Always take your hippy with you

I recently watched a SF/F film, The Last Mimsy, which was rather sweet and very enjoyable, and managed to bring together Alice in Wonderland, mandalas, genes and nanotechnology. At the crucial moment in the film, the hippy character (who has been to Nepal and knows about Tibetan Buddhism and mandalas) knows exactly what to do and how to react, whereas the rather square and non-hippy parents have no idea how to react.

This suggests to me a new principle in life:

"Everywhere you go
Always take your hippy with you."

This insight was borne out by an article on my employer's website announcing that growing hemp is carbon neutral, and you can build houses with it.

Hemp could be key to zero-carbon houses
08 April 2009
Researchers from the Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering are investigating using hemp to build carbon-neutral homes. Using this renewable building material would not only help combat climate change but could also boost the rural economy.

artificial languages, artificial religions

A post over at Evn's place got commenters thinking about fictional religions. My favourite fictional SF religion is the earth-based one depicted in Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guin. My second and third favourites also appear in her books (The Telling and short stories about the people of Ki'o). I also rather like the religion of Minbar in Babylon 5.

And then there was a post over at Bo's place about artificial languages, specifically Brithenig, which reminded me that there is even a Language Construction Kit.

It's probably fun to construct both fictional languages and fictional religions (and there is a similarity between language and religion) because it helps us to think about how they are structured, what makes a good or bad language or religion, and whether other species would have anything that we could recognise as religion, and how they would communicate (maybe using pheromones, like the aliens in Liz Williams' Empire of Bones).

kinky SF

Chas Clifton: Kink on other planets reports on a blog-post of ten of the kinkiest SF/F novels ever.  According to the commenters, several are missing.  (Well, I suppose it's not claiming to be a definitive list.)  I noticed that the kinks were somewhat skewed towards BDSM (as opposed to plain old SM).  There's nothing wrong with a bit of that sort of thing as long as it stops at the front door (I usually say the bedroom door but that would preclude use of the stairs).

There was quite an interesting kinky scene (BDSM and drugs) in The Poison Master by Liz Williams, plus an entire planet given to restrictive clothing and poisoning each other, possibly because the planet represented the Sephiroth of Geburah on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

I can't think of any other kinky bits in SF novels.

I had a dream once in which I was having it away with an alien, which was quite strange — it was two-tone purple and green.

a new planet

This is very exciting: astronomers at the University of Toronto have spotted a planet.

Young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 and its faint, planetary mass candidate companion.

University of Toronto astronomers have unveiled what is likely the first picture of a planet around a star similar to the sun.

Three scientists from astronomy and astrophysics used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies outside the solar system at about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about eight times that of Jupiter and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-sun distance away from its star. (For comparison, the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits the sun at only about 30 times the Earth-sun distance.) The parent star is similar in mass to the sun but is much younger.

"This is the first time we have directly seen a planetary mass object in a likely orbit around a star like our sun," said David Lafrenicre, a post-doctoral fellow and lead author of a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters and also posted online. "If we confirm that this object is indeed gravitationally tied to the star, it will be a major step forward."

Actually I think I heard about this when it happened and forgot to look it up. But anyway, a planet like ours near a star like ours. Wow - it could be capable of supporting life.

Hat-tip to Geekologie.

More information and a bigger picture on Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Steampunk

Awesome! Bluetooth, steampunk-style:

clipped from www.slipperybrick.com Nicrosin’s Victorian-style Bluetooth device should be mass produced and powered solely by winding. He makes his creations from sculpey and watch parts, then lines it with leather for comfort. Though it still looks like it will eat your ear.

And this steampunk R2D2 is pretty cool, too:

clipped from www.slipperybrick.com

Here’s what you get when a mad scientist from the 19th century creates a droid. The only thing missing is C3PO in a gentleman’s suit and bowler. It was made by Deviant Art user Amoebabloke, who has mad droid modding talent.

Quantum rap

Just been sent the Large Hadron Collider Rap, which as well as being funny, explains the physics rather well (at least I assume it does, since I'm not an expert on particle physics). There's a Wikipedia page about the LHC, which incidentally records that the rap has been listened to by a million YouTube viewers. It also has a guest appearance from Stephen Hawking (or possibly a simulation of his voice).

I'm currently reading Keeping it real (part 1 of Quantum Gravity) by Justina Robson, which has as its starting point the rearrangement of the multiverse by a device similar to the Large Hadron Collider. As a result, gateways were opened to Alfheim, Zoomenon, Thanatopia and the realm of demons. It's good because there's a lot of detail about the world and the characters, and some interesting ideas, like Games (like head-games but there's more at stake). Also the main character is a cyborg called Lila, who is having an identity crisis about being a cyborg. The elves are pretty cool, too, though definitely not nice. There's also an elvish rock star.

straining the meme

In a comment on a previous post about my taste in literature, The Silver Eel asked why I did not list Margaret Atwood. It's a good question, and there's actually quite a good reason why not.

SF (science or speculative fiction) is not just a genre for geeks; it is a serious exploration of what life might be like if you changed one or more parameters of existence, either social, scientific or technological.

Classic examples of the genre include Where late the sweet birds sang by Kate Wilhelm, Always Coming Home by Ursula K Le Guin, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and many more; books by authors who understand how the technology or science that they are writing about actually works, and manage to write characters and scenarios convincingly affected by changes in the technology or science.

In order for such books to be credible explorations and extrapolations, the author must understand both the science and the characters, and be familiar with previous SF; it's not enough just to be able to write good characters. This is why The Death of Grass by John Christopher works, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy does not work - in The Death of Grass, the ecological disaster scenario is coherent and convincing, and in The Road, it's not - why are a lot of humans still alive when every other life form has died?

Mainstream authors who write science fiction are frequently unfamiliar with the genre and often do not realise that the idea for their book has been done before, probably more convincingly. So the sheer chutzpah that they exhibit in then denying that what they have written is SF, because they write "literature", is outrageous. For example, both Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Atwood have denied that their efforts are science fiction. That's why I call this type of book "strain-meme".

And frankly, I thought Oryx and Crake was a pile of pretentious garbage. The Handmaid's Tale was good, if depressing - but still not really SF.

At least Sir Salman Rushdie does not regard his early novel Grimus as "not SF" (though the publishers apparently denied that it was). He also continued to include elements of magic realism in his subsequent novels.

some art that I appreciate

• Ursula K. Le Guin, because her science fiction is philosophical, utopian, human(e) and poetic
• A. S. Byatt, whose writing is nuanced, intelligent and luminous
• Robertson Davies' dark glittering writing of depth, wit and perspicacity
• Patricia Duncker's wonderful novel Hallucinating Foucault
• Jeanette Winterson's early work, which is earthy and speaks to my condition
• Michèle Roberts' novels, especially The Wild Girl, In the Red Kitchen and Daughters of the House
• Salman Rushdie - especially Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Midnight's Children
  
• Iris Murdoch - again, her early work, especially Under the Net and The Bell
• Patrick Leigh-Fermor - the most beautiful travel writing ever
• Lawrence Durrell - especially the Alexandria Quartet, which is beautifully written and introduced me to Cavafy
• Many fine blogs (see Blogs I Read and the spiritual blogroll on dance of the elements), but especially The Expvlsion of the Blatant Beast, Quaker Pagan Reflections and Théâtre Phantasmagorique
• Lots of books
• The poetry of Sylvia Plath, U A Fanthorpe, and Hilary Llewellyn Williams
• The films of Jeunet and Caro, especially Delicatessen
• The art of Pierre et Gilles
• The Pre-Raphaelites, especially Burne-Jones and Evelyn de Morgan
  
• Marc Chagall and Cecil Collins
• Gustav Klimt
  
• Hokusai and Hiroshige
• the haiku of Bashō
• the films of Hayao Miyazaki
• the clear and elegant writing of Ronald Hutton
  
• Music: klezmer, cajun, medieval, renaissance, baroque, Dead Can Dance, Mediaeval Baebes, Dragonsfly, Kate Bush, Sequentia
  

hidden talents

The BBC has just discovered an archive of recordings made by Delia Derbyshire, the woman who composed the classic Doctor Who theme music (but the credit was taken by someone else).

They are amazing, and well ahead of their time.

Paul Hartnoll, formerly of the dance group Orbital and a great admirer of Ms Derbyshire's work, said the track was, "quite amazing".

"That could be coming out next week on [left-field dance label] Warp Records," he noted.

This story seems reminiscent of numerous instances where someone discovered or created something that was then credited to someone else.

• Artemisia Gentileschi - many of whose paintings are (or were) attributed to male relatives
  
• Jocelyn Bell-Burnell - discoverer of pulsars (for which her male PhD supervisor got the Nobel prize)
  
• Rosalind Franklin - co-discoverer of DNA (she died before the Nobel Prize was awarded to her three collaborators, and it is not given posthumously)
  
• James R Heath - co-discoverer of C60, better-known as Fullerene
• Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, who contributed to Rutherford's theory of the atom
  

Snow Crash

I am currently reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (written in 1992). In the first ten or so chapters, he managed to predict Second Life, World of Warcraft, Google Earth, and people being disillusioned with online social interactions because they are less real than face-to-face interactions. According to Wikipedia, one Google Earth co-founder claimed that Google Earth was modeled after Snow Crash, while another co-founder said it was inspired by Powers of Ten.

He also independently coined the use of the word 'avatar' for an online persona (although somebody was already using it in a virtual reality program called Habitat that he didn't know about when he was writing it). I am pretty impressed with this. Mind you, it says in the acknowledgements that he is a programmer himself and had read the Apple Macintosh user interface development guidelines, so I guess that gave him a head-start in predicting stuff. Of course the political situation in the book is different to current reality, but still entirely plausible.

If you haven't read Snow Crash, I highly recommend it. It makes William Gibson look like an amateur. It's also really well-written.

rendezvous with Yama

It's the end of an era, the death of Arthur C Clarke. He was one of two authors who introduced me to science fiction (the other being Ursula K Le Guin).

My favourite one of his books has to be The Fountains of Paradise, but I also found Childhood's End deliciously creepy. One of his short stories, The Nine Billion Names of God, is one of my favourite short stories (even though Buddhists don't believe in "God" in quite the way that the story implies).

He also invented the space elevator and the idea that geostationary satellites would be ideal telecommunications relays.

Quite a few people have remembered him on their blogs:

Here is to Arthur C. Clarke. Here is to Sri Lanka. by Iva Skoch
Gadling - http://www.gadling.com

Arthur C. Clarke: An Appreciation of a Life Well-Lived by Jeff VanderMeer OMNIVORACIOUS - http://www.omnivoracious.com/

Arthur C. Clarke, 1917 - 2008 by The Bad Astronomer
Bad Astronomy Blog - http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog

Arthur C. Clarke Appreciation by Jeff VanderMeer
Ecstatic Days - http://www.jeffvandermeer.com

An appreciation of Arthur C. Clarke
Official Google Blog - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Arthur C. Clarke, RIP
skepticalobservor - http://skepticalobservor.blogspot.com/

Remembering Arthur C. Clarke by Dave Itzkoff
Paper Cuts - http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com

Arthur C. Clarke: 1917 - 2008 by Dan Sandler
Control Freak - Video Games - http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_videogames/

Arthur C. Clarke RIP by Stuart Woods
Quillblog - http://www.quillandquire.com/blog

RIP Sir Arthur - Liz Williams

Arthur C Clarke is dead by Al Billings at In Pursuit of Mysteries

the last human?

After I finished the wonderful The Stolen Child, I started reading I am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson. Funnily enough, both books are about what it means to be human, but in radically different ways.

The protagonist of I am Legend is the only human being not to have been infected by a plague of vampirism that has swept over the whole earth. As a consequence, he decides that he must kill as many vampires as possible, and hopes eventually to find some other uninfected people. Gradually, however, he works out the infection vector and lifecycle of the vampiris bacteria, and how it accounts for the symptoms of vampirism. It gradually dawns on the reader that if this is an illness, it is not supernatural, so there is no "moral obligation" to kill the vampires. Eventually you get to find out how the vampires feel about it. It's a study in how someone can turn into a complete psychopath, but feel entirely justified in his compulsion to kill. Although it's about vampires, it can actually be classified as "hard SF", since there is a well-worked out scientific explanation of vampirism, and it's about the sociological and psychological developments that might occur if there was a plague of vampirism. But it is also a story of loss and grief and fear, and the possibility of forgiveness. The character of Ruth is particularly interesting, though not that well-fleshed-out, and I'm not sure I believed in her forgiveness. But still, it was a very interesting read. There was also the idea of what it is that makes us human - is it that we are not vampires or whatever, or is it that we are capable of relating to others, of empathy, and trust and acceptance? This aspect of the book sort of reminded me of Cassandra in Doctor Who, who is also "the last human" but in her solitude and pride, has lost her humanity. This loss of empathy is applicable to many other bigots who demonise other people.

Cheshire Crossing 3

Cheshire Crossing Issue 3 by Sephalon is now posted and available for your reading pleasure. Very amusing.

significant SF

A meme snagged from The Silvereel

The Key:
Bold the ones you've read.
Strike-out the ones you hated.
Italicize those you started but never finished.
Put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings *, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea *, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz *, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy *, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness *, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big *, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion *, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination *, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

I would question some of the choices on this list (are they SF? are they significant?) but agree that most are significant SF works. Interesting meme.

prestidigitation

We went to see The Prestige last night, and I must say it lived up to expectations - fine writing, acting and directing. Some elements of it were rather disturbing: the idea that various birds and other creatures have to die in large numbers for the magician to perform his art; the sadistic titillation of audiences watching an attractive young lady escape from drowning (or not, as the case may be); and the final scene was the most disturbing of all (though I can't mention it as it would give the plot away). The flashback scenes were a bit confusing sometimes, but the plot was very cleverly constructed to give plenty of shocks and surprises. It was great to see such a talent-laden cast - Michael Caine, David Bowie, Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Rebecca Hall, Andy Serkis, et al. It's also good to see a science-fictional theme transposed into a late-19th century setting, and good that the ideas of Tesla were given an airing. I just hope that the cat in Tesla's experiment was done with CGI (but don't worry, it survived).

skiffy

Sci-fi is dead, long live SF - maybe. Interesting article on Wired daring to suggest that the reason Hollywood sci-fi movies aren't very popular is because they are basically space opera and not real SF. Wouldn't it be great if there were faithful film adaptations of Ursula Le Guin, or Liz Williams, or Karen Traviss, or Ken Macleod, or Alastair Reynolds, or a host of other talented writers of genuine SF? It's very encouraging that The Prestige was made into a film (which I must get around to seeing before it disappears from cinemas), but there are so many more SF novels that would make excellent films, if it weren't for the problem of the Two Cultures. One of the essays in Speculations on Speculation points out that many people simply don't have enough scientific knowledge to understand basic concepts like planets and asteroid belts orbiting stars, and these people simply don't get SF.

jihad in space

My MA tutor sent me an interesting article on Beliefnet about Battlestar Galactica and religion. I haven't been watching the new series, but it sounds as if it could be interesting, as I love SF and am fascinated by religion. I might have to wait till it comes out on DVD now, though, as I'd never catch up with the plot if I started watching it now.

Interesting that the author of the original show was a Mormon, and drew heavily on his beliefs for the storylines. What is it with SF and religion? The current writer/director is not a Mormon, but religion is still a prominent theme on the show, and humans are polytheists (hurrah!) One of the benefits of examining religious conflict in the context of SF is that you can give your fictional religions different names from religions that exist now, which reduces the likelihood of offending people - although quite a few people have identified the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica with both fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist Christians. To which I have to say, if you're ugly, don't look in the mirror.

clones & angels

Just finished The Time of the Angels by Iris Murdoch, a curiously claustrophobic experience. The characters seem trapped in their lives, unable to move beyond the destiny ordained for them by character - they are like the painted angels on Eugene Peshkov's icon. As ever, Murdoch's prose is divinely precise. At the end, though the characters leave the house, they are still trapped in the strange sad webs of their destiny, and still detached from each other and from other human beings, still viewing everything through a distorting lens. Leo Peshkov reminded me of Lafcadio in Les Caves du Vatican - though Leo realises that one cannot live without morality because he experiences remorse for his immoral action.

Now reading Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm. It's a beautiful book, well-crafted and thought-provoking. The characters are well-drawn, the shift of power from humans to clones is convincing, the prose is lyrical, the characters engaging (except for the poor degraded breeders). The only thing is, she doesn't go into quite enough detail about how the telepathy between the clones works, although an analogy is offered in the form of the rapport that exists between twins. But the return to individuality and the explanation for it is convincing, even if the explanation has been simplified for a non-psychology audience. It is interesting that Wilhelm does not envisage the possibility of temporary subsumption in a group mind followed by a return to individuality. The title comes from the fourth line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 73. I must also get around to reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (also about clones) - it should make an interesting contrast.