Friday, December 31, 2010
Why write?
This is why. I've been looking for reasons for a while. I knew Marx offered a few, but Keith Richards? Hmm.
Late to the party
This seems to be a time for me to discover lots of blogs that are worth reading. That's partly because I've recently got more interested in economics and futures so have been looking for sources but the best ones I've found range over lots of subjects.
This is a great example of that and I really like the assertion that the singularity, aka the rapture of the nerds, has already been and gone. It ended in 1918 if this is to be believed. There is a great discussion of why the notion of the early Singularity is wrong, here.
Following the early Singularity link lead me to another great blog. Curse you internet, when am I supposed to sleep?
This is a great example of that and I really like the assertion that the singularity, aka the rapture of the nerds, has already been and gone. It ended in 1918 if this is to be believed. There is a great discussion of why the notion of the early Singularity is wrong, here.
Following the early Singularity link lead me to another great blog. Curse you internet, when am I supposed to sleep?
Friday, December 24, 2010
Gun shot
I really hope this never happens to me, but I thought I'd post this information about being shot with a handgun in case I need it in the future. Words cannot do justice to how terrible it sounds and it does make me think that every shooting I've seen in a movie or read about are pale imitations.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Before they were famous - ACC
This is number three in an increasingly regular series.
I thought I would take a leap into the past and see what Arthur C Clarke was like at the start of his career. The first story he sold was Rescue Party which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in May 1946. It was not the first he had published. A story he sold later, called Loophole,
appeared the month before. Rescue Party was written in March 1945 when ACC was 28, in the RAF and working on the development of radar. Soon after the war he began studying mathematics and physics at Kings.
Image via Wikipedia
Knowing that I can see how the atmosphere ACC inhabited while writing the story informs its themes and conclusion. It's essentially a mystery story that reveals how technology helped mankind escape the sun going supernova. The story is broadly about a number of aliens who
investigate what has happened to the creatures that live on Earth. The big reveal comes at the end when humanity is discovered prospering a long way away from Earth. The threat in its closing line is all the more chilling given the period in which it was written.
What is astonishing about the story is its faith that technology can solve all problems and its view of mankind as a vigorous, innovative species that shows up all those aliens by developing technologies in mere centuries that they slaved over for millennia. In that sense it is as dated as an Ealing comedy.
It is also dated by its description of what was cutting edge tech in the 1940s. Valves, relays and thyratrons get a mention as do the "almost human Hollerith analyzers". I wonder if they still used punch cards? It's from a time when IBM, which subsumed Hollerith, was turning out up
to 10 million punch cards a day. Its interesting to note (for me, at least) that the 80 columns of text on some early monitors is a hangover from the punch card days.
From the lordly pedestal of the 21st century those technologies look quaint and I guess the same will be true 70 years from now when a human (or whatever we have become by then) reads the SF of today. Social networks? Pah.
Rescue Party also suffers from the faults of many stories about aliens in that the creatures and races depicted are not really that different from people. They have a few physical and mental differences but those are talked about rather than shown. What was good was that the aliens
are not gods, the technology they use has its limits and much of the tension of the story emerges from a race to find out what happened to man before the sun goes boom and the aliens get fried.
To its credit the story nips along smartly (though there are a lot of adverbs) and is a good whistle-stop tour of a dying Earth. As Eric Flint writes in his introduction, despite the threat at the end, it is an inspiring story. It contemplates a future and mankind's part in it. I don't believe it for a second but its good to dream.
I thought I would take a leap into the past and see what Arthur C Clarke was like at the start of his career. The first story he sold was Rescue Party which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in May 1946. It was not the first he had published. A story he sold later, called Loophole,
appeared the month before. Rescue Party was written in March 1945 when ACC was 28, in the RAF and working on the development of radar. Soon after the war he began studying mathematics and physics at Kings.
Image via WikipediaKnowing that I can see how the atmosphere ACC inhabited while writing the story informs its themes and conclusion. It's essentially a mystery story that reveals how technology helped mankind escape the sun going supernova. The story is broadly about a number of aliens who
investigate what has happened to the creatures that live on Earth. The big reveal comes at the end when humanity is discovered prospering a long way away from Earth. The threat in its closing line is all the more chilling given the period in which it was written.
What is astonishing about the story is its faith that technology can solve all problems and its view of mankind as a vigorous, innovative species that shows up all those aliens by developing technologies in mere centuries that they slaved over for millennia. In that sense it is as dated as an Ealing comedy.
It is also dated by its description of what was cutting edge tech in the 1940s. Valves, relays and thyratrons get a mention as do the "almost human Hollerith analyzers". I wonder if they still used punch cards? It's from a time when IBM, which subsumed Hollerith, was turning out up
to 10 million punch cards a day. Its interesting to note (for me, at least) that the 80 columns of text on some early monitors is a hangover from the punch card days.
From the lordly pedestal of the 21st century those technologies look quaint and I guess the same will be true 70 years from now when a human (or whatever we have become by then) reads the SF of today. Social networks? Pah.
Rescue Party also suffers from the faults of many stories about aliens in that the creatures and races depicted are not really that different from people. They have a few physical and mental differences but those are talked about rather than shown. What was good was that the aliens
are not gods, the technology they use has its limits and much of the tension of the story emerges from a race to find out what happened to man before the sun goes boom and the aliens get fried.
To its credit the story nips along smartly (though there are a lot of adverbs) and is a good whistle-stop tour of a dying Earth. As Eric Flint writes in his introduction, despite the threat at the end, it is an inspiring story. It contemplates a future and mankind's part in it. I don't believe it for a second but its good to dream.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Reservoir Gods
And so it came to pass that the Istari were brought before the Council of the Valar to hear more about the signal task their wise masters would set before them.
Image via Wikipedia
And in one voice the Valar spoke. "Maiar, great spirits, my brothers, you know already the work we have charged you with, of giving aid to the good people of Middle Earth to resist Sauron in his dominance. Now we would perform a ritual to that end and bestow on you the names and colours by which you will be known among men. You will be known thus. Saruman, the white; Gandalf, the grey; Radagast, the brown. Oh, and to Allatar and Pallando, you will be, err, blue? Yes, blue."
"And now, we move to..., yes. Radagast. What would you say to the Council?
"Just one thing. Why the fuck do I have to be brown?"
"It is our unquestionable wisdom that..."
"Unquestionable, my arse. Why can't we pick our own colours?"
"No. We tried that before. Didn't work."
"Anyone want to trade? Allatar? Pallando?
"I can think of a reason you're brown."
"Fuck you, Saruman. Easy for you to say. You have a cool-sounding name.
"Grey isn't great."
"It's a sight better than brown, Gandalf. Think grey, get doves, dappled horses, storm clouds. But brown? That's too close to shit.
"Again, I can think of a reason..."
"Saruman, really, shut it. Okay? Or I'll stick that staff where the Daystar don't shine."
"Cheeky."
"I want to pick my own colour. How about black? I'll be Radagast the black."
Thus spake the Council of the Valar. "Black! You fucking idiot. We're the good guys. Now we know why we named you brown, you shit for brains. You're brown. You are so brown."
"Fuck you."
"And you. You're done."
And so the Council was dissolved and the Istari placed upon Middle Earth to set about their great task. And everywhere Radagast went he was known to say: "Brown, yes, but more towards beige, y'know. Really. That's what they said and who am I to question the wisdom of the Valar?"
Image via WikipediaAnd in one voice the Valar spoke. "Maiar, great spirits, my brothers, you know already the work we have charged you with, of giving aid to the good people of Middle Earth to resist Sauron in his dominance. Now we would perform a ritual to that end and bestow on you the names and colours by which you will be known among men. You will be known thus. Saruman, the white; Gandalf, the grey; Radagast, the brown. Oh, and to Allatar and Pallando, you will be, err, blue? Yes, blue."
"And now, we move to..., yes. Radagast. What would you say to the Council?
"Just one thing. Why the fuck do I have to be brown?"
"It is our unquestionable wisdom that..."
"Unquestionable, my arse. Why can't we pick our own colours?"
"No. We tried that before. Didn't work."
"Anyone want to trade? Allatar? Pallando?
"I can think of a reason you're brown."
"Fuck you, Saruman. Easy for you to say. You have a cool-sounding name.
"Grey isn't great."
"It's a sight better than brown, Gandalf. Think grey, get doves, dappled horses, storm clouds. But brown? That's too close to shit.
"Again, I can think of a reason..."
"Saruman, really, shut it. Okay? Or I'll stick that staff where the Daystar don't shine."
"Cheeky."
"I want to pick my own colour. How about black? I'll be Radagast the black."
Thus spake the Council of the Valar. "Black! You fucking idiot. We're the good guys. Now we know why we named you brown, you shit for brains. You're brown. You are so brown."
"Fuck you."
"And you. You're done."
And so the Council was dissolved and the Istari placed upon Middle Earth to set about their great task. And everywhere Radagast went he was known to say: "Brown, yes, but more towards beige, y'know. Really. That's what they said and who am I to question the wisdom of the Valar?"
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Capitalism's grave
This is just astonishing. Chomsky always is but this sets a high water mark even for him. I love his assertion that business elites are instinctive Marxists. The questions by Keane Bhatt are pretty damn good too.
Image via Wikipedia
Reading it brought together a lot of ideas I've been playing with that I had hoped could create an interesting setting for a story. The setting would be a world in which all government is gone and everything is run by organised crime groups.
It'd be an interesting place to write about because much of what is cherishable about the modern age (equality, freedom of speech and movement, social mobility) would be gone. To be honest, I'm increasingly surprised that it has lasted as long as it has.
If a society is built around crime then the norms we are taught and which tell us to treat each other well, or do as we are done by, will have been ripped up. In that setting the social contract that defines civil society, like all verbal contracts, is not worth the paper it is written on.
Mind you, this suggests that not all will be doom and gloom in a crime-controlled civilisation. I wonder if the reverse will be true if the bad guys are in charge. A speakeasy might be a place you go to behave well, hear chamber music and recite poetry.
Bizarrely, my thinking about this was helped by a section of Don Winslow's The Winter of Frankie Machine in which Frankie rants about the differences between organised crime scams and the (legitimate) rackets that big business and politicians run. Frankie makes the point that there is no difference, except that the legitimate scammers tend to get away with it and only the chumps try organised crime.
Winslow's book also has a lot to say about Nixon's links with the mafia. Really? Kennedy, I knew about but Tricky Dick? Hmm.
For a long time though I've stumbled over how that society might come about. It seemed too much of a leap to just impose it. I needed some event or chain of circumstances that pointed in the right direction even if they did not lead me by the hand. The map not the territory.
The Chomsky interview suggests those circumstances might have already come about. Evidence for this is here (and you don't get much better witnesses than a former chief economist of the IMF) and in many of the posts here. No doubt I'll be getting Yves Smith's book as well.
I realise that all the information here plays to my white, liberal, middle-aged bias and there are other legitimate interpretations of recent events but I also realise that you need a place to stand if you want to view the territory.
I was loathe to post this as it strays a bit too close to the real world and actual events. As this blog is supposed to be about fiction that troubled me as I wanted to maintain that air gap between one and the other. What I'm starting to see more clearly than ever is how much of a fiction, fiction is. It's not fact, it's not fantasy, it's life.
Image via WikipediaReading it brought together a lot of ideas I've been playing with that I had hoped could create an interesting setting for a story. The setting would be a world in which all government is gone and everything is run by organised crime groups.
It'd be an interesting place to write about because much of what is cherishable about the modern age (equality, freedom of speech and movement, social mobility) would be gone. To be honest, I'm increasingly surprised that it has lasted as long as it has.
If a society is built around crime then the norms we are taught and which tell us to treat each other well, or do as we are done by, will have been ripped up. In that setting the social contract that defines civil society, like all verbal contracts, is not worth the paper it is written on.
Mind you, this suggests that not all will be doom and gloom in a crime-controlled civilisation. I wonder if the reverse will be true if the bad guys are in charge. A speakeasy might be a place you go to behave well, hear chamber music and recite poetry.
Bizarrely, my thinking about this was helped by a section of Don Winslow's The Winter of Frankie Machine in which Frankie rants about the differences between organised crime scams and the (legitimate) rackets that big business and politicians run. Frankie makes the point that there is no difference, except that the legitimate scammers tend to get away with it and only the chumps try organised crime.
Winslow's book also has a lot to say about Nixon's links with the mafia. Really? Kennedy, I knew about but Tricky Dick? Hmm.
For a long time though I've stumbled over how that society might come about. It seemed too much of a leap to just impose it. I needed some event or chain of circumstances that pointed in the right direction even if they did not lead me by the hand. The map not the territory.
The Chomsky interview suggests those circumstances might have already come about. Evidence for this is here (and you don't get much better witnesses than a former chief economist of the IMF) and in many of the posts here. No doubt I'll be getting Yves Smith's book as well.
I realise that all the information here plays to my white, liberal, middle-aged bias and there are other legitimate interpretations of recent events but I also realise that you need a place to stand if you want to view the territory.
I was loathe to post this as it strays a bit too close to the real world and actual events. As this blog is supposed to be about fiction that troubled me as I wanted to maintain that air gap between one and the other. What I'm starting to see more clearly than ever is how much of a fiction, fiction is. It's not fact, it's not fantasy, it's life.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Good reading
Another ace find. An actually useful list of the good bits on the web. I've seen a lot of this type of site and many lose focus after a while and neurotically link to everything that anyone has remotely liked. This looks much more discerning plus it chimes with my guilty white liberal POV.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
