Science Fictional musings, a roundup and some preens!

Last month we hosted a memorial and celebration of our dear friend, prophetic author Vernor Vinge. Here is some video sampled from our farewell celebration of this wonderfully brilliant and sweet human being.  

Vernor’s Hugo-winning works include A Deepness in the Sky and Rainbows End, in which the UCSD Library is tech-persuaded to ‘get up and dance!’ His novella “True Names” foresaw the many vexing quandaries about identity and accountability, as well and many boons.

Vernor foresaw - by decades – so many implications of our world, including the Internet, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence (AI) and 'the Singularity,' with novels and award-winning stories translated into 25+ languages. Vernor was also a beloved professor of mathematics and computer science at San Diego State, since 1972. Here is Vernor speaking at a panel at Loscon39 about 12 years ago. 

 

Feel free to leave memorial messages there or under my blog tribute to Vernor. Or, on my video memorial honoring Vernor.

 

Oh, one last thing.  We hope to gather resources to establish an annual Vernor Vinge annual lecture to alternate at UCSD and SDSU, featuring great talks about plausible speculative futures. Please contact me if you are interested in participating.

== A couple of forgivable preenings ==

On Tim Ventura’s popular ‘cast – just released: “Legendary SF author David Brin discusses Dune! The new movies vs. the novels, contrasted and compared to Isaac Asimov's Foundation, Arthur Clarke and how certain obsessions of the 60s still resonate, affecting art & consciousness even today.” 

Especially this question: is Denis Villeneuve’s brilliant version questioning or even reversing some classic thematic elements of Frank Herbert's masterpiece?

Oh and this. My page devoted to both 250-word and 6-word stories. One of mine won WIRED's 6-word story contest a while back. Six words, containing three separate scenes! Action! Conversation! Love & loss and tragic irony!  A lot more story than 'baby shoes.'

== Others are pointing it out! ==

Are fictional dystopias blocking us from better futures? From Big Think: 

“Since the 1970s the prevailing vision of the future in popular culture has tended towards the dystopian. Commentators of all stripes — from celebrated movie critics to novelists and today’s "effective accelerationists" — have addressed the lack of blue-sky thinking. Michael Harris argues that dystopias are not a failing of their creators’ imaginations — and that fears about the future are rooted in the mechanisms of power and control.” 

Yes. It's one of the key points I make in Vivid Tomorrows!

…And yet, I also argue that some dystopias are not downers, but useful warnings! In fact, we are likely alive, today because of effective warnings by sci fi SPP… “self-preventing prophecies”! 

From Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove to China Syndrome and Soylent Green and Nineteen Eighty-Four, chilling tales drew attention to possible failure modes!

What is the difference between those effective ‘SPP’ dire warnings and dismal dystopian downers that only hurt our morale? Well, one difference is whether the warning is something we might DO things to help prevent! 

But the biggest difference is laziness. Dystopias or caricature tyrants with glowing eyes are trivially easy! Easy - for writers & directors – to write, to film, and to push at suckers!

Of course plotting a thriller becomes much harder, if the hero gets help from skilled professionals or even institutions... or neighbors! If the hero is a member of an actual civilization with skilled professionals eager to help. Can’t have that! The writer might actually have to work for a living, instead of just cloning every other lone-hero-and-pals-vs-Sauron cliché! Far easier to dismiss the plot complications that might impede the relentless slam(!) of vivid/implausible action sequences! 

Alas, there is a price we all pay for this betraying laziness. After generations of Hollywood flicks have preached that civilization never matters, it now feeds much of the propaganda that’s turning us into sullen pessimists. (For more see Vivid Tomorrows.)

And on that downer note, let's swivel back to fun!

== Science Fiction Updates ==

David Gerrold is being way-entertainingly vivid again! Chess with a Dragon – a revived classic from Open Road. Newly admitted to galactic society, naïve humans find out that the Galactic Encyclopedia has a user fee—and they are overdrawn! If the debt can’t be paid, humanity will be sold as slaves . . . or food.  

Check out this article: Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” predicted devastating climate change, inequality, space travel and “Make America great again” 31 years ago. I miss Octavia! As a friend and for her uncanny ability to encourage our active conscience. Only, unlike the Hollywood depression machine of today, she laced her warnings with hope.

Here's a recent bibliography of SF about the Law: “Bibliography: Law in Science Fiction,” by Stephen Krueger.

Here is an interesting and cogent appraisal by Noah Smith of the “Dark Forest Problem,” – the core driver of every plot element in Liu Cixin’s wonderful (and Hugo winning) science fiction epic The Three-Body Trilogy… or Remembrance of Earth’s Past. (I am mentioned several times. Also spoilers.) I must agree on many levels – (though the trilogy is still magnificent and fascinating!) – that the premise depends upon our galaxy being far more opaque to knowledge and observation than it actually is. And that the tale’s zero-sum premise is hard to support in light of either actual evolution or game theory. Still, this critique offers worthy insights about a magnificent epic so grand that it can take a little scrutiny!

Lightening the mood: We found the movie Future 38 to be silly and way-fun! A take-off from 1930s screwball comedies, with a sci fi twist, as we’re supposed to believe the flick was actually made in 1938, projecting a future 2018, getting a flurry of predictions both hilariously wrong and even more amusingly spot-on. As almost never happens in Hollywood, there’s optimism all over…and some real wit. 

(In the future, it’s perfectly normal for ‘jolly’ couples to get married. They demo'd the formica bomb on a useless Nevada ghost town... Lost Wages or Lost Vegas, I think.  ;-).  And so on. I expect there will be GPT personas offered soon that mimic Mabel the Operator.

== SF Miscellany ==

My novels - Earth and Glory Season - have just been re-released with gorgeous new covers by Open Road, along with my Uplift titles, such as Startide Rising. 

Audio tales? This one by Asimov - A Pebble in the Sky - is a lost classic that I refer to in Foundation's Triumph. (Though it ignores the novel’s main plot arc.) But there are lots more...

My colleague Bruce Golden has released a new collection. Everything Aliens Always Wanted to Know About Sex (*But Were Afraid to Land and Ask) features short stories, satire, novel excerpts, and factual reports about love, sex, romance, lust, and the realm of human desire. Inside its pages you'll find tales both dark and humorous, romantic and passionate, weird and wonderful.

Lawrence Schoen’s story "The Panda's Dream" is moving and sweet.

An anthology of positive future climate stories and scenarios - The Climate Action Almanac - is available free from ASU's Center for Science & the Imagination.

== Finally, another preen… ==

Finally... a montage of photos from Panama... just before I keynoted the conference on Beneficial Artificial Intelligence (see my talk summarized here.) And okay, John Cena I ain't! But lucky at love!

Vernor Vinge - the Man with Lamps on His Brows

They said it of Moses - that he had 'lamps on his brows.' That he could peer ahead, through the fog of time. That phrase is applied now to the Prefrontal Lobes, just above the eyes - organs that provide humans our wan powers of foresight. Wan... except in a few cases, when those lamps blaze! Shining ahead of us, illuminating epochs yet to come.

Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, Vernor Vinge

Alas, such lights eventually dim. And so, it is with sadness - and deep appreciation of my friend and colleague - that I must report the passing of Vernor Vinge. A titan in the literary genre that explores a limitless range of potential destinies, Vernor enthralled millions with tales of plausible tomorrows, made all the more vivid by his polymath masteries of language, drama, characters and the implications of science. 

 

Accused by some of a grievous sin - that of 'optimism' - Vernor gave us peerless legends that often depicted human success at overcoming problems... those right in front of us... while posing new ones! New dilemmas that may lie just beyond our myopic gaze. 

He would often ask: "What if we succeed? Do you think that will be the end of it?"

 

Vernor's aliens - in classics like A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep - were fascinating beings, drawing us into different styles of life and paths of consciousness. 

His 1981 novella "True Names" was perhaps the first story to present a plausible concept of cyberspace, which would later be central to cyberpunk stories by William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and others. Many innovators of modern industry cite “True Names” as their keystone technological inspiration... though I deem it to have been even more prophetic about the yin-yang tradeoffs of privacy, transparency and accountability.  

 

Another of the many concepts arising in Vernor’s dynamic mind was that of the “Technological Singularity,” a term (and disruptive notion) that has pervaded culture and our thoughts about the looming future.

 

Rainbows End expanded these topics to include the vividly multi-layered "augmented' reality wherein we all will live, in just a few years from now. It was almost-certainly the most vividly accurate portrayal of how new generations might apply onrushing cyber-tools, boggling their parents, who will stare at their kids' accomplishments, in wonder. Wonders like a university library building that, during an impromptu rave, stands up and starts to dance!

Vinge was also a long-revered educator and professor of math and computer science at San Diego State University, mentoring generations of practical engineers to also keep a wide stance and open minds.

Vernor had been - for years - under care for progressive Parkinsons, at a very nice place overlooking the Pacific in La Jolla. As reported by his friend and fellow SDSU Prof. John Carroll, his decline had steepened since November, but was relatively comfortable. Up until that point, I had been in contact with Vernor almost weekly, but my friendship pales next to John's devotion, for which I am - (and we all should be) - deeply grateful.

 

I am a bit too wracked, right now, to write much more. Certainly, homages will flow and we will post some on a tribute page. 

I will say that it's a bit daunting now to be a "Killer B" who's still standing. So, let me close with a photo from last October, that's dear to my heart. And those prodigious brow-lamps were still shining brightly!

We spanned a pretty wide spectrum - politically! Yet, we Killer Bs - (Vernor was a full member! And Octavia Butler once guffawed happily when we inducted her) - always shared a deep love of our high art - that of the gedankenexperiment, extrapolation into the undiscovered country ahead. 

If Vernor's readers continue to be inspired - that country might even feature more solutions than problems. And perhaps copious supplies of hope.

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Addenda & tributes

I have posted a video tribute from our memorial to Vernor Vinge.

“What a fine writer he was!”  -- Robert Silverberg.

“A kind man.”  -- Kim Stanley Robinson (The nicest thing anyone could say.)

 

“The good news is that Vernor, and you and many other authors, will have achieved a kind of immortality thanks to your works. My favorite Vernor Vinge book was True Names." -- Vinton Cerf

 

“Vernor was a good guy.” -- Pat Cadigan