Science Fictional News & Updates

== Science fiction in action! ==

Ward Shelley a few years ago artistically charted the history of science fiction and fantasy - from Gilgamesh to Mary Shelley to the year 2000 - via a fantasy "leviathan" beast. It's quirky, fun, and leaves out a lot, e.g. modern non-English SF. Anyway, it's fun to be included, a couple of times.

Okay, so science fiction has conquered the world. It is the engine behind most of the big, money-making successes of Hollywood. It propels much of the political narrative, from dread of Big Brother to obsession with social collapse scenarios. And now, each year, ever more purportedly “literary” authors try their hand at “doing future” – resulting in romances set in space, thinly repurposed westerns and navel-contemplating angst-ridden time travelers. 

On Slate, Laura Miller appraises some of the most recent forays by artistically approved authors, and finds most of them wanting. Only then, what about Chabon? Bacigalupi? Rajamieni? Okorofor? Sue Burke? We embrace them. Yes, in part because they give a little love back. But also because they bothered to heed some of our history, some of our had-learned craft. Above all, they don't imply: "I just invented all this!".

 Still, should we be glad, or miffed by these cultural appropriations?  

Paraphrasing Gandhi: “First they ignore you. Then they mock you. Then they fight you. And then they claim to have loved you, all along.” Sigh.

== What's new in SF? ==

Ari Brin's excellent podcast - Novum - explores many topics related to science fiction and its influence on other media - and the world. In Episode 14, she begins a two part series reflecting on "Advertising in Science Fiction."  First, how advertising is portrayed in novels and films about the future, and then in Episode 15 about how advertisers use science fiction - and images of the future -- to sell, sell, sell.  And episode 16... about the origins of the "Jungle Gym," is even better! Terrific stuff.

Gregory Benford’s latest - The Berlin Project - explores another What-if about the Second World War, only this time, instead of maundering about implausible ways the Axis powers might have won, he delves into a way the struggle might have ended much sooner, if the director of the Manhattan Project had not made a crucial mistake. Had Leslie Graves listened to one fellow – who happens to have been Benford’s father-in-law – we might have had the bomb a year earlier, to use against Hitler’s capital. Like Benford’s classic Timescape, this novel shines light on the process of science itself in critical times. Only here, most of the characters – including the incredible Mo Berg – were real-life or even larger than life.  And Benford knew a great many of them. See Tom Shippey’s review in the Wall Street Journal.

Steve DeGroof, creator of the excellent Tree Lobsters comic strip, has a trio of short story collections: First Lines, Dandelion Seeds, and Scatter Plot -- all going for $1.99 on Kindle. See my review of science-based webcomics.

A lovely and pointed morality tale by Eliot Peper (author of Cumulus - an all-too believable tale of ubiquitous surveillance) is available on Kindle … True Blue… about a future when having blue eyes is the stigma-crushed minority. 

The rebooted Omni Media announces that it has partnered with the Museum of Science Fiction to bring back the original full run of Omni Magazine. Every issue ever published, all the way back to the 1970s, is now available online. Explore the iconic science fiction collection today. 

== Science Fiction & the Future ==

Global English Editing has created a fascinating web-graphic shows you many aspects from a recent study of literacy and reading in many nations, around the world. The good news is that reading is far from going extinct. More paper and e-books than ever are being consumed.. and yes, in the U.S. as well.  Though the graphic also shows reasons for caution. Among tidbits: There are books you can “pre-order” that are scheduled for release a thousand years from now (a stunt). But book publishing is the largest media and entertainment industry.

Wow okay, here’s one for the prediction registry: “A study involving 34-week-old fetuses found they were more likely to focus on a pattern of lights that resembled a human face than on the same lights configured to look nothing like a face.” In other words, techies have started visually showing stuff to fetuses. How long before we get the teaching units I portrayed in “Dr. Pak’s Preschool”? A chilling story that forecast future parents giving their unborn off spring a “womb with a view”? 

What next? Poor women renting out their wombs to make advanced bio-mechanical devices, as in “Piecework”? Find both stories (and much more) in OTHERNESS.  

A call for volunteers to update my predictions registry!  It's a wiki. There's more, much more!

Wow. A quantum improvement in hobby drones. Controlled via face and hand gesture recognition, in addition to the usual remote controls. Put out your hand and it will land on it. Gymbaled camera, image stabilized. Amazing.

The Problem with Hollywood's visions of Artificial Intelligence - a re-evaluation of Alex Garland's film Ex Machina. 

== The Sheep Around us? ==

Using his WIRED soapbox to promote his new novel, Walkaway, Cory Doctorow takes the occasion also to fight some of the most hoary and destructive instincts of modern, lazy storytelling in his essay: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopia.

“Here’s how you make a dystopia: Convince people that when disaster strikes, their neighbors are their enemies, not their mutual saviors and responsibilities. The belief that when the lights go out, your neighbors will come over with a shotgun—rather than the contents of their freezer so you can have a barbecue before it all spoils—isn’t just a self-fulfilling prophecy, it’s a weaponized narrative. The belief in the barely restrained predatory nature of the people around you is the cause of dystopia, the belief that turns mere crises into catastrophes.”

This paraphrases the core point from my novel The Postman, which I wrote as a rebuttal to the Mad Max genre’s perpetual contempt for the average person.  In my novel (and I admit that Kevin Costner did remain faithful to this notion) all hope for a restored civilization rests upon the survivors remembering one core fact: “I was once a mighty and noble being, called a citizen.”  And hence, the great accomplishment of the story’s hero is not to defeat the villains, but to remind the people of that central fact.

Rebecca Solnit - one of the finest essayists in America - makes the same point in A Paradise Built in Hell, showing that time and again, our neighbors show pluck and guts, as when 80 average citizens rebelled, aboard flight UA93.  And yet, authors and directors relentlessly trot forth the banal dystopia that Cory criticizes.

Doctorow distinguishes this tiresome cliché with his notion of the  guardedly upbeat utopia. Not the boring aftermath of an enlightened and better civilization — no drama there! That’s why - in the much better tomorrows of Iain Banks, of Star Trek and my own Kiln People - most of the tales take place at a fringe or frontier.  (The Federation is decent and good and fair, which is why we almost never look there.)

Likewise, Doctorow eschews a preachy utopia in favor of portraying its beginning, in danger and ferment.  The initial problem may be chaotic and deadly, as in a dystopia, but with a crucial difference.

“Stories of futures in which disaster strikes and we rise to the occasion are a vaccine against the virus of mistrust. Our disaster recovery is always fastest and smoothest when we work together, when every seat on every lifeboat is taken. Stories in which the breakdown of technology means the breakdown of civilization are a vile libel on humanity itself.”  He asserts that: “ the best science fiction does some­thing much more interesting than prediction: It inspires. That science fiction tells us better nations are ours to build and lets us dream vividly of what it might be like to live in those nations.”

As is very often the case, Doctorow presents important and thought-provoking notions. Alas, Cory does tend also to wave signs implying “Look here! I invented this idea!”  

And so, only in the interests of fairness, I do urge you also to have a look at my much-earlier missive on “The Idiot Plot,” and compare.

== The Big Announcement? ==

The hacker group Anonymous claims that NASA has evidence for alien life. I have heard such rumors all my life. This one sounds especially implausible, for several reasons:

1. Given my overlapping sectors of interest in alien life - as an astrophysicist, the SETI scholar who has catalogued "Fermi" hypotheses, a NASA consultant, a known speculator on alternative biology, and as an expert in science fiction scenarios of First Contact, I can pretty much guarantee you that any contact committee that makes no use of me is both stupid and crazy.  I say that (obviously) without modesty, and yet bolstered by the simple reason that I do not leap to premature conclusions, unlike almost every other savant in the field.

2. Okay, let's shift from one diagnosably egotistical statement to the worst narcissist in the world... do you actually think that our current president would refrain from seizing such an announcement as his own?  Especially as a distraction from current problems? Heck, he might just make something like this up! One third of the country would follow him. The notion that he would leave such a thing to NASA is pure fantasy -- as, blatantly, are most UFO tales.

3. Look, I have written scads of SF about cryptic or suddenly-disclosed alien contact! It makes for great drama. I can entertain the thought. It's just that nearly every publicly bruited scenario I have seen and heard, across half a century, has been so dismally dumb! Tawdry, temporally and sociologically and scientifically illogical blarings of the cheapest Hollywood melodramas, with the added trait of nearly always being stunningly... bo-o-oring. (Zzzzzzzzz.)  Wel... with some exceptions.

4. Okay, maybe I over-rate my own value. But I also know many of the scientists and other thinkers who would be called in to consult, in case of something truly dramatic. And I see no sign of any of them scurrying about frantically or disappearing from the map.

5. But just in case, let me add that I can concoct scenarios under which intelligent and sincere public servants might (a) understand what's going on and not need (or believe  they don't need) input from a sci fi writer... (who has given many talks at alphabetical security agencies.) (b) have genuine and valid reasons for secrecy (see my story "Senses, Three and Six.")  And (c) have compelling reasons not to inform an untrustworthy chief executive.  I admit that all of that is possible...

...though down that road lie many rationalizations, deeply rooted in human nature and bad old practices that seldom led to good. If I were on the commission, I would go along with decided policy... but would perpetually be the fellow inside who questions pat assumptions.

I spent more time on this than the rumor was worth. If it comes true, I would win some wagers and lose others. And pray that we are not led by fools.

== Coming events!  ==

I'll be keynoting at the coming Interstellar Conference, in Monterrey California on August 7. Headlining along with warp drive inventor (or at least the least implausible version) Miguel Alcubierre.

A few days before, I'll be attending the annual Science Foo camp at the Google Campus.

Recent events! July 13 I gave the dinner keynote at "Realizing the Future: Genome Engineering 2017," in Minneapolis. At San Diego's Comicon International, I was on a July 21 panel about alien civilizations with Jimmy Diggs and Mark O'Bannon and others. The next day I was on a couple of panels at Freedom Fest, in Las Vegas. Then we went see Penn & Teller! (Penn's a sci fi reader and futurist, too.)

August 26 - come by the San Diego Festival of Books.

The Future is Here: A sci fi weekend roundup!

The future of civilization could depend on our elections (in fact that may be true even of the galaxy!)... but not today. Today, let's peer ahead a bit!  In fact, hang around for a few paragraphs to see a great opportunity to get some fine science fiction... cheap!

But first. The new OMNI Reboot looks snazzy and well-done.  Certainly worth a visit. Especially (!) their very nicely-presented interview with me about topics ranging from AI and apocalypse to the value and basis and future of science fiction.

Are we overthinking the dangers of artificial intelligence? On Gizmodo, George Dvorsky interviews me about the potential dangers and benefits of AI… and other future hazards. Will the dystopian nightmares of sci fi flicks come true? Or might those warnings actually help prevent the worst mistakes?

Did you read that Germany has submitted draft legislation to the EU granting personhood to robots? If only Isaac could have seen this! Silly ass stuff... but reflective of society’s generally laudable trend toward a reflex of inclusion. It may speak well of us when (now?) some secretive-scared AI wonders whether to "come out."

Looking backward, but suddenly pertinent in the surge of Pokemon Go! A fascinating tale by Ted Chiang — “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” — won the 2011 Locus Award and the Hugo Award for Best Novella. Published in 2010 by Subterranean Press, it follows the many quirky problems and ups and downs faced by a woman and her friends, devoted to “raising” and teaching simulated near-intelligent beings in virtual worlds. Chiang makes a great effort to realistically convey how shifting fads and technologies can pull the rug out from under you, though the range of implementations will vary even more than he conveys. The whole story is available here. 

== New Realism in SF ==

An interesting riff on the New Realism in science fiction film and television. The Future is Almost Now, from The Atlantic: “Many new works of science fiction seem to represent a strain of pre-apocalyptic cinema, characterized by a willingness to dramatize disasters that are less hypothetical than poised to happen.… Unlike The Terminator and Matrix franchises, these films don’t predict an apocalyptic “rise” of machines so much as a gradual digital takeover, the next phase of a revolution already in progress,” writes Elizabeth Alsop.

The notion appears to be that scifi is backing away from boldness in extrapolation. As one quoted scholar put it: “[t]he magical and disruptive inventions that used to feature prominently in some stories have now been folded into more typical domestic realism.” Or, as Margaret Atwood puts it: “things that really could happen but just hadn’t completely happened when the authors wrote the books.”

Elizabeth Alsop continues: “If, as the critic Northrop Frye has argued, the job of science fiction has been 'to imagine what life would be like on a plane as far above us as we are above savagery,' what does it mean that so much recent sci-fi has been taking place on a plane that’s relatively proximate to ours? 

In other words: Why this rise in near-future stories, and why now? One possibility is that verisimilitude allows for better social commentary…”  She asks: “Should the fact that sci-fi seems to now be handling such scenarios more concretely, then, be seen as a sign of progress? Or is this insistence on concrete-ness merely a symptom of what the sci-fi luminary William Gibson sees as the end of speculation—the collapse of imagination into a reality that has already outpaced it?”

A fascinating analysis… and almost entirely wrong at every level.  

But I am cheered by one aspect no one else mentions.  That this thoughtful rumination on science fiction appeared in ...The Atlantic. A magazine that, along with Harpers and The New Yorker, used to regularly commission pompous hit pieces attacking the very notion of science fiction as literature, let alone its interest in the disruptive effects of onrushing change. That shift, by some of the literary-arts arbiters reveals something about the 21st Century and our gradual recovery from year 2000 Future Shock.

Sometimes it is the macro perspective that really matters.  Welcome to the conversation, Dr. Alsop.

 == Sci Fi visions ==

Time for a roundup of recent SF!  But first... a couple of Brin-related items...

For you fans of star-spanning Space Opera, check out the StarwardBound Story Bundle of ebooks! My collection Otherness is included, as well as books from Mike Resnick, Brad Torgerson, Martin Kee, Marko Kloos and others. How Story Bundle works: you choose what you want to pay for these ebooks; you decide how much goes to the authors. Enjoy some fun Sci Fi.  

And those of you who like good old adventure science fiction (and yes some tusslin' fightin' mixed in, for fun)? Check out The Year's Best Military and Adventure 2015.  A great annual that - this round - contains one of my most popular new stories: "The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss," (which made it into several best-of volumes, this year.) No military or fighting in that tale of terraforming Venus, but lots of adventure!  

In fact, those who want to participate in the volume's Readers' Choice Award can go online and vote for their favorite story from the anthology. The winner (announced at DragonCon) gets $500 and a plaque. Hey, have fun. Explore! And enjoy an election in which you like all the candidates, for a change!

Will we have a Star Trek future of abundance? Can there be a post-scarcity future? A discussion with Manu Saadia, author of Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek.  

Or will we see a darker future, as explored in recent Arab dystopian sci fi? Very interesting: “Science fiction and surrealism have long provided an escape valve for writers living under oppressive regimes. In Latin America, decades of fascism and civil war helped inspire masterpieces of magical realism from authors like Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende. In Russia, the postmodern novelist Vladimir Sorokin has published disturbing and controversial futuristic novels that surreptitiously skewer the country’s repressive government. Dystopian themes are not entirely new in Arabic fiction. But they have become much more prominent in recent years…”  writes Alexandra Alter in The New York Times.  (Another literary arbiter journal that now admits SF is one of our smartest and best genres.)

How does Science fiction fare in the rest of the world? A look at Science fiction in Cuba! Plus see: 100 amazing African science fiction authors! Geoff Ryman begins this series on the Tor website. 

It’s so strange it might as well be science fiction. Matthew McConnaghy’s new movie The Free State of Jones.  Here’s a fine article on the historical background behind the real-life hero of the story. (Strange but inspiring.)

A fine interview with my friend and genius artist Jim Burns, on Omni Reboot.

== New in SF ==

Corsair, by James Cambias (author of A Darkling Sea) offers a sci fi thriller – a near-future tale of space pirates, computer hackers and terrorists. Nuclear fusion has, at last, become a reality on Earth – powered by helium extracted by robots from the lunar regolith. (Controversial if this will ever be economically feasible… but I’m willing to go along for the ride.) The tricky part is returning the shipments to Earth – the helium payloads an attractive target for pirates. The amoral genius cyberhacker, David Schwartz (aka Captain Black), seeks to redirect the payload to international waters where real pirates can claim it. The U.S. Orbital Command backs away from battle, but Air Force officer Elizabeth Santiago (with whom Schwartz had a brief affair back at MIT) goes rogue, determined to foil his efforts. The plot twists as Schwartz is double-crossed after he teams up with hard-core terrorists.

Jeff Carlson, a rising star of SF, has published volume three of his Frozen Sky series — set under Europa's ice roof, an unusual tale of First Contact. 

In Frozen Sky 3: Blindsided, engineer Alexis Vonderach sets out to rescue an ESA biologist who has been kidnapped by ancient blind alien tribes, existing in secret deep below Europa's ice surface. 

Meanwhile, in space the People's Supreme Society of China takes action against the ESA, launching thousands of drones and hunter-killers. Conflict above. Conflict below. Blindsided really moves. Try this science-rooted, fast-paced hard SF adventure!

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by newcomer Becky Chambers has received a lot of press. Humans have abandoned their inhospitable homeworld, and joined the Galactic Commons -- but they find themselves at the bottom of the totem pole in this fragile alliance among sentient aliens. Seeking to escape her family’s shame, Rosemary Harper joins the interspecies crew of the Wayfarer, a tunneling starship on a mission to punch wormholes through hyperspace to establish contact with a distant planet. On this long space-road trip, the story focuses on the backstories and relationships of the crew, their solidarity tested by the stress of a long voyage through galactic zones on the verge of war.

If you enjoyed The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang, try his latest collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, speculations about the nature of man, machine and alien. In “Tower of Babylon”, one of my favorites and winner of the 1990 Nebula Award, Sumerian workers labor to reach for the skies and shatter through the vault of the heavens… only to find the unexpected. His novella, “Story of Your Life” won the 1999 Nebula for novella; it explores initial attempts to communicate with alien minds who perceive reality and the flow of time very differently than humans. “Understand” offers a dark take on a “Flowers for Algernon” – style intelligence boost, as two hyper-enhanced minds work toward contrary purposes.

ALSO: Have a look at Eliot Peper's latest novel, Neon Fever Dream. Sinister goings-on at Burning Man! In this fast-paced thriller, mystery, intrigue, espionage and dark conspiracies unfold during a pilgrimage to the incendiary desert festival. 

A worthy follow-up to Peper's last book, Cumulus, a techno-thriller which envisioned a world of near-constant corporate surveillance.