Science Fiction updates & news

Leading off: my brilliant colleague Ted Chiang has a featured article in the New Yorker about whether A.I. will ever be able to creatively do art. He starts by referring to a 1953 Roald Dahl story - The Great Automatic Grammatizator - about a story-writing automaton. (See below for references to other tales from that era... and even the 1890s... that were far more plausibly prophetic.)

"Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium. But the creators of traditional novels, paintings, and films are drawn to those art forms because they see the unique expressive potential that each medium affords. It is their eagerness to take full advantage of those potentialities that makes their work satisfying, whether as entertainment or as art."

Hmm... inspiring and even moving. Though on a practical level, in fact, I agree with only a few of Ted's confident assertions.  Still, he is always worth a read.

== Sci fi news for youse ==

And now a few Brin-nouncemnts. The show "The Science in the Fiction” interviewed me a week after they had on Avi Loeb. So, you can bet that first contact scenarios, Fermi Paradox stuff and plausible types of Alien Probes in the Solar System all came up.  

And also yeah, sure, also those dang UFOs and the folks who have dredged up that tiresome mythology twice per decade, since I was ten. (See my own much more plausible notion about those "tic-tacs." Someone tell Stephen Colbert?)

One thing I'm sure that some of you will takeaway: “Brin sure can talk! Take a breath for some air, David!”  Well, all of those topics fascinate me... pretty much my one common trait with Avi.

You can find this episode of The Science in the Fiction: "David Brin on First Contact in Existence" on Apple Podcasts - or on Spotify.

Moving on to all you gamers out there. Uh, maybe this will impress you?  ;-) “The Postman by David Brin influenced the unique landscape and settlements in Fallout , and its themes can be seen throughout the game.”

A far more important announcement? Phantasia Press is about to issue the very first ever hardcover of Sundiver - the book that launched the Uplift Universe. 

Great cover art and interiors by Jim Burns! He and I had to scribble a fair number of signature pages... oh, and Rob Sawyer, who wrote an introduction! Beautiful edition. Watch for the publication announcement in a couple of months.

== And a little bit of prescient sci fi? ==

Want better old stories than the Roald Dahl cited by Ted Chiang?

Truly ancient Sci Fi is sometimes uncannily predictive! Take Fritz Leiber's "The Creature from Cleveland Depths" which was prescient about AI smartphones and their effects. Almost as much so as Murray Leinster’s "A Logic Named Joe." The latter, also appearing in the 1940s, was prophetic about PCs and especially today's learning systems who hallucinate reasons to help the user fabricate or fabulate... or even commit crimes!

And here’s a link about Isaac's clever story “Strikebreaker,” which now is redolent with this particular news item about a small town that abuses its civil servant and comes to regret it: “Clerk Denied Time Off Quits - Entire Town Shuts Down.”

But if you truly want undiscovered gems of sci fi prescience...  this is way cool! A podcast interview with two terrific academics concerning one of the ‘lost’ founders of modern science fiction – 1880s San Francisco 'hard SF' author Robert Duncan Milne – who they are in-effect resurrecting from obscurity in a soon published book. Co-authored by University of Dundee scholar Keith Williams - and Ari Brin! Listen on the daringly named ‘cast “Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever.”  

 == Erudition about Science Fiction ==

If you want to become comprehensively erudite about the 200+ year history of the literary genre of thought and possibilities… try The Evolution of Science Fiction Webinar Series, by Tom Lombardo (based on his multi-volume History of Science Fiction books). With over thirty individual videos, providing a comprehensive history of science fiction from ancient to contemporary times. Covering science fiction literature, cinema/TV, art, comics, and the evolving science fiction community, along with numerous important writers and their works. The webinars also examine the power and value of science fiction, its influence on the modern world, and the impact of intellectual and cultural trends on the evolution of science fiction. 

On Big Think, Guy Harrison offers 31 sci-fi quotes that offer real-world wisdom, excerpted from his recently published collection, Damn You, Entropy! 1,001 of the Greatest Science Fiction Quotes, including one of mine from Existence: “For all its beauty, honesty, and effectiveness at improving the human condition, science demands a terrible price—that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not.”  

Oh, I donated/contributed a story to a benefit anthology of SFF stories and art, to benefit Ukraine. To Ukraine, With Love, is now available for purchase!

== Minor Brin Notes ==

LOCUS reports a small matter about me and my alma mater, Caltech - which has  awarded me this year's Distinguished Alumni Award, to be presented on campus in October. And I must say it came as a complete surprise, given the astounding folks who were just in my own class, there!

Ah, but give this Audible release a listen: The River of Time… my first collection of short stories, narrated wonderfully by my friend, the charismatic Stephen Mendel! And yes, one of the stories is a Hugo winner and a couple others were nominees. And nothing would go better with your commute! Tempted, but not quite sure? Take a look at the YouTube book trailer for The River of Time!

Oh, a friend just made a cute connection. Remember Foundation's Triumph? The final canonical book in the marvelous SF universe created by Isaac Asimov? (Wherein I tied all of Isaac’s loose ends, much to the pleasure of Janet Asimov.)  It was the final, stand-alone novel in the “Second Foundation Trilogy.” Greg Benford’s tale portrayed Hari Seldon as a young man, Greg Bear’s showed him in middle age and mine – well...

... Foundation's Triumph dealt with the final two weeks of Hari Seldon's life, after the Foundation departs for Terminus... and his greatest adventure of all.   

No more sequels. But a prequel? What of the cute (groaner) connection to… Young Seldon?  Oooog.

Science fictional futures: news & updates

First... one of the best surviving science fiction and mystery bookstores left in the west is San Diego's Mysterious Galaxy. It looks like they may have to close without a new owner or investor. If you have any leads, refer them here... or to me.

I've been busy, all right. In addition to my e-book on political tactics you never see in the news*... we're almost ready to announce something that many of you have written to ask for over the years --both an e-book and POD paperback of The Ancient Ones, my sci fi comedy novel...

...and our own e-book re-issue of Sundiver! Stay tuned.

And yes, many of you have written in or commented on the huge new popular online game Death Stranding, and yes, well, some things are obvious. "If you’ve ever read David Brin’s novel, or seen the 1997 Kevin Costner film, The Postman, this shares a similar premise. The only difference of course would be the supernatural elements,"notes Adam Beck in Hardcore Gamer.

A new anthology Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow includes 14 speculative stories from such accomplished authors as Paolo Bacigalupi, Emily St. John Mandel, Annalee Newitz, Carmen Maria Machado, and others. By turns funny, alarming, and inspiring, Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow is a thought-provoking excursion into the futures we would and would not want to live in. 

== Science fiction and the news ==

Congratulations to this year’s winners of Hugo Awards:

The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal — Best Novel (And I recommend highly.)

Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells — Best Novella

“A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies,” by Alix E. Harrow — Best Short Story

“If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again,” by Zen Cho — Best Novelette
Wayfarers, by Becky Chambers — Best Series

And in this world...

Los Angeles recently ended its insistence that all tall buildings have heliports. Ironic! Because uber and other are designing networks of hover cabs to ferry users between rooftops.

Forget flying cars. How about wooden ones? New “Metallic Wood” could lead to Super-Light Cars. It’s as tough as titanium, but light enough to float in water.

In The Uplift War, there’s a riot scene (that readers call a laugh riot!) in a chimp bar called the Ape’s Grape, wherein the tables are made of straw and the beer bottles out of paper, only partly for reasons of cost/ecology… mostly to limit damage, because a nice riot is one of the objectives, every evening! Now Carlsberg brewery is developing paper beer bottles. Eco driven for now. But expect the fun-to-damage ratio of bar fights to improve mightily!  

Another prediction happening: in Earth (1989), I portrayed Sea State using power-generating kites. Now Google’s “X” team at Makani has moved closer the day when a kite massing far, far less might generate as much power as a massive windmill tower.   One use here is offshore platforms, potentially floating ones, or getting small island nations off diesel generators.  Later, much more.

One more for the prediction registry? “It Slices, It Dices, It Binds, And Stops Bugs: Dental Floss Is Your Secret Multitool.” Yeah. In The Practice Effect, my hero uses dental floss to tear down a wall and escape from prison.

My Hugo nominated story “The Giving Plague” is reprinted in an anthology (along with many originals) of science fiction about health care!  Some stories in VITAL explore advances in treatment for serious and emergency conditions; imagine a healthcare system that is simpler to navigate and cares for the whole person, or envision a world where the average life expectancy is 200 years.

A fun story by my colleague Ted Chiang has a title “The Great Silence,” that I coined in my 1983 general review article on SETI, before the mystery of the missing aliens was even called the “Fermi Paradox.”  The subtitle: “A parrot has a question for humans,” pretty much cues you in to the well-written little tale. And the narrator has more to say than the poor parrot quantum-messengers in my novel Existence. The plaint of a soon-to-be extinct sapient bird and species isn’t rancorous, though moving.

Along similar lines see “What the Dead Man Said,” a new short story about climate change, migration, and family secrets, by Chinelo Onwualu.

And from the sublime to the deliberately ridiculous…  ‘Alcohol in Space: Past, Present and Future’ is now available — including a story (*hic!*) - of mine own. Collected by Chris Carberry, with a forward by Andy Weir.

A new film “Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me!” tells the story of 13 ability-diverse global citizens as they explore their identity through artistic expression and making a home for themselves in the VR Metaverse.

A simple proposal that could change a generation. These new e-sports leagues are just now setting up their rules. So why not require that the players POWER their own devices with exercise? As long as it's a level playing field, so to speak, with allowances for age and handicaps, it would add another dimension! It could be part of game play. Above all it would set an example that these new e-sports don't have to be slovenly and destructive of physical health. It might inspire a whole generation to at least move a bit in both the real and virtual worlds.

Chinese Director Says He’s ‘Truly Sorry’ for Sci-Fi Flop. Teng Huatao, the director of “Shanghai Fortress,” on Saturday expressed his “extreme sadness” over myriad memes joking that the movie had “closed the door” on expectations for Chinese sci-fi. While such films have performed poorly in recent years, the runaway success of February blockbuster “The Wandering Earth” had ushered in a surge of excitement and optimism about the genre’s future — that is, until now.

More soon!

---

* And yes, my new e-book POLEMICAL JUDO sets our current crisis in many perspectives you’ve never seen, offer ing100+ tactics to counter the would-be destroyers of our Great Experiment. Free sample chapters! And the paperback is now available for Print-on-Demand.

Maybe someone will pick up some of these tactics and win some victories for us.

Science Fiction media and more

A bit of a sci-fi media roundup today.

How long have we waited for a television anthology series to be based upon (not just occasionally) genuine published short stories crafted by fine authors? Netflix has one, at last, titled Love, Death & Robots. See descriptions of some of the stories and authors featured.

31 Science-Fiction Things That Actually Exist Now… alas every one of them from TV or movies. How long would the list be, if they just took the forecasts of Frederik Pohl?  Including meat substitutes and tissue culture steaks that could help save us all. Oh, and today's cell phone with Siri. Yes that.

I want to see this... A famous “lost film” almost on a par with Jodorowsky’s DUNE, would be “Giraffes on Horseback Salad,” Salvador Dali’s attempt to sketch a possible film collaboration with the Marx Brothers! And now the pieces have been put together for a surrealist graphic novel: Giraffes on Horseback Salad: The Strangest Movie Never Made.

LATE NEWS: the composer of the concept album has announced that the sound track to "Giraffes" has just been released. Drop by for free samples.


== All SciFi news is miscellany! ==

Any Trekkies out there, Alec of the Axanar team (the fan production so good that Paramount took serious (&legal) notice) interviews me about Star Trek, my graphic novel, the missing concept re Klingons and comparisons to Star Wars.

Here are five science fiction themed music videos that take a look at unfolding, futuristic societal dilemmas. Janelle Monáe’s 2009 “Many Moons” is lavish and way fun. Rosamund Pike does an amazing marionette dance, and others.

A classic: my 1999 "Open Letter To Alien Lurkers" helped fill in a gap in SETI: "what if there are aliens or probes currently in the solar system, watching and reading our Internet, yet withholding first contact?" The Invitation To ETI site filled in that gap by formally asking for contact... but nothing happened. In my page on the IETI site, I contemplate 11 possible reasons why! (This list was dramatized and expanded and woven into the plot in EXISTENCE!) Watch the terrific/fun video trailer for Existence!

A fun look at the Captain’s quarters in various Star Trek shows.

Some folks say XKCD was referring here to my (Hugo-winning) short story “The Crystal Spheres” from The River of Time. I doubt it. But I’ll bask in the mistaken assumption.

== Sci Fi is “Speculative History” and so… ==

Extra History is one of the best things on YouTube. Quick, animated summaries of past eras that shaped our age. A 6-parter filled in my gaps about Sun Yat-sen and the Chinese Revolution. Another swept me across the end of the samurai era. This one about the Gracchi brothers shows how oligarchy undermined the Roman Republic, which was then torn up by radical populism. It all makes clear how fevered and harsh was "history" and why our present oligarchy plots against the new, modern, grownup ways of doing things.

The animations are way fun! But the narration is so good I get everything while turning my back to cook or do busywork at the computer. And dig it... he has a series on sci fi authors! Not comprehensive but cool.

Oh, also look at HISTORY BUFFS, which compares "historical" movies with actual events. I sometimes disagree. For example, the only good thing about the incredibly stupid flick  LAST SAMURAI was the fact that it made some more people aware that the Meiji Restoration happened. Treating the brutally oppressive lords as some sort of noble, repressed native tribe was silly. Nick Hodges understandably goes apoplectic over APOCALYPTO, though the simplest excuse for the 600 year gaffe is that one city survived the Classical Collapse and somehow kept going till the Spanish came. (Absurd, of course.) He waxes effusive over WATERLOO and ZULU and I agree -- while filling in a lot of interesting background.

On Tor.com “8 Books to Help You Rebuild After an Ecological Catastrophe.” The list doesn’t go back to tomes that were prescient about it all, though.

Along a similar topic… a new Swedish Sci Fi flick about a ship escaping Earth that gets waylaid… Aniara. 

I gave a club permission to translate and publish my short story ”Reality Check” (from Insistence of Vision) into Romanian. And here is the link for a few of you to enjoy.  

Every now and then someone sends me or links me to a semi-tribute song or composition based on one of my works, often inspired by some dolphin-poesy… in this case some trinary musings by the brain-damaged dolphin captain of Streaker, Creideiki.  Funky and strange use of poesy, yet catchy.   The key refrain is "where there is mind... there is deception..."

== short takes and news ==

Bill & Ted return? Oy. Forget the actors. Hire the old writers! Few flicks were ever more original. Alas, while the ‘third movies curse’ is no longer as perfectly true as it was in the 1980s and 1990s, it still is pretty strong. Bogus! 

Another theory that attempts to make sense of the utterly stupid Luke-Obiwan-Yoda story arc. And yes, it makes some sense… within the larger context of my STAR WARS ON TRIAL assertion the Yoda is probably the most-evil character (if you go by body count) in the history of all human storytelling. By far.

They Live is a 1988 movie directed by John Carpenter, based on Ray Nelson’s Sheckleyish 1963 short story "Eight O’Clock in the Morning." Rent it! It is truly wonderful. There's this scene that will make you laugh and cry at the same time, in which these two big, decent-but-dumb guys beat the crap out of each other in a fair-fight-of-honor over whether one of them will simply put on a pair of special sunglasses that will let him see the aliens who are enslaving the Earth. Oh, but what a perfect metaphor for our divided politics… how hard we’ll fight for our illusions! Oh, if only it were as easy as forcing our neighbors to put on some sunglasses. The fight scene. Truly classic.

== ... more... ==

An interesting video about a utopian experiment in the midwest in 1960’s America. A visionary scientist and a team of committed experts plan a domed city for 250,000 people whose futuristic technology and innovative design will eradicate the pollution and waste of the modern city, and lead the way toward 21st-Century urban life. But before the city of the future breaks ground on a virgin site in isolated northern Minnesota, rural citizens and mistrustful environmentalists rise up in protest, doubtful of its pollution-free promises. 

In my own yet-to-be-published SF comedy, my character muses about an even greater Lost Film, “The Road To Transylvania,” one of the “road” flicks of Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, set in Dracula’s Castle with villains like Duchess Succubus. But it’s the song they sing – a variant on their traditional “Thanks for the Memories” – that got the film banned, never viewed until the year 2102. Want more? Hope I find a good publisher!

How wonderful! Science fiction is flourishing. It long ago took over Hollywood (though could use more depth from real novels). It’s on the upswing in China (for now).  Few cultural shifts could do more good in Latin America. So NYC area folks should drop in on “Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas,” (alternative worlds) currently on view through Aug. 18 at the Queens Museum. According to this review, there’s quite a bit of humor, too.

Kinda cool how the producers of a film NOMAD flew to an exact spot to film two lovers with a perfect solar eclipse in the background. The premise sounds cool, too.

Lawrence Schoen, author of BARSK and other way cool sci fi, has an amusing and fast-paced series starting with "Buffalo Dogs." -- The Amazing Conroy, the greatest hypnotist in known space, hits a snag when one of hypnotic suggestions is taken literally by aliens who only understand objective truth. Over the course of the day he'll lose everything, get blackballed from his profession, and smuggle an insanely valuable alien creature that can eat anything and farts oxygen.  Download it for free(!)

Science fiction scholars! Prof. Tom Lombardo has published the first volume of his epic work “Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future “Prometheus to the Martians” – dealing with how ancient myths all the way to HG Wells have dealt with a timely topic – how humanity might change. Or catch an audio interview about the book (skip about 5 minutes in).

Lombardo's followup - Volume Two: The Time Machine to Star Maker had been completed and scholars chafing at the bit to see it might write to him.

Rising SF star David Walton has a new novel from Simon & Schuster — Three Laws Lethal — about the inventor of a virtual world in which AIs train to be released into the economy, who begins to recognize that these entities are developing goals of their own—goals for which they are willing to kill. 

Science Fiction Scenarios

Today we'll play catch up with a raft of science fictional items, some of them plausible! And some almost as weirdly implausible as the world we're living in.

== Living with AI ==

How will humanity keep up with AI? Many Big Thinkers foresee AI outstripping organic humans and rendering us obsolete – at-best patronized-beloved old farts and at-worst disposable.  There are some potential soft-landings, though:

1 – Merge with the machines, the dream of Ray Kurzweil and other cyber transcendentalists. There are many reasons to doubt the possibility, but none are yet decisive. So I portray it working very well, in a post-singularity society, in my story “Stones of Significance.”

2 – Augment organic brains and people to keep up.  Of course my Uplift Universe is all about this, as are the “augments” in The Postman.  And the “dittos” in Kiln People. And several stories like “Transition Generation” and “Chrysalis” in my collection Insistence of Vision. Those who believe our brains are “quantum” think that we have time, before cybernetic entities cross a threshold to high consciousness. We probably don’t.

3 – Emphasize the one thing that works well in humans – our ability to get more done in groups, and even (sometimes) show collective, positive-sum wisdom. In Futurism, Louis Rosenberg suggests that our chief hope will come from a developing "hive mind."  Nor is he the first. After all, this is what Teilhard de Chardin wrote about, a century ago and it’s a recurring theme/prescription in the futures of both Isaac Aimov and Arthur C. Clarke, as well as Theodore Sturgeon and many others.  (It really was cult-like, amid the despair following the atom bomb.) 

In fact, I portray a “Macro Mind” in my novel EARTH, but it’s different than any of those. More loose and flexible and willing to accept the individuality of her human components, the way any sane person admits “I am many” and listens to the cacophony, within.  Indeed, even looser — this kind of synergistic "mind" made up of hundreds of millions of autonomous citizens is the key underlying the successes of Enlightenment Civilization… and it is the thing targeted by its enemies to be destroyed.  (If they succeed, we’re all doomed.)

Machine intelligence and AI are explored more fully in the recently released The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence by Amir Husain, as well as in Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era by James Barat.

4 - Raise them as our children. We already deal with creating new intelligences who are smarter than us!  We know how to do it, such that only a very small percentage of human adolescents in each generation actually try to carry our their loud threats to “destroy all humans”!  I portray this in EXISTENCE.

And yes, I’ve thought about this very problem, from a myriad angles, for a very long time.  Here’s video of my talk on the future of A.I. to a packed house at IBM's World of Watson Congress - offering big perspectives on both artificial and human augmentation.

== Science Fiction cinema ==

YouTube's sorting algorithms can offer you an endless supply of "short science fiction films," such as the site DUST. Some are very well made, and it's good to see such verve and creativity. The special effects available to small groups of amateurs are amazing... though alas, there's almost never much in the area of plot. Very few have a decent story arc, and the obsessive reliance on gloomy post-apocalypse premises is downright tedious. What? you can't fish around for cool old SF stories?

Still, if you take into account Sturgeon's Law, it's a great trend! And some of these shorts really stand out.

I've mentioned one of my favorites: Einstein-Rosen by Olga Osorio. A lovely, whimsical and endearing little flick about two brothers, who take their genius for granted with child-like grace as they mess around with a fluke of physics.

Counterpart. Looks unusual. A fresh take on an old idea. I hope it's well done.

Fascinating -- Out There was a short-lived science fiction television program broadcast on Sundays at 6 on CBS Television from October 28, 1951 through January 13, 1952. It was one of the first science fiction anthology series, and one of the first shows to mix filmed special effects with "live" action. It only lasted twelve half-hour episodes before being cancelled. The awkward time slot may have led to its failure. In its short run, the program featured episodes adapted from stories by (and in some cases written by) authors including Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, John D. McDonald, Murray Leinster, Frank Belknap Long and Milton Lesser.  

We gave the TV Time travel show TIMELESS a chance, watching 4 episodes from a disk. Alas, the premise and plot conceits are ancient. The actors are captivating and the dialogue okay. But the historical aspects -- actual, loving attention to historical detail and events? Horrible. Truly atrocious. Every episode was rife with howlers, sometimes almost every ten minutes. Just a wee bit of professionalism could have fixed that. What a pity.

== Science Fiction criticism ==

It was a privilege to have been one of Ursula Le Guin’s students, long ago. The ready acceptance of her brilliance by most in science fiction proved the genre was ahead of its time - even back in the 60s – and she was a leader keeping it on the cutting edge for many years, predicting many of the passionate causes of our rambunctious, ever-dynamic time. See this reflection on her life from the Los Angeles Times. In her final publication - No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters Le Guin offers personal reflections on life, aging and writing. 

UCR Lit Prof. and science fiction legend Nalo Hopkinson explains “afrofuturism” in this excellent interview on CBC.

A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison, by Nat Segaloff offers an uncensored look at a unique individual, with amusing anecdotes, ongoing controversies and extensive - unfiltered - interviews with Ellison as well as numerous friends, colleagues and fellow authors.

For decades the Eaton Conference was the premier site for academic discussion of the boldest and most pertinent genre of literature. Now available for you science fiction scholars, a collection of the best papers - including one of my own.

Voices from beyond: In this article from The Washington Post, author Brad Meltzer asks if a person can leave a message inside his body before dying, a plot device the author used in his thriller, The Escape Artist. A bit of book promotion that stands alone as both fascinating and inspiring.

== and... ==

A sci-fi-ish disturbing video depicts near-future ubiquitous lethal autonomous weapons, or “slaughterbots.” Of course, as always, the makers of the film point to a dangerous tech-possible trend… and prescribe rules to limit it, never considering the question of how those rules will apply to the worst and most deviously secretive forces in the world.

Watch the video! Be disturbed, as the makers intended! Then watch it again and note that the evil deeds happen precisely because of asymmetry of light. And the only solution… the only possible solution… is to concentrate on shining light on villains, including villainous elites. It is how we got the relative freedom and safety we have now! It is the only way we can keep it. See The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?