’s exquisite, Hugo-winning novella, which you can find on Amazon. (What I absolutely rebel against is the remake of perfect films. I mean carumba, leave Lawrence of Arabia alone!)
Flash fiction is a lovely exercise in rapid creation on the fly. I am pleased to recommend an allegorical fairy tale about a witch and a gargoyle.
== Sci Fi Roundup! ==
The mighty Kay Kenyon has finished her wonderfully entertaining series. Now available for pre-order, book 4, Keeper of the Mythos Gate, the exciting and moving conclusion to The Arisen Worlds. Publication, September 3. If you haven't checked out the series yet, dip in with this excerpt from Book 1.
Bruce Golden’s Evergreen centers around a mysterious artifact + themes of obsession, revenge, and redemption amid timber jockeys, uncouth frontier towns, and into the heart of an awareness so alien it defies common notions of "intelligent life."
One of the fine authors I’ve mentored in my Out of Time YA series (only teens can teleport through space and time!) is Torion Oey. His latest, a fantasy novel, is The Disgraced Mage.
Tales of the United States Space Force is a new combination of science fiction stories and fact articles about – or related to - America's newest military service branch. Space is critical to the economy and our whole modern way of life, and that makes it a target. Let this volume open some eyes. And one of my classics is included.
Winter 1962. A child is discovered in the frozen Oregon woods. Mute and feral, wandering lost, naked and near death… and not entirely human. Nonesuch Man: an illustrated novel by Steven Elkins.
Two of my out-of-print novels are now re-issued with fine new covers and fresh editing. Earth came in second for a Hugo and is on every “Top Ten Predictive Novels” list you can find. (See below!)
Also Glory Season is a Silverberg/Norton-style adventure on a world where human reproduction has been channeled down wholly new paths… with one of my favorite protagonists, plucky Maia! The trade paperbacks are luscious.
Terrific covers and Open Road allowed me to insert about 80 page breaks in Earth that give this edition a really classy look and feel. Don’t miss free chapters and trailers on my website.
== Stories that predicted well? ==
I mentioned predictive tales? Well, whenever exploring new territory, you might ask the natives? What profession spends a lot of time seeking and extrapolating on 'signals from the future?"
The top 10% of near future science fiction novels generally contain riffs to portray answers to the questions: "If this goes on..." or What if...?" From John Brunner's astonishingly prophetic 1968 books Stand on Zanzibar and The Shockwave Rider to Frederik Pohl and Ursula LeGuin and Nancy Kress... to my own Earth and Existence... to Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry of the Future, which has proved so influential that the UN is pondering naming a new agency after it.
Start here? 8 Books That Eerily Predicted the Future.
Which circles us back around to TASAT or There's A Story About That.
I blurted: "Suppose someday you encounter something strange - maybe very strange. You form a committee to look into it and give advice." (I have been on several such 'consultant rolladexes'.) "Shouldn't that committee have access to past ruminations that might have already explored similar ground? Tales that maybe poked at the first assumptions that you might mistakenly make, if you ever face a similar situation?"
The purpose of TASAT is to enroll folks who have read a lot of sci fi tales and who might be able to provide that very service! See the full explanation at TASAT.org!
Lately, the first beta testers have been citing past tales about tech-sabotage, that eerily foresaw the recent "pager caper" wherein explosives got inveigled into an adversary's unsuspecting hands. Citations included Eric Frank Russells's Wasp and Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You, but it goes back even a century!
The TASAT project has stumbled many times. Turns out we needed Mr. Todd Zimmerman, expert programmer, to finally make it happen. (Thank you, Todd!)
And now we're hoping many of you will try out TASAT in the current beta and give feedback... because who knows? You may be the one to cite a story that shakes a false assumption, and maybe thusly save us all!
== A final grumble ==
Okay, it still kinda hurts. But my tribute to the recently-late Vernor Vinge... my friend and one of the greats of science fiction - can be found here.
So, what’s my grumble? The travesty - also raised by Harry Turtledove - that one of the best and most visionary SF authors of all time – Vernor – was never named Grand Master of SFWA - the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.
(Hey, changing SFWA's name from the parochial 'of America' was long overdue.)
But as for neglecting Vernor - despite many campaigns on his behalf? No writhing excuse for this dismal spurning is anything other than masturbatory justification of pure bigotry, of the kind that George Orwell described in Homage to Catalonia. The same righteous circular firing squad behavior that demolished the left in the 1930s Spanish Civil War, opening up a path for Hitler & Mussolini. Or frippy fads like Nader and Stein, that led to the destructive presidencies of George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and could do it to us, again.
Likewise, it is – today – the very essence of self-destruction, narrowing, cauterizing and neutering what should be an inspiring and multi-directional literature of progress.
Was that a Heinlein-like, old man shouting-at-clouds grumble rant? Sure, but prove me wrong, in comments?
Or how about maybe let's try a gesture that will both re-establish some justice in our field and broaden -- rather than narrow-down -- a progressive, future-seeking coalition? It could begin with a simple act to honor one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time.
Nancy Kress for Grand Master of SF.
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Rant mode off, now. But always on standby mode. ;-)
Have a great weekend. And check your voter registration.
37 comments:
Here’s how the war on the “knowledge based professions” actually started https://thespectator.com/topic/scientific-american-making-mistake-endorsing-kamala-harris/
mcsandberg what stunning drool. The entire premise is that smart people are stupid. Sure, we all know that "High intelligence and knowledge don't automatically make you wise." That's a truth we all understand. But today's Kremlin-led cult to sabotage the West has converted that truth into the following:
"High intelligence and knowledge automatically make you unwise."
YWhen it is parsed that purely, you will shrink back and deny it. But that is EXACTLY the campaign pushed by the entire Fox-o-Sphere, in their 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.
Dig it. Universities have expanded to a point where there are valid criticisms needed now and it is time to provide many alternatives. NEVERTHELESS, our university systems have since 1945 been America's crown jewell, the central source of all our progress and might. And the massive propaganda campaign against them is always trackable to our enemies who seek to weaken us and bring back rule by inheritance brats.
Re: Vernor VInge
I never met him, nor even read any of his SF (until lately). To me, his name was always associated with advanced computation, often in the pages of ACM.
This week I was perusing some old FORTH code (not mine) that implemented a fairly extensive Theory of Mind (the holy grail of A.I. before all this generative hokum). Lo and behold, there was a reference to Vinge and his 'Singularity' term.
"Nancy Kress for Grand Master of SF.
Amen.
I personally discovered Nancy Kress when I read Murasaki, which I bought because of your story, Doc.
So, thanks for that.
Nonetheless, the editors of Scientific American did make the error of endorsing a political candidate. Not because they are stupid, but as Toby Young notes:
"More likely, I fear, is that the editors of Scientific American really do believe in the snake oil they’re selling. It’s not science they’re committed to, but scientism — a weird hybrid of technocratic managerialism and radical progressive ideology. If the modern era was made possible by the separation of knowledge and morality, the worshippers at this new altar seem determined to usher in a new post-modern utopia in which science and religion are fused once again. In that light, they cannot help but endorse Kamala Harris because their consciences won’t allow them to do otherwise. It’s not a choice dictated by science, but by theology. Trump, who gleefully trespasses over their sacred values, is the devil and they must stop him. The title of their magazine should be changed to Scientistic Americans."
Say, will there be a Kindle version of Project Solar Sail: 21st century edition? Space is at a premium and when travelling, I only use ebooks. Thanks.
Scientists endorsing Harris does not require them worshipping her. Trump is the enemy of science. Not just of the preeminent role scientists have in making policy, but of the very notion that evidence and facts can lead to a logical conclusion.
Endorsing Harris is a way of endorsing "not-Trump". From their POV (and mine), Trump must not be elected, therefore Harris must* . And it's not a matter of Democrats being in thrall to science or anything like that. Democrats, including Harris, will respect science and what it can do for us. Republicans don't.
It's not the scientists or the Democrats or the liberals who are the cultists.
* But of course, "therefore" implies a logical conclusion following from established facts learned by evidence--something your type of know-nothing doesn't accept. Good luck on a battlefield.
Conser did you try the book's website? Let us know here if you can't find an e-version.
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mcsandberg THANK YOU for perfectly illustrating the masturbation-incantation of the morons who desperately seek to justify their insane war on science. STEP UP NOW with $$$ wager stakes and one of us here will accompany you to the nearest research university and knock on twenty doors. to see if even one person matches your egregiously dumb and insulting slander.
Your incantation only applies to one very small (minuscule) clade of folks with a scientific background... members of your planet assassinating cult.
IF you knew any scientists at all, you'd know we are the most COMPETITIVE beings this species - this planet - ever produced. A young scientist only gets somewhere by finding some corner of a standard model and poking at it until something gives. And thus the model improves... or else is replaced.
In fact RIGHT NOW I demand that you name a fact-based profession that is not warred upon by Fox and whose members aren't fleeing your mad cult. (I can name one.)
Not just science but 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 latter, mostly lifelong republicans, can see that the party has become a Kremlin-serving treason cult. Few have become Democrats. But almost all have left the GOP madness and taken long showers.
"John Perlin’s newly re-issued tome is a classic. A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization* is a deeply-moving and persuasive elegy to the vital importance of the natural world - the groves and prairies and seas. Not as alternatives to civilization, but as the lungs and sinews and beating heart that allow us - especially our glittering cities - to stand and gaze upward."
Here's one example of a culture that adapts trees into their infrastructure rather than converting them (it's an oldie but a goodie): The living bridges of Meghalaya.
Hey mcsandberg. Where'd you go?
"The Word for World is Forest"
U K Leguin heard herself described as the most arboreal SF writer of her age, and mentioned in the preface to this story that 'some of us are still up here swinging'.
Pappenheimer
P.S. 'Science and religion are fused once again'.
Is that like the Republican (and, in Canada, the Conservative) Party, issuing fatwas forbidding the use of the words 'climate change' in official documents or using climate change forecasts in state planning? Or Project 2025 planning to dismantle NOAA and the NWS?
No, that's dismissing science on behalf of religion. Me, I'd say SA is acting in self-defense...
There are other examples, but I'm ex-USAF Weather, and this is not only ignoring the experts, but shutting them up. And down.
I found the Time list '8 books . . .' interesting for what was left out.
While the mechanisms may not be the same, I see real echoes of both 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale in play at the moment. And I find that terrifying rather than merely eerie.
Dr Brin in the main post:
What I absolutely rebel against is the remake of perfect films. I mean carumba, leave Lawrence of Arabia alone!
What mystifies me even more are re-makes of films whose surprise endings are universally known. Like what was the point of re-making The Stepford Wives when "Stepford Wife" has become shorthand already.
The debate is ended when the insults begin.
We've been living in Brave New World for so long that it's the book's "good" characters who seem hopelessly naive.
Yeah yeah yeah. The ideal mask for cowardice. YOU came here hurling insults at the entire field of science and all of its practitioners. Insults that are bald-faced lies. I challenged you to actual, actual tests of your baseless and insulting assertions.
Were you possessed of EITHER honor or curiosity, you would have been interested in pursuing those tests. e.g. goint with one of us to a nearby research university and knocking on 20 doors. But you can clearly see that any direct tests would reveal your assertions to be mere cult incantations.
Let's be clear. I enjoy brusque but fair debate. But I owe no courtesy to a person spreading general lie-calumnies against the topmost aspects of our era that actually "Made America Great." And as a scientist (the most-competitive of all professions) I sure as heck found your insults worthy of response.
You are directly part of a 'movement that is assassinating the planet and civilization that my children will need, to survive. That makes you unworthy of courtesy.
The Stepford remake was weird. The wives are hypmo-tized!. No they're clones! No, robots!.
he way to make wagers work between ADVERSARIES is to escrow the stakes in advance with a neutral party... as when men (actual men) give the stakes to the bartender to hold. Then they find a neutral and savvy adjudicator. I have proposed a RANDOMLY selected panel of senior retired military officers. Supremely fact oriented and hard for MAGAs to spurn. Thus cornered, an honest person reconsiders ridiculous stances, in order to preserve both honor and money! The dishonorable liars flee. And so far it is always, always flight.
I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t remake good movies, you should remake BAD ones…
I've been president of a couple of non-profits and I always advised the boards of trustees to avoid endorsing political candidates. Reason 1: you don't want to make enemies - if the opposing political party starts to view you as a partisan player you get stuck if that party gets into power. Reason 2: once you start endorsing somebody, you get pressured to join a coalition and you get pressured to take stands on issues that are irrelevant to your core mission.
I would gladly let political campaigns buy ad space in our fundraising flyers and we would only rarely refuse to let a group buy an ad. Don't make enemies if you don't have to.
"Scientism", a favorite flatearther word.
If I were still president of a non-profit, I would probably recommend against running ads for any political candidates; the environment is just too toxic. I think Harris is a better candidate and would be a better functioning President, but if the board let the Harris campaign buy an advertisement and if the Trump campaign demonstrated its usual incompetence and failed to buy an ad, this might piss off the MAGA right. Better not to accept money from any of them.
Someone (Niven?) said Heinlein's prediction of the arms race in Solution Unsatisfactory (1941) was the best prediction ever.
Don,
iirc, that story got Mr Heinlein an Official Visit.
He and Bertrand Russell (separately) came up with the most obvious solution - an international gov't with a monopoly on nukes, a UN with big teeth. I don't think there was ever a window for that. It makes too much sense for the human species to adopt.
Pappenheimer
@Hugh groups like the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) are explicitly neutral in political allegiance.
It doesn't stop them issuing score cards on certain desired policies (eg stronger nature laws, fossil fuel reduction)
It doesn't stop certain parties, whose policies score poorly , from sharpening the axe. Morrison sought to exclude all environmental groups from charity status.
The group I led for a brief time had the good sense to split into a 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 leaving one part able to studiously avoid politics while the sister org could dabble as long as they didn't appear to be too partisan.
I get SciAm's motivation, though. This is one of those times in history where the next generation of kids is going to ask people who were here "Why did you stay silent?" No future org will do well with a 'collaborator' label pinned to it. Same goes for 'coward' most likely.
Another (fictional) example of arboreal architecture comes from my current interest. The game Horizon: Forbidden West features the Utaru tribal village of Plainsong. Situated at what's left of the Very Large Array in NM, the Utaru have bolstered and interwoven the remains of some of the radio telescope dishes with vines and banyan trees. The result is a sight to behold!
if the board let the Harris campaign buy an advertisement and if the Trump campaign demonstrated its usual incompetence and failed to buy an ad, this might piss off the MAGA right. Better not to accept money from any of them.
Isn't that how democracy dies? "Let's not piss off the Brownshirts or they might go from terrorizing everyone else to noticing us."
Singing my song.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Sep23-2.html
Groups like this ["Uncommitted", an Abandon-Biden-over-Gaza group] , especially on the "left," have a lot of trouble handling situations where you get a choice between a candidate who is bad (from your point of view) and one who is truly horrendously awful. They don't get it that going for "bad" may not feel good but gets you a better result than truly horrendously awful.
I am still pissed that in Ohio, the Senate Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC paid $2.7 million in the GOP primary to support the worst Republican contender, Bernie Moreno.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/us/politics/moreno-trump-democrats-ohio.html
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/ohio-senate-race-democrats-supporting-trump-endorsed-bernie-moreno.html
This type of nonsense is legal but it is immoral and wrong. I won't argue for it to be made illegal...I don't know if that is possible. But we end up with the possibility that the plan can fail and you end up with a terrible person in office.
Irony is, Moreno is now leading Sharrod Brown in the polls even though the independent PACs supporting Brown are flooding the airwaves and social media with very effective ads showing how terrible Moreno is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/20/opinion/trump-elon-musk-twitter-x.html
What Trump Did to the G.O.P., Musk Did to Twitter
That headline reminds me of the line from Mel Brooks's version of To Be Or Not To Be, spoken by a Nazi general to Brooks's disguised character, not realizing that he's talking about the actor he's speaking to:
"...and what he does to Shakespeare, we did to Poland."
"John Brunner's astonishingly prophetic 1968 books Stand on Zanzibar and The Shockwave Rider" - and "The Sheep Look Up" his novel on environmental collapse, which was almost prophetic. Global Warming wasn't on anyone's radar back in the 70s so it doesn't get much mention (though unusually hot days and weird weather like snow in Paris in August) are mentioned. His emphasis was on chemical pollution of air. water and soil along with species decimation, dead seas (the Med and the Baltic are lifeless), beaches ringed with trash, crop failures from insecticide resistant pests, drug resistant diseases, etc.. But his description of the government and wealthy elite responses (more right wing repression and foreign wars along with guarded and fortified wealthy communities) was spot on.
@GMT,
I can't help but notice that whenever you object to bad behavior that is not actually prohibited but that you wish would be discouraged, it's always in the context of telling Democrats not to harm Republicans. I don't recall you inveighing against your state's including text on the ballot's anti-gerrymandering provision which claims it to be a pro-gerrymandering provision. Or North Carolina actually delaying the printing of ballots (and foreshortening early voting) in defiance of actual state law in order to remove RFK Jr after the deadline for doing so.
As far as I'm concerned, Republicans can take the beam out of their own eye before complaining about the mote in Democrats' eye.
...though I will admit that your "Careful, it may backfire" argument has merit.
DP... Harry Harrison's MAKE ROOM! did the Greenhouse warming and so did the resulting movie SOYLENT GREEN.
Hudh (GMT) Of course the behavior you describe is unpalatable.... as is the very notion that Indiana and Ohio run their electric grid off the spinning in the graves of 50,000 ancestors who fought for the Union wearing blue, against an earlier phase of confederate madness.
I do wonder to what degree your media sources exaggerate this electoral sabotage attempt. But even if it is true, the fault lies in insanely partisan election laws perpetrated by party machines... but nowhere as brutally and systematically as in red states, where gerrymandering and other tricks have rendered the general election moot, compared with primaries that are rigged to favor extremists.
A majority of blue states have ended gerrymandering - often via rebellions by blue voters against blue party leaders. In California we have the best election laws in the nation. Except for President and a couple of other offices, it matters not a whit what party you are "in." The primary is a 1st-round. Every candidate is listed and every voter votes, so that the General Election is a runoff. This means that:
1. The chances of a monster making it into the general are small and winning it the odds are even smaller.
2. Yes, it often results in two dems against each other in the general... or two republicans. But a funny, unexpected thing happens. As two dems fight it out, each says "Wow, this district is 40% Republican. They vote. Let me reach out and see if there are some issues they care about that I can serve."
In other words, the problem and injustice of the ignored and despised 40% is partly solved.
3. 3rd parties have a slightly better chance now. Would improve more with rank choice voting .
My point tho is that the whole situation you describe is the fault of one party. The same one trying to end meaningful democracy forever.
Dr Brin:
Harry Harrison's MAKE ROOM! did the Greenhouse warming and so did the resulting movie SOYLENT GREEN.
The movie even moreso than the novel. The book version did begin with a heat wave, but later on there was still snow and ice in New York. In the movie, they talked about running the air conditioner to cool a room, "like winter used to be" (emphasis mine), as if the weather has been consistently hot for a long time.
* * *
Also, you've mentioned before that Harrison sneered at the movie by insisting that his story didn't include cannibalism. Maybe not so overtly, but the novel did have the Soylent corporation introducing a new cheap cut of meat that people raved about without explaining what it was or why it was so abundantly available. Since I had already seen the movie, I couldn't help reading in.
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