They're alive!
(1) I'm posting my SF comedy THE ANCIENT ONES!
Samples were available at davidbrin.com. Only now I'll go all the way through, one chapter per week (or so) on Wordpress. Come by for laughs + painful puns! And some sci fi concepts taken to extremes. Oh and there'll be freebies for best groaner comments to adjust the final version. (Full novel soon at Histria Press!)
== Rich prepper ingrates using my ideas ==
Almost exactly as depicted in Existence -- and in conversation with some of the innovative schemers -- it seems that an island nation -- one that is threatened by rising seas -- is collaborating with world zillionaires to erect a lagoon-sheltered arcology-city One that can float above changing sea levels… providing both those zillionaires and the island nation’s elites with refuge from both angry Nature and the western tax man. And as a bonus, those zillionaire preppers will get a legacy-sovereign UN seat. Well-schemed!
And no need to pay the fellow who gave you the idea, in the first place?
Speaking of predictive success, here’s an extremely minor forecast I'll now offer. Minor, but still, one for the registry. I foresee that folks will feel a small but real sense of relief when we reach the year 2032! Why? Because we will suddenly be able to use just 6 digits for the date, instead of 8. Can you envision why? Speak up, in comments.
Alas though, right about the same year religious zealotry will spread rapture ravings, like nothing we have ever seen before. Can you envision why? I explained here. Hopefully, by then we'll still have a civilization then that awards predictive points. And that has resumed confidence in science and reason.
Meanwhile... In Nautilus, Namir Khaliq interviews me, Doctorow, Bujold, Stross, Jemison and Weir about how science influences science fiction, especially in a time of looming AI. Come for insights.
== Are hidden or ‘shy’ aliens or AIs watching us right now? ==
The "After On" podcast posting by Rob Reid (author of the SF novels After On and Year Zero) about "Shy or Hidden AI" was fun and well-spoken... though incomplete and hence not fully persuasive. "Might we unwittingly start sharing our world with a super AI?" A monologue and (mostly) playful thought experiment. Listen on Apple Podcasts.
Interesting? Well... let me shine light on one under-explored aspect. For about two decades, I've pretty often been interviewed about either aliens or Artificial Intelligence. Sometimes I trot out a particular riff, when it seems likely to be fun. Here goes:
"I can now reveal that I've been 'channeling' for hidden (aliens/AIs) who use me as their human 'front,' to publish odd thoughts, or their attempts at sci fi (some better than others!), or else in order to float ideas out there...
"...like this idea that I'm floating right now, that a particular human might collaborate in this way, fronting for cryptic (aliens/AIs) who are shy about being publicly revealed. An idea that nearly all human audiences have deemed benignly amusing, because they assume that I am joking!
"But then, isn't that what I'd be hired to do? Getting folks pondering the possibility, so that the hidden aliens or AIs might get a measure of the reactions? Perhaps to see if it's safe to come out?
"Or else... isn't this exactly what a rascal like me would say, in order to tease about weird ideas? Just like you idea-rascals out there pay me to do?"
In fact, most of the last fourth of my novel Existence ponders cryptic or 'shy" interstellar probes who (conjecturally) have been lurking in the asteroid belt for millions of years, and might recently have been probing our internet. In that novel I riff-contemplate a wide array of motives they might have for maintaining secrecy a while longer. And yes, using humans as intermediaries is one of a dozen (actually 13) possible scenarios.
Still, this is an interesting and fun... if incomplete ... podcast speculation about the possibility. Including the notion that instead of lurker alien probes, it might be 'Shy AIs' reading these words right now as I type them... or else from stored files, five years from now.
I do say other things to such aliens or AI lurkers, that I won't get into here. Suffice it that I give them grandfatherly advice! ;-)
== The deep context of sci fi ==
Possibly the greatest living epic poet – certainly of epic-length poems about the future or sci fi themes – is Frederick Turner. He’s done me the honor of reading Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood – And while agreeing with some of my points, he also demurs on others.
"Yes, many of the great epics - works like the Mahabharata, the Heike and the Aeneid – do emphasize demigods in a context of assumed rule by kingship. But that may not have been in preferred-contrast to then-unknown innovations like democracy."
Rather -- Fred argues -- many of them do contain their own profound critiques of power abuse by hereditary kings. Further, many of those epics may have been viewed as liberal in their age and context, contrasting instead vs: “…the only prior alternative, bloody tribalism and what Marx called rural idiocy. The city was a huge achievement, and it needed walls and authority, and was the origin of law and advanced technology.”
Certainly it has been pointed out that the story of Cain vs Abel has a context of the resentment by hunters and herders against the encroachment of agriculturalists, who appear (from genetic evidence) to have been far more expansionist and violent.
Indeed, a major new element has been added by genetic research which now says there was likely a huge Y Chromosome bottleneck around 10,000 years ago. Weirdly and inexplicably, it may have happened roughly simultaneously across much of the world -- a few centuries when only 17% or so of males got to breed. The implications are immense!
For one thing, this was the disruptive time when we invented both beer and kings. It's known that humans had less resistance to alcohol back then - more like other mammals, who are still very susceptible. So drunken boors musta been much more common. And this coincided with the new kings of minor agricultural realms, who abruptly possessed a power that tribal chiefs never had - to order killed anyone they didn't like, including drunken boors. (This was actually observed by Captain Cook etc., in Polynesia.) Hence, just one effect could have been a major quick-evolution toward more self control re alcohol. (Still incomplete, alas.)
It seems that this phase only lasted a few centuries, until kingdoms grew larger. At which point the top king's harems were as big as he could handle and he gained nothing further by allowing the lords under him to keep rampage-murdering other males. In fact, the local top king would lose soldiers that he needed against other mid-sized kings. Hence, there arrived rule of law against capricious murder... even by local lords... and the Y Chromosome bottleneck stabilized.
Sure, that is a speculative take on recent discoveries. But if all that is true, then there may be real implications for the vast oeuvre of oral mythology, coming to us from that era. The roots of all our heritage might be re-examined in new light.
== Pertinent Prescience? ==
Octavia Butler's terrific 1998 novel, Parable of the Talents, depicts a dystopian US ruled by fundamentalists. President Jarret seeks to rid the country of non-Christian beliefs, using the slogan.... "Make America Great Again." Sigh and alack.
And I miss her.
And her memory reminds me that we need to Make America smart and good and wise (and thus actually Great) someday yet again.
2 comments:
For the record, the previous comments went to a second page just before Dr Brin posted "onward", so there might be some posts there that you missed, or you might have posted something that you thought disappeared into the ether.
Carry on.
I'm glad I read The Ancient Ones before the promotional material started giving away who those various entities are. Maybe it's inevitable in the ways of promotion, and maybe the images do get people more interested than they would be otherwise. Just sayin' that I'm glad I was able to come to the realizations of what those creatures were during the actual course of reading the book.
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