Science Fiction: the literary stuff - Hugos and China and a Latin Beat!

First, congratulations to this year's many fine Hugo nominees for best in Science Fiction for 2013! 

 -- Including -- amid a gallery of bright lights of SF -- Anne Leckie (Ancillary Justice), Charles Stross (Neptune's Brood), Mira Grant (Parasite), Larry Correia (Warbound), Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (The Wheel of Time) and so many more stories and novellas you might survey (and find opportunities to read!). 

Later note: the Hugo (and Nebula) Award went deservedly to the very impressive and multi-faceted Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Give it a read!

== SF that's for reading and the mind ==

But onward to the next year.

The Three-Body Problem is part one of an award-winning trilogy by Liu Cixin — and is arguably the best Chinese science fiction novel ever translated into English. Liu uses the “three-body problem” of classical mechanics to ask some terrifying questions about human nature and what lies at the core of civilization.

The series explores the world of the Trisolarans, a race that is forced to adapt to life in a triple star system, on a planet whose gravity, heat, and orbit are in constant flux. Facing extinction, the Trisolarans plan to evacuate and conquer the nearest habitable planet, and finally intercept a message—from Earth. The Three-Body Problem, released in October 2014, has been translated into English by award-winning writer, Ken Liu (author of books such as The Grace of Kings). Take a look at Stephan Martiniere's way-cool cover for the coming Tor Books edition!)

For more on China, culture and Science Fiction, see Ken Liu's article, What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese? Liu writes movingly that science fiction is "...a literature that is born on the frontier -- the frontier between the known and the unknown, magic and science, dream and reality, self and other, present and future, East and West..."

Special note… The Three Body Problem deals very closely with the issue of SETI and the Fermi Paradox and whether we should shout "yoo-hoo!" into the cosmos  -- a quandary about which I've also written, from time to time.

I've long maintained that the health of an enlightened and progressive society is measured by how vibrant is its science fiction, since that is where true self-critique and appraisal and hope lie. 

If so, the good news stretches beyond China!

== Sci fi with a Latin beat ==

Horizon-expansion has been the core cause of the liberal west, increasing the circle of tolerance, diversity and respect… 

...and no literary genre has explored these issues more deeply or broadly than science fiction. Despite an absurd reputation for being "dominated by old white guys," Science Fiction has actually been pretty joyfully accepting and welcoming… though any field will exhibit noxious old habits that need cleansing or at least interrogation. 

For years the James Tiptree Award (named after the great Science Fiction author Alice Sheldon) encouraged exploration of gender issues in Science Fiction. The Carl Brandon Society provides a center for discussion of the future as it relates to ethnic issues, especially in science fiction.

In another welcome endeavor, there are moves to form a support group for Latino sci-fi writers. We should all enthusiastically back any endeavors that will draw more bright writers from the cultural background of Cervantes and Marquez! Not only will we benefit from horizon-expanding insight and art (and social criticism!) But there are so many parts of the world that will reciprocally benefit from the greatest gift of all… more science fiction!

The posting at La Bloga is informative. Alas, it wrangled much too much about the politics of such a support org and speaks far too little about positive goals. Like how to get sci-fi excitement to latino youth and students. How to encourage the feed stock of sci fi thinking so that more young writers emerge...

...and how to spread the memes of future, change and exploration back into the grand Hispanic culture whose vibrancy is already a marvel to the world.

Although, the SF movement still has a center! California is the Future! And here's an interesting article about why the future seems so often to be set in California. Yes… so? Hey, Robert A. Heinlein explained it.... The continent is tipped and everything loose rolls down into this corner.

Of course, space is the frontier! An old-fashioned "can-do" sci fi novel, The Martian, by Andy Weir, updates Robinson Crusoe and Marooned with lots of fascinating, problem-solving verve. A best-seller that arose out of self-published versions, Weir's tale portrays an astronaut, abandoned for dead on the red planet, finding ways to survive until rescue can finally arrive… in 500 days.

A fine example of what's been called.... competence porn! Take pleasure in watching a superbly trained engineer performing extraordinary feats of technological wizardry. The Martian is to be turned into a movie in 2015, starring Matt Damon.

== And a Saharan What-If tale! ==

Here's a fun what-if scenario. When the Americas began breaking off from Eurasia, two possible north-south rifts might have made the sea-spreading divide. What if the other one - the loser in our world, stretching from the Congo to Morocco -- had taken off? Arfrica's western bulge would have stayed linked to Brazil. The resulting globe map is… creepy!

This is a cute story: Take a look at Southern Fried Cthulhu by Steve Poling. I love the assertive, can-do ghostbusters-style ethos. 

Also kind of reminiscent of Eric Flint's excellent 1632 alternate history series -- which my son and I both enjoyed.

== Brin - formation ==

Vint Cerf's recent hangout interview (TWiT Hangouts) was spectacular and wise. Classic Vint … sagacious and well-worth watching/listening. (And all right, I enjoyed late in the podcast when he gave me and my novel Kiln People a shout-out.)

Meanwhile the same novel is highlighted in a very interesting essay by Dean Burnett in the Guardian, about Mind-Swapping… whether or not this familiar sci fi and movie trope might ever actually come true.

 Talks at Google has uploaded my speech: David Brin, "Existence" - a one hour talk about pretty much everything (!) that I gave at Google HQ last winter, after the release of my latest book, Existence.

Here's a lovely mention of The Postman in the Arkansas Times, in the context of "books that women recommend to men, when they become more-than-passing interested in them as potentially more than a friend." Pleasant and wise.

While we're at it. This page takes you on a tour of the weapons used in the movie The Postman -- based on.. the book of the same name!

See more... A collection of my personal speculations on Science Fiction -- the literature of the future.

Also my own list of Favorite Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels, with old favorites by Zelazny, Bester, Anderson, Dick and Asimov, as well as more recent works by Stephenson, Gerrold, Chabon and Willis. 

Plus a separate recommended reading list for Young Adults interested in Science Fiction, works brimming with sense-o-wonder -- including works by Douglas Adams, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ursula Le Guin, Andre Norton, Terry Pratchett and others!

The dawn of a "predictive" era?

Help crowd-fund the new Museum of Science Fiction -- to be established in Washington D.C. The MSF plans to have interactive exhibits that explore the history and ideas of science fiction, in books and film -- the intersection of science and the imagination. Right now they are raising money through Indiegogo for a Preview Location as a first step toward the museum. Take a look at their video -- and help fund this worthy project. 

Then some big news: The Chinese Science Fiction Congress in Chengdu will, in a couple of weeks, honor me with a Galaxy Award for "most popular foreign author" among SF readers in China. My thanks go out to all the voters, readers, authors and professionals in the burgeoning Chinese science fiction fandom who participated in this selection, "uplifting" me to this honor.  I am thrilled and deeply moved.

Indeed, nothing gives me greater optimism about the human future  than the rapid rise of science fiction in China! You will see why, next year, when Ken Liu's excellent English language translation appears for Liu Cixin's spectacular three-part novel, "The Three Body Problem," which was a tremendous leap forward for Chinese SF.  And more thrills are coming. The winner of the Best Novel category in this year's China's Xingyun (Nebula) Awards is a book that paints a pessimistic, dark view of a corrupt near-future China.  The Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan takes place in the 2020s, and depicts a dystopian future -- the kind of literary exploration that shows a nation self-confident enough to relish and benefit from dark criticism.

== A new era of "smart mobs"? ==

Readers have seen a number of my tales feature a rising "Age of Amateurs" in which ad hoc associations of citizens have the right, ability and initiative to make as much difference in human affairs as corporations and government agencies.  Now ponder this. The First AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP-2013) will be held November 6-9, 2013 in Palm Springs, California.  How I wish I could attend! (I'll instead be an a European Union conference on the future of the Information Age in Vilnius, Lithuania. ) The Palm Springs conclave will appraise "systems that rely on programmatic access to human intellect to perform some aspect of computation, or where human perception, knowledge, reasoning, or physical activity and coordination contributes to the operation of larger computational systems, applications, and services."

In other words, how networked problem solving systems can make use of human beings as intelligent nodes, sensors, actuators and solvers of sub-problems, empowering a dispersed system to crowd-source overall solutions…  pretty much as I depict happening in our near future, in EXISTENCE.

I hope someone will report in from the event in the desert and let us all know how it goes. Let's hope this trend will bode well for us all.

== A Helvetian War? ==

Hordes of bankrupt French invade Switzerland to get their hands on their “stolen” money — such is the imaginary scenario cooked up by the Swiss military in simulation exercises recently.

Sound familiar? In my novel EARTH (1989) people of the year 2038 look back upon the horrific "Helvetian War" of the 2020s, when 30 developing nations declared hostilities with Switzerland and other banking havens, in order to track down the trillions stolen by former kleptocratic lords.  What started as a legalistic "phony war" allowing the beligerants to seize property quickly turned violent and eventually neighbors in Europe joined in…. turning the Glarus Alps into radioactive slag.  An unusual scenario(!) that fans found both fascinating and unlikely.

Unlikely?  Hm. So much so the Swiss Army is taking it seriously, it seems.  Indeed, let me go farther. Something like it is starting to look (alas) unavoidable.

== Other pred--brin-ictions ==

Then there's this. One fan wrote in "Hey Dr. Brin, chalk up another one for your predictions registry! #2 of Cracked.com mentions that Sweden is "designing toilets that will extract the precious phosphorus from our [urine]."  All right.  That one was from Existence.  In that novel I portrayed denizens of our near future using the "Phosphorus-recovery Urinal" or P.U. Heck, I thought that up mostly for fun! Eep. Even slightly off color tech humor is coming true, now!

And speaking of bold predictions: Forbes presents Three Scenarios for funding Interstellar Travel, in a review of  Starship Century: Toward the Grandest Horizon, the fascinating anthology of essays and stories about interstellar flight, edited by the Benford Boys, with contributions by Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, Peter Schwartz, and me… among others….

== Predictions from other sci fi ==

My friend Dr. Erik Virre is interviewed about the latest X Prize competition to build an honest-to-gosh Star Trek Medical Tricorder.  The devices are going to measure vital signs, assess medical conditions, and wrap all the systems into a useable mobile platform, and the winners announced in the summer of 2015.

And see: How Science Fiction gave birth to UAVs and GPS.

See this: Man zips around Mount Fuju 9 times in a homemade jetpack!

== Troubles with Quibbles ==

On “The Raiders Minimization” episode of The Big Bang Theory, Amy Farrah Fowler watches Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time with Sheldon Cooper. Afterward, Amy explains, “If Indiana Jones weren’t in the movie, the Nazis would have still found the Ark, taken it to the island, opened it up, and all died, just like they did.”  Hence the show's smartass writers proclaim a "gotcha" on Steven Spielberg.

Actually, this is entirely wrong.  Because Indiana Jones had proved to be a doughty adversary he was brought to the island so the Nazis could gloat, as he was forced to witness their triumph.  This resulted in:

1) a qualified witness to the power and glory of the Lord, and

2) the provision of a new home for the Ark. The very last scene makes clear that  America is morally deserving to keep it... but not mature enough to be trusted to use it.  Hence it "vanishes" into the storehouse catacombs.  Jones was instrumental and key to achieving that end, his purpose. My only quibble is that he should have had a touch of gray in his hair after that close brush with The Light.  It was a cool effect in The Ten Commandments.  Hey Raiders was a great film! From back when George Lucas actually cared about story. (Anything touched by Spielberg is gonna be just fine, anyway.)

== Speaking of Quibbles… or Tribbles… ==

… sign up for Sasquan -- the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention -- in Spokane WA in August 2015, with Guests of Honor David Gerrold and Vonda M. McIntyre.

There will be a bonus "Train-Con" for those using Amtrak to get to Spokane, from either Seattle or Chicago.

== And Sci Fi Miscellany ==

In this moving interview on NPR, Terry Pratchett, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease and can no longer read, describes how he used dictation software to revisit and revise a new edition of his very first novel, The Carpet People (published in 1971, when he was only 17!). The book is illustrated by the author.

In the Guardian: Why Science Fiction isn't just for geeky boys.

John Ringo has off-color fun leading you through his "proof" that a zombie apocalypse is inevitable.

== And finally ==

Some excellent advice for J.J. Abrams before he locks in his plan for the renewed Star Wars universe.  And I agree with the points in this lovely little video!

Still, as you all probably know, my quibbles run a whole lot deeper, down at the level where the prequels actually betrayed the fundamental moral elements of the earlier trilogy!  Where they actually started conveying some truly vile messages. Or at least, that was my case as "prosecutor" in the fantastically fun (and wise!) volume STAR WARS ON TRIAL.

And yes.  I have long promised you that extensive essay on James Cameron's wonderful epic Avatar… and how it does not preach the things that Mr. Cameron thinks it preaches, alas.  The essay is finished.  

Looking for the right venue.

Suggestions?

Is the world improving… despite our grouchy dogmas?

Poverty and violence are decreasing worldwide, at truly amazing rates. And of course - as we have seen - this fact seems anathema to grouches of both the far left and the entire right. But it does prove that the Great Program instituted by George Marshall, Harry Truman, Dean Acheson and Dwight Eisenhower has been working, in a spectacular mix of good development assistance and the better half of capitalism.

I have described several times how Dr. Stephan Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, shows clearly that per capita rates of violence across the world have been plummeting (albeit with tragic unevenness) every decade since the Second World War. Even the recent, terribly unwise wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, though in many ways regrettable and devastating to our U.S. economy, were nevertheless waged in a manner unlike what any other generation would have called "war," looking more like heavy-scale (sometimes fierce) SWAT team action than mass armies pounding and flattening everything in their path.

But it is the fight against poverty that stands out even more. As reported in a recent Economist article, Towards the End of Poverty: "In his inaugural address in 1949 Harry Truman said that “more than half the people in the world are living in conditions approaching misery. For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of those people.” It has taken much longer than Truman hoped, but the world has lately been making extraordinary progress in lifting people out of extreme poverty. Between 1990 and 2010, their number fell by half as a share of the total population in developing countries, from 43% to 21%—a reduction of almost 1 billion people."

To be clear: I'm no pollyanna.  (1) These improvements are just enough to offer hope, not any excuse to let-up.  And (2) there are many areas that are not improving at a trajectory for success. Environmental worries top that list.  Nevertheless, violence and poverty are paramount, and the news in those areas is tentatively fantastic.

Why do we hear so little about this? Because amid today's callowly indignant political polarization and Phase Three of the American Civil War, good news serves the polemical interests of neither right nor left. The mania of the right is that "improvement" campaigns are manifestations of pushy do-gooder oppressors; things are rotten but that is the natural way of life and existence. Trying to "improve" people and the world is either nanny-frantic rudeness or else a commie plot.

The mania of the left is to hallucinate the most self-defeating fabulation of all. Not that we must improve… (I agree that we had better, a lot, or fail utterly)... but that chiding... and only chiding... will get us there.  That reflex, to emphasize only indignant finger-wagging, has been politically devastating, by alienating millions who naturally dislike being relentlessly guilt-tripped. Moreover it illogically and stupidly aims to motivate folks to take up progressive causes without ever admitting that earlier progressive campaigns to improve the world have actually … worked! 

Pause. Contemplate that sales pitch. Would you buy a product when those pushing it howl that it never worked? (This is why pragmatic liberals are essentially a different species from leftists.)

Feh. You can see how these right and left manias feed into each other. They are reciprocal addiction enablers. And extreme self-righteousness junkies are not the ones making a better world.  We are.

See also: Was 2012 the "best year in the history of the world"?

Now see it put in perspective with satire… 

== Emissaries wanted! ==

1) Jay Lake is inviting folks who will be near Portland on June 27 to attend his "pre-mortem wake and roast, a somewhat morbid, deeply irreverent, but joyous celebration of me." Gawrsh, wish I could attend.  (And weep a little between jokes.) Volunteers wanted to proxy-me, praise a truly vivid life, and wish Jay happy trails.

2) Another METI - (Message to Extraterrestrials) - stunt appears to be underway, pushed ahead by fools who claim an arrogant right to speak for humanity, without ever discussing the issue in open debate with colleagues or the public. One group will be announcing their planned Yoohoo Shout at a news conference in New York City on June 11: 1pm at 500 Broadway (2nd fl).

For background on this vexing issue see: Shouting at the Cosmos: How SETI has taken a worrisome turn into dangerous territory. Here is the shouters' rationalization: The Benefits and Harms of Beaming into Space, which is based (the Benford boys assure me) upon fallacious physics.

Out of all the members of our SETI dissidents group (arguing that there should be discussion involving top people from many fields, before small groups arrogate to go screaming into the cosmos on humanity's behalf, based on faulty assumptions) none of us are able to attend the news conference on short notice, or ask inconvenient questions. Do we have any volunteers from out there in the community? Calm sciencey types preferred!  Get in touch via comments below.

At minimum, we could learn who is funding this and who owns the telescope.

== A miscellany of fascinations… 

Are All Telephone Calls Recorded And Accessible To The US Government? Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, hinted that the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations (in the context of the Tsarnaev bombings.) Consider the implications of that blithe, offhand remark. The blogosphere went ballistic in outrage!

My reaction: and you expected… what? If they cannot do it now, they certainly will. Nothing on Earth will prevent the mighty (and I am more scared of oligarchs than civil servants) from seeing and hearing us.  We must concentrate our efforts not on trying (futilely) to blind them, but on measures that allow us (or trusted representatives of us) to sousveil and reciprocally look at the  mighty. If we cannot hide from the mighty, then let us strip them naked.

See an amazing 90 minute documentary on the Graf Zeppelin's 1929 voyage around the world. Especially fascinating is the portion about the airship's brush with death, after leaving Japan and barely surviving a Pacific typhoon, blown off course and coming  down near an uninhabited island to do repairs. (That part is 55 minutes in.)  A terrific show about olden times that (I believe) may in some ways come again!

(See my own future zeppelins! ;-)

You should know about the Cottingly fairies and other famous hoaxes!  Two little girls fooled the author of Sherlock Holmes.

And learn more about the online Museum of Hoaxes! 

Words that last: a research team has identified 23 “ultraconserved words” that have remained largely unchanged for 15,000 years, spanning not only Indo-European but several of the six other major language groups in Eurasia. Among them the root words for "hand" ("main") and "to give" ("donne").

==Mars Haiku==

NASA solicited "Haiku about Mars," -- to be sent aboard the MAVEN Spacecraft, to be launched late in 2013. I whipped out two Mars haiku in about a minute….  So I'll just share them with you now.

Does Mars need women?

And incidental males too?

Let's supply them soon.

Snowy Olympus

Juts into vacuum above

The oceans we'll revive.

== More Miscellany ==

In "The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be: Why Futurists and Pundits So Often Get It Wrong," Christian Cantrell (author of Containment) offers  a welcome reality check, or dose of cold water in the face, concerning our excessive utopian expectations from technology. 

Indeed, his comments on declining quality of air travel hit home. I expect air travel to keep getting worse, until -- fed-up -- the middle class forms mobs with torches and pirchforks to burn down the corporate jetports and chase the rich back into First Class, where they belong.  That would end our decline into misery, overnight!  But read this cogent essay.

Now come algorithms that will only let your browser come up with things that they think you'll like. My novel EARTH (1989) portrayed hackers in the 2020s deliberately tweaking this "nuremberg-ware" so that it would do the opposite.  Instead of helping people only see and hear and read what agrees with them, all saluting the same memes at the same time, the hacked relevance algorithms would let through different and provocative points of view.  Breaking folks out of the group-think "nuremberg rallies" of memic sameness.

What's the solution?  To introduce randomness into searches? Randomness won't work.  It just makes your searches less efficient.  What's needed is a small symbol showing if someone with very high reputation and credibility scores disagrees or finds fault.  You can click on the symbol, or not.  But just glimpsing the symbol, flashing over on the far right, would say "there is dissent to this; don't assume it's just given."  Of course for this to work, we need the desperately neglected cred-and-reputation system I designed.

Or take a simpler wholesome reality check. A feel-good public relations move that just might do some good… Coca-Cola has set up hyper-window vending machines in India and Pakistan that let you meet, play games or dance with folks in the other country, then toast them with Coke. I hope this isn't a one-off but that they will deploy dozens.  Also, I hope the screens are Gorilla Glass viz the inevitable hate attacks.  Clearly they must be set up in affluent and highly supervised shopping malls.  Still… what fun.

A commercial product based on Transcranial stimulus.

A Guardian analysis of the top 50 video games sold in 2012 found more than half contain violent content labels. One third have weapons that depict real-life firearms.

== Artistry Notes ==

I've quite enjoyed the web-comic called "Tragedy Series" by Benjamin Dewey.  Done in sepia with a Victorian-Steampunk ambiance, these little one-image postcard vignettes are lovely jolts of dark wit and sometimes even genuine irony.

Next year will see the english language publication of THE THREE BODY PROBLEM by the greatest sci fi author ever in China, Liu Cixin.  It takes a very dark view of METI, by the way.

I will speak more in coming months about this top-flight, truly exceptional series and its excellent translation by our own Ken Liu.  

But when you do read it, you may never think the same about "harmless" METI shouts into the cosmos.