Hugo Awards and other Science-Fictional News

Congratulations to this year's nominated novels (and their brilliant authors) for the 2012 best of the year Hugo Award in Science Fiction.

Nominees for best novel include 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson , Blackout, by Mira Grant, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, by Lois McMaster Bujold, Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, by John Scalzi, and Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed.   These works show the incredible range of modern SF, from grownup literary speculation about the future to humor to consistent series to quasi-fantasy.  I am proud to be part of such a bold movement dedicated to the exploration of ideas.

Don't just read and enjoy the nominated works. Join and attend this year's Science Fiction Worldcon (we'll be there)! And attend the Hugo ceremony at Lone Star Con this August in San Antonio.

Again, felicitations to our proud and deserving colleagues!  Oh, also have a look at the other categories, which include short works by long-time greats Nancy Kress and Pat Cadigan ... as well as works by rising young stars like Kij Johnson and Ken Liu and others.  Many of the shorter works are now available for viewing or downloading for free.

== Smart Mobs in Real Life? ==

See real-life plans to empower "smart mobs." In Existence I portray -- among many aspects of our world 30 years from now -- the fluid and skilled use of Smart Mobs, or ad hoc groups of amateur citizens who use rapid access to vast information troves, plus sophisticated analytics tools, to attack and deal with real-time problems more quickly and effectively than even the pros in government or industry.  Such effective use of flat, "networked" systems is (at best) in its early days. (See my novella, The Smartest Mob, as well Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.)

Facebook and Twitter were effective at calling out rioters during the Arab Spring. They are inherently limited at coordinating the expert abilities of far-flung citizens, dividing tasks, coalescing the Big Picture and drawing effective conclusions. You can't blame members of our professional castes for deeming this a sci fi hope and little more.

Still, consider that the government's best tools tend to enter corporate use within a decade and private hands soon after. Vast data streams and sophisticated analytics might lead to "smart-mob" empowered citizen action networks… that is, if certain enabling technologies surfaced.  Better forms of online discourse, for example (I have patents!) And software that rise above TwitBook lobotomization, encouraging us to be smarter than the sum of our parts, not a whole lot dumber.

Walter Lasecki of the University of Rochester is one fellow who at least seems to get what's needed. I cannot attest to how these ideas are executed. But advanced collaboration-ware would be a great start.

== Most Iconic Characters? ==

For a recent interview I was asked to name the "most iconic science fiction characters" I could think of.  Well, well.  On the one hand...

...science fiction has always conveyed certain rebel themes. For example, the character who is able to remake herself or himself and rise up to meet insurmountable challenges. One who comes to mind is Helva, in Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang, whose crippling handicaps  are resolved when she becomes the "brain" of a starship and goes on to achievements her earlier self could not have imagined. A grittier version would be Gully Foyle, a low-class space hand in Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, who makes mistake after mistake but finds his way to world-changing greatness. This is often an underlying theme in the classic series Star Trek, wherein the products of Star Fleet Academy and the Federation as a whole - like Captains Kirk and Picard and Janeway - typify the iconic self-made hero.

Of course there is another theme, one that is far older than the rather American notion of self-improvement.  That theme is the demigod.  The born prince who suffers the abuse of fools until... lo! ... he comes into his powers.

This approach goes back to Homer and pervaded most legends till our time. Indeed, it is still the propellant of comic books.  It was extolled by Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, wherein Campbell left out all the dark sides to this ancient, limiting and morally-dubious storytelling pattern.  In science fiction, famous adherents included  A.E. Van Vogt, L. Ron Hubbard and, more recently, Orson Scott Card, whose every protagonist is born to be better than humanity at large and vested with the perfect-inherent right to over-rule any democratic institutions standing in his way.

Sometimes these characters aren't cruel in their own right: take Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter.  The trope does not have to be deliberately oppressive! Indeed, Robert Heinlein's iconic Lazarus Long relentlessly works for humanity and helps us to find our own, independent strength, just as Tolkien's born-prince - Aragorn - has a common touch.  Still, these are "icons" of a side of science fiction that is older and more deeply tied to our feudal-romantic past. Those who keep returning to it are doing us no favors.

When I saw all of this in an epiphany, one day, I vowed to try to avoid Nietzschean ubermensche demigod-superman types and stick to characters who are merely way, way above average.

Have you seen my more extensive essay, Our Favorite Cliche: The Idiot Plot, where I decrypt WHY so many sci fi tales and movies go for the easy crutch of the uber-demigod hero... or else posit that society is useless and ALL our fellow citizens are fools?

== And some random thoughts… ==

I'll be on the road for a week, consulting for some agencies and such… so these snippets will have to hold you.

Took the family on a long, overnight, clickety-clack rail journey across much of China, back in 2007. It seems we were very lucky to travel from Xian to Chengdu when we did - the next time you travel in China it will be via High Speed Rail and by 2020 there will be 50,000 kilometres of it. Wow.  In the same time period California will have built out 1% of that - 500km or so. We have got to rediscover ambition.

Okay, fair enough! A satirical music video from South Africa, where youth there decide to help freezing Norwegians by sending them radiators. Delicious. Respect-worthy. Good music and images, too.

38 maps of the US and the world that take unusual perspectives.

Is this for real? The O.R.B. is a ring you wear on your finger that twists into a bone conduction earpiece-phone.  Oh, I've got something better.  Whatever wristwatch phone thing Apple comes up with, my design is better and those companies who get jealous of the Apple watch should get in touch!

A big project in London to bore 32 km of new tube/metro/subway lines using giant tunneling machines.

And another project in New York, where deep tunneling wasn't the norm. (Most NY subways  were shallow-trenched. Not very useful in an emergency or Blitz!)

A thought-provoking illustrated polemic as to who better predicted our (dystopic) future, Orwell or Huxley?

Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books: A new analysis of words in scanned Google books indicates that English speakers becoming less emotional (but American English is decidedly more emotional than British English).

And finally… a wondrous-hilarious re-do of the great "Who's on First" Abbott and Costello routine… only redone in Shakespearean dialect.

Thrive-all and persevere.

Farewell to Two Amazing Women

Two fantastic women departed from our sight on Earth last week, leaving it more barren than before.

Anne McCaffrey was my friend and colleague -- a wonderful writer, deeply devoted to her craft, her fans, her civilization, and delivering wonder to millions.

I barely knew Lynn Margulis, who was no less gifted and no less a gift, having prodigious impact on the world of ideas and the advancement of science. Both were fascinating people, cultural icons and role models.

==Lynn Margulis==

Professor Lynn Margulis was instrumental in developing "endosymbiotic theory"... the incredible theory that our very cells derived out of the unification of many separate species that learned, through the harsh selective process of evolution, to work together for their common benefit.

Once a radical idea, it's now widely accepted that the mitochondria inhabiting - and providing power to - the cells of eukaryotic metazoans like fish and mammals are descended from bacteria-like creatures that once lived independently, but somehow united through a process of symbiosis that became Margulis's lifelong theme.  Other cellular organelles have since been proposed or accepted as having joined us through a process of incorporation that took a billion years.

This theme was taken to new levels when Margulis extended the early "Gaia Hypothesis" of James Lovelock... the notion that Earth's biosphere shares many traits of a living organism, such as self-correcting feedback loops, synergistic behavior and overall optimization, as if it were in effect a living being.

That's the "weak Gaia Hypothesis." The strong version, which Margulis never proclaimed, would remove from my previous paragraph the words "if it were in effect."

I made extensive use of Margulis ideas, performing riffs in my own work. Heart of the Comet explored possible implications of endosymbiotic theory. And it was impossible to avoid having great fun with both weak and strong versions of the Gaia Hypothesis in my novel Earth.  Both themes reappear in my forthcoming book, Existence.

What I admired most about Lynn Margulis was her bold willingness to always take a step back in order to encompass the wider context, the bigger picture.  Then an even bigger context, and so on.

==Anne McCaffrey==

Anne was a sweet lady who showed me great kindness whenever I visited her impossibly green farm in County Wicklow, Ireland.

I could reminisce further, but that would just be pointless bragging. So I'll pay tribute to the colleague and writer who entertained and influenced millions.  One thing Anne did for me was to help distill what is the essence of my profession.  It happened one day when we were both being interviewed by a reporter, who referred to the famous McCaffrey "Dragons of Pern" books as "fantasy novels."

Oh, how Anne bristled! With clenched restraint, she corrected the reporter:

"I don't write fantasy. I am a science fiction author.

Now, a great many people have tried to define the difference between fantasy and SF.  Some try to explain it as a matter of past or future, or setting, or gimmicks and tools  (e.g. swords vs spaceships), or even the vast moral distinction between magic and science. And sure, one can grasp how some folks make lazy assumptions.  If it's got dragons, well then, it must belong in the same category as Tolkien, right?

Anne dealt with that part of it swiftly. "My dragons were genetically engineered. Scientists designed them to help colonists save themselves from a terrible environmental threat."

Hm, well. It's not just the dragons. Most of Anne's tales are filled with colorful things like tapestries and great stone castle holds, with much talk of weaving and herbal lore and fathom-deep traditions. There are duels and nobles and bards and songs and brave knights that are standard fare in your typical fantasy.  If you're going to judge by superficialities, like the furniture, then it's easy to see why some people make the mistake.

But here's the real difference and it goes to the heart. The characters in the Pern stories dwell in a feudal setting, all right.  But unlike the endlessly repeated trope-protagonists in all those Tolkien-clone universes most of them don't want to!

And they don't intend to. Not for any longer than they must.

In the course of Anne McCaffrey's fictional universe -- as the stories unfold -- people discover that things weren't always this way - with peasant-serfs tied to the rocky land, wracked by filth, pestilence and arbitrary rule by hereditary lords, staring in occasional wonder at the great dragon-riders who protect them from raining death. Sure, their condition is eased by a myriad lovely traditions and crafts, reflecting the makeshift creativity of brave folk, improvising - making the best of things across centuries of darkness.

But during the span of many novels, they come to discover a core truth: that things could be better. That their civilization fell from a height so great that people once voyaged between stars, cured disease, pondered secrets of the universe... and even made dragons. And, as soon as they realize this, they start wanting to get all of those things back.

Anne's characters know there's something better than living in grimy ignorance and violence, even lightened by clever medieval arts. It will be a long climb back, but they itch to get their hands on flush toilets, movable type, computers, democracy. And one thing is certain - they are going to quit being feudal, just as soon as they can.

Oh, sure. Feudalism tugs at something deep within us. Those images of lords and secretive mages and so on resonate, because we're all descended from the harems of guys who managed to pull off that trick! Anne -- lately in collaboration with her most-excellent son, Todd -- certainly made good use of those themes, and more power to them both! 

But the McCaffrey notion of the time flow of wisdom was always aimed forward, rooted in a love and belief in progress, in our ability to raise better generations, in a hope that better days will come.

Anne McCaffrey was a science fiction author. One of the best. And I'm proud to say she was my friend.

------

My condolences to Dorion Sagan, and to my esteemed colleague Todd McCaffrey, and to their families. Soar on.

Astronomy, SETI, science, transparency and wonders!

Science fiction is one of the most "American" literary genres, because, like America itself, SF has a relentless fascination with change. In fact, I believe that this trait - rather than technology - is what most distinguishes SF from fantasy.  (It is certainly why Anne MacCaffrey, author of the “Dragonrider” series, proclaims quite firmly that “I am a science fiction author; I don’t do fantasy.”

Societies, families, and individuals have always lived on shifting sands.  When just a few of your comfy assumptions are rocked, you may find wisdom and solace in a closely-focused literary view. But if you want or need a bigger picture -- to ride the tsunami that change has become in modern times -- then literary science fiction turns the reader from a hapless recipient of change into an explorer.

The "what-if" thought experiment is the purest expression of a courageous mind.  Because authors hurl, and readers accept, the ultimate challenge to empathy --

-- not just putting on the shoes of your neighbor, but stretching your empathic power to other places, times, cultures and states of being.  To put aside the comfort food of familiarity, repetition, nostalgia or the myopic here-and-now... and instead reconnoiter the vast range of things that (for better or worse) our children might do and become.

Despite the simplistic banality of Hollywood sci fi, there is more to science fiction than garish, clanking monsters.  It can infect children with the dangerous mental habit of imagining things different than they are. And a surprising majority of scientists, doctors, astronauts, engineers, teachers, diplomats and world-changers all grew up devouring SF.  It can stir discontent with past and current injustice and then go on to warn of dangers on - or just beyond - the horizon.

A habit of questioning all dogmas - even those that your parents taught you - can makes science fiction seem dangerous, even to lit-professors, who cannot force the genre into slots or pigeonholes.  Because an SF author - once slotted - may bend all of his or her energy and considerable imagination to the project of breaking out.

It is the literature of rambunctious questioning.  And to the extent that Americans loved it -- we thrived.

==== MORE UPSHOT FROM SETI ====

The Astronomy Now site  has a 6 min piece about the debate that was hel in Britain a few weeks ago, at the Royal Society’s new Kavli Conference Center.  Featured are clips of Dr. James Benford & me on our side (urging that the issue of “messages to aliens” be discussed in more open fora) and Dr. Seth Shostak, of the SETI Institute, on the other.  Of course nothing was resolved.

The most significant outcome? A straw poll of the attendees at the conference overwhelmingly and almost unanimously asked that the Royal Society and the AAAS support our appeal for international symposia on the issue, bringing in the world’s greatest sages from fields like History, anthropology, biology, philosophy etc into a discussion that may ultimately include -- and affect -- us all. 

Oh... and in related news....

Richard Dawkins speculates about extraterrestrial life in this video.

NASA Ames reveals DARPA-funded "Hundred Year Starship" program, with $1 million funding from DARPA. Announced at a Long Now Foundation event, the program is aimed at settling other worlds.

==== NEWS OF THIS AND OTHER WORLDS ====

That 90 minute audio interview I gave last month, for Jay Ackroyd’s BlogTalkRadio (in conjunction with an event on Second Life), is now available on podcast. 

UK firm crowdsources security camera monitoring so you never know who's watching:

"Back in 1996, writer and scientist David Brin wrote "The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to choose between privacy and freedom?" a tale of two fundamentally similar yet very different 21st century cities. Both were littered with security cameras monitoring every inch of public space, but in one city the police did the watching, while in the other the citizens monitored the feeds to keep an eye on each other (and the police). These days, many UK police forces monitor their city streets with cameras mounted on every corner. Now, for a fee, a private company is crowdsourcing security surveillance to any citizen willing to watch, fulfilling Brin’s prophecy in a sense.”

Augmented Reality?.... Try diminished reality!

And? Pope Benedict XVI said on Thursday that the media’s increasing reliance on images, fuelled by the endless development of new technologies, risked confusing real life with virtual reality.  (Um... go to the Jesuit church in Rome and see the trompe l’oeil ceilings (fool the eye) that they are so proud of! dang. It was the immersion 3-D mind-blow of it's day!) 

 Fascinating possible alternative way to collect solar energy in the stratosphere and deliver it to the ground. 

Fun stuff!

A fabulous leap in the use of the Codona Coronagraph to block light from a distant star and see Jupiter-scale planets, as close as 5 au to their sun. 

See a great image of the tree of life and evolution in action. Look carefully and see how the tree suddenly THINS at certain extinction times (notice the dinosaurs vanish) but life soon fills in the gaps.  This really is terrific... even if it does prejudice by implying we are the "most evolved." http://evogeneao.com/images/Evo_large.gif

Cool video: Imagining the tenth dimension

A cartoon comparison of Huxley and Orwell Orwell feared those who would ban books; Huxley feared there would be no reason to ban books, for there would be no one to read them…

Five times we almost nuked ourselves by accident.

Fifty ideas to change science: Artificial life : biologists will make artificial cells, enzymes, stem cells, induce photosynthesis in the lab…you need a subscription to read the whole article.

=== WANT MORE? ===

A test of truthiness: Fascinating to see how memes spread across the web, passed from peer to peer. But how can one tell what ideas are grass roots and which are spread by political campaigns or corporations? Truthy, based at Indiana University’s School of Informatics and Computing attempts to chart the diffusion of information & misinformation on Twitter – by tracking keywords and retweets. http://truthy.indiana.edu/

At Carnegie Mellon, a computer named NELL (Never-Ending Language Learner) is busy uplifting itself: scanning info 24/7, calculating, categorizing – learning language as humans do. A step toward the semantic web and possibly true artificial intelligence?

The Lunar X Prize (backed by Google) will grant $30 million to the first privately funded team that lands a robot rover on the moon. The rover must travel more than 500 meters and transmit video and data back to earth. Deadline is 2012

Be sure to see Comet Hartley 2 (discovered in 1986). It should be visible with binoculars, appearing as a greenish smudge near Cassiopeia if you have dark skies. This comet will be targeted by NASA’s Deep Impact probe (EPOXI) for a flyby in November – coming within 435 miles of the comet.

Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford, once issued a challenge to young researchers: Concisely explain your research topic in an “elevator pitch”: Imagine riding an elevator with a friend who is bright but not a scientist. Explain what you do, what it means and why it matters – all before reaching the 15th floor. A worthy challenge in communicating science to the general public – who does pay the bills, after all. 

How will technology impact personal liberties? The ACLU is analyzing sci-fi plots to plan its future battles over individual freedom. Its report, Technology, Liberties and the Future, draws upon science fiction for worst-case scenarios to study possible civil liberties violations that may result from advances in technology: omni-surveillance, cloning, gene splicing, nanotech, cyborgs, AI…

Is it censorship if the government buys the entire first printing of a book (Anthony Shaffer’s Operation Dark Heart), in return for the publisher’s agreement to destroy ever copy?

Kenyan tinkerer builds plane from scratch, using a Toyota engine and a wooden propeller, wings from aluminum siding.

An animated look at Changing Educational Paradigms

Danny Gold’s new movie: 100 voices A journey Home: the revival of Jewish culture in Poland

Check out this assembly of sculptures of human ancestors -- ranging from Australopithecus to Homo erectus -- amazingly realistic reconstructions created by French artist Elisabeth Daynes, fleshed out from casts of skulls. See her website with details on the reconstructions and methodology:

Our most precious resource, water, is increasingly being privatized. Global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, and demand will soon outstrip supply. The rights to divert water are a sellable commodity, but will markets deal with this problem equitably -- or pit industry against drought-stricken countries –  water haves against water have-nots…

A Moh’s Scale of Hardness for science fiction: how ‘hard’ is the science – is the story consistent with the laws of physics – and are the fictional extrapolations plausible? Click to expand the categories at the end.  My opinion?  Eh.