(1) GENRE RECAPITULATES ONTOLOGY. Damien Walter divides the audience into “The 8 Tribes of Sci-Fi”.
Calling sci-fi a genre in 2016 is about as accurate as calling the United States one nation. In principle it’s true, but in practice things don’t work that way. While crime, romance and thrillers all remain as coherent genres of fiction, it’s been decades since sci-fi could be comfortably understood by any shared generic criteria. What do Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, Joe Abercrombie’s Shattered Seas trilogy, the fiction of Silva Moreno Garcia and the erotic sci-fi of Chuck Tingle actually have in common, beyond being nominated for major sci-fi book awards this year?
The answer is they all belong to one of the eight tribes of sci-fi…..
The Weirds Most writers at some point play around with the effects that can be induced by engineering stories with internal inconsistencies, mashing together disparate metaphors, or simply being weird for weirds sake. The weirds take this as an end in itself. With China Mieville as their reigning king they were riding high for a while. However, with newer voices like Molly Tanzer’s Vermillion coming through, the American ‘bizarro fiction’ movement, and with authors including Joe Hill and Josh Mallerman rejuvenating the traditional horror genre, the Weirds are still among the most creatively interesting of the eight tribes.
(2) SILENT THING. According to Digiday, “85 percent of Facebook video is watched without sound”.
Facebook might be hosting upwards of 8 billion views per day on its platform, but a wide majority of that viewership is happening in silence.
As much as 85 percent of video views happen with the sound off, according to multiple publishers. Take, for instance, feel-good site LittleThings, which is averaging 150 million monthly views on Facebook so far this year. Eighty-five percent of its viewership is occurring without users turning the sound on. Similarly, millennial news site Mic, which is also averaging 150 million monthly Facebook views, said 85 percent of its 30-second views are without sound. PopSugar said its silent video views range between 50 and 80 percent.
(3) YAKKITY CAT. Steve Davidson says an interview with Timothy the Talking Cat will appear on Amazing Stories this Thursday. I’m running neck and neck with Steve in pursuit of interviews with the hottest new talents in the field — he won this round!
(4) JENCEVICE OBIT. SF Site News carries word that Chicago conrunner and club fan Mike Jencevice died May 16.
Chicago fan Mike Jencevice (b.1955) died on May 16. Jencevice entered fandom in 1978, publishing the fanzine Trilevel and serving as the long-time president of Queen to Queen’s Three, a media fan club. He ran the dealers room at Windycon for more than 30 years and served on the ISFiC Board for much of that time. He was one of two associate chairs for Chicon 2000.
(5) VR. BBC News explores “How will virtual reality change our lives?”
Four experts, including Mark Bolas – former tutor of Palmer Luckey, who recently hand-delivered the first VR handset made by his company Oculus Rift – talked to the BBC World Service Inquiry programme about the future of VR.
Mark Bolas: Out of the lab
Mark Bolas is a professor at USC School of Cinematic Arts and a researcher at the Institute for Creative Technologies. He has been working in virtual reality since 1988.
VR hits on so many levels. It’s a real out-of-body experience, and yet completely grounded in your body. …
To find a way to make it low cost and still retain that field of view, we harnessed the power of mobile phones – the screens, tracking and processing – and we figured out a lens design that was extremely inexpensive.
It’s been really fun playing all these years, but there’s something more important now, which is making it a space that allows us to harness our emotions, our desire to connect with people.
I’m worried by our current computer interfaces. I watch people walking around like zombies with cell phones in their hands, and I have to manoeuvre a mouse to fill out little boxes on web forms in a horribly frustrating way. I think VR will allow us to transcend this.
I don’t worry so much about where VR is going, I worry about where we currently are.
(6) SHEER WEIR. By the Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach: “Andy Weir, author of ‘The Martian,’ aims his pen at the moon”
Lots of people who are interested in going to Mars have been gathering this week at George Washington University for the annual Humans to Mars Summit, and the star attraction this morning was Andy Weir. He’s the author of the novel “The Martian,” which has sold 3 million copies, been translated into something like 45 languages and served as the basis of the blockbuster movie by the same name, directed by the legendary Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon. So, yes, that book did well — remarkably so given that he originally published it in chapters on his website and later as an electronic book that could be downloaded for free.
Weir, whom I interviewed on stage in the summit’s opening session (you can probably find the video here), was scheduled to pop by The Post for today’s “Transformers” event and then visit Capitol Hill to testify before the House subcommittee on space. Busy day! He said he was going to talk about how an interplanetary spacecraft, such as one going from Earth to Mars, can be designed to spin to create artificial gravity. That’s a potential way to moderate the severe physical effects of weightlessness on the human body. Without artificial gravity, the first astronauts on Mars would likely spend many days just trying to recover from all those months in zero-g conditions.
But he’s also working on another novel, this one about a city on the Earth’s moon that features a female protagonist who is something of a criminal but still lovable, according to Weir.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born May 18, 1931 — Mad magazine cartoonist Don Martin
- Born May 18, 1930 — Fred Saberhagen
(8) THE REAL-LIFE GRINGOTT’S. The BBC tells where the gold is kept.
The largest by far lies in the Bank of England. It holds three-quarters of the gold in London, or 5,134 tonnes. Most of the gold is stored as standard bars weighing 400 troy ounces (12.4 kg or 438.9 ounces) – there are about 500,000 of them, each worth in the region of £350,000.
But the official reserves of the UK Treasury account for less than a tenth of this.
“Just 310 tonnes of the gold in the Bank of England is from the UK Treasury, the rest is mostly commercial,” says Adrian Ash of BullionVault.com.
The gold is held in a system of eight vaults over two floors under Threadneedle Street in the City. This is to spread the weight and prevent the vaults from sinking into the London clay beneath the bank.
“So no maze of caves bored into rock,” says Chip Hitchcock, sounding a little disappointed.
(9) MARCON HARASSMENT, PART ONE. Steven Saus relays “Reports of Harassment at MarCon 2016, including ‘The Chainmail Guy’ who harassed people at CONTEXT” at Ideatrash. (To refresh your memory, see File 770’s post about Context.)
Sadly, I’m hearing from friends who attended MarCon this year that the stance about Chainmail Guy’s harassment – the one that some members of the board decided to destroy the con over rather than censure a buddy who was harassing people – was completely justified.
According to multiple accounts, he was very visible in the main corridor, apparently with a table displaying some chain mail. (Which is exactly the setup that spawned problems at Context.) Sure, he wasn’t a volunteer, but had a very prominent bit of real estate. And, much like the complaints at Context, kept inserting himself into private conversations, just as he did before.
Unlike Context, he was in the main hall – and therefore much harder to avoid.
As one person put it, “if you heard about the stuff about Context, you’d get the very clear opinion that MarCon was okay with all that.”
Sadly, this might just be the case.
There were reports (and these were forwarded to the con chair) of another guy suggesting he should “frisk” a young woman after earlier reaching out to touch her without consent.
A corset vendor walked the line between creepy and harassment by insisting their corset fit perfectly, and any impression otherwise was due to the person’s “body issues”. He told another person that “he needed to see me try on one of the corsets and not in a friendly way…in front of my kids.”
And this is just what’s managed to cross my awareness.
(10) MARCON HARASSMENT, PART TWO. Saus also published “A (Good) Response From One of the Security Team From MarCon about Harassment”. It is signed by JP Withers.
As a fan I really hate it when our community is damaged by harassing behavior. Inclusion is kind of the point of our thing to me.
Our security and operations folks need help making our space better for everyone, and that help is reporting stuff when it happens. I know there can be a lot of reasons someone might not report behavior, but if one of those reasons is a feeling we won’t take it seriously I can tell you that isn’t the case for anyone on my team….
(11) MARCON HARASSMENT, PART THREE. Ferrett Steinmetz, immediately after Marcon, published these generalized comments calling into question how some apply the principle that “A Person Is Innocent Until Proven Guilty By Law”.
…And all the complexity comes to a boil when we’re discussing how to handle missing stairs in a community – potentially dangerous people who have gossip swirling about them, but no definitive proof. (Because most consent violators are smart enough not to do terrible stuff in public with witnesses.) And what do you do to keep your parties free of dangerous players when the only proof you have is the equivalent of “She said Phil didn’t pay her back”? Do you ban people on someone’s word?
Maybe you think the court’s standards are worthy for any institution, which is a noble goal. There is a strong case to be made for “I will hold the people who would spread rumors to the highest of standards,” because yeah, the ugly truth is that there are corrupt cops and there are people who’ll trash folks they don’t like. Having standards for evidence is good, and though there’s no single True goal, having high standards when the penalty is “Banning someone from a party” is not necessarily a bad thing.
But stop extending that to the idiotic argument of “If something someone says has not been proven in a court of law, it is automatically untrue.” No. If that happens, you are adopting the court’s standard of, “We would rather have someone guilty attending our parties than risk ejecting an innocent person.”…
(12) MARCON HARASSMENT, PART FOUR. Reddit ran its own recap of the latest episode, the essence of which is —
But now a different Ohio convention, MarCon, has had a problem with a harasser… and it’s the SAME GUY:
It’s the same stuff different day syndrome at its worst. There is no way for cons in general to keep these people out since conventions don’t have any kind of shared governance… so even when “missing stairs” are dealt with at one con, they aren’t at another. 🙁
(13) UNPAID MINIONS. The Seattlish has screencaps of the legal papers — “Someone Is Suing Emerald City Comicon for Not paying Volunteers”.
A class action lawsuit has been filed by a former Emerald City Comicon volunteer—the organization calls them “minions”—alleging that the convention violates labor laws by treating their volunteers like employees, but failing to pay them.
The suit, filed in King County Superior Court on May 16 by plaintiff Jerry Brooks and naming ECCC and three members of the Demonakos family as defendants, alleges that as many as 250 people may be among the class.
According to the suit, the volunteers are expected to work essentially as paid workers would—performing functions necessary to the operation of the convention—but aren’t required to be paid for their labor or their overtime due to their volunteer status.
This suit could be hard to prove; the volunteers not only willingly enter into an agreement stating that they’ll work for free, but the culture of the convention fosters a competitiveness for the volunteer positions. A lot of people really like volunteering. In a blog post from 2013, a minion wrote that it “isn’t the kind of thing you do for money.”
(14) STORYBUNDLE. The Story Collection StoryBundle is available for another 15 days. Readers can choose to donate part of each purchase to SFWA. Curator Lisa Mason tells how the bundle was assembled here.
As always at StoryBundle, you the reader name your price—whatever you feel the books are worth. You may designate a portion of the proceeds to go to a charity. For the Story Collection StoryBundle, that’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (“SFWA”). SFWA champions writers’ rights, sponsors the Nebula Award for excellence in science fiction, and promotes numerous literacy groups.
The initial titles in the Story Collection StoryBundle (minimum $5 to purchase) are:
- The Green Leopard Plague by Walter Jon Williams. Two stories in this collection won the Nebula Award.
- Collected Stories by Lewis Shiner. This extensive and multi-genre collection was prepared as an ebook for StoryBundle.
- Errantry: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand.
Those who pay more than the bonus price of $12 get all three regular titles, plus five more:
- Women Up to No Good by Pat Murphy. Two stories in the collection were nominated for the Nebula Award.
- Strange Ladies: 7 Stories by Lisa Mason Six Stories by Kathe Koja. The collection was created by the author for StoryBundle.
- What I Didn’t See: Stories by Karen Fowler. The collection won the World Fantasy Award and the title story won the Nebula.
- Wild Things by C.C. Finlay. The collection was prepared as an ebook for StoryBundle and has a brand-new Afterword. Finlay is the editor of F&SF.
(15) NEBULA CONFERENCE. SFWA President Cat Rambo has vivid memories of “Nebula Conference 2016, Chicago”.
For me, so much of the weekend was a reaffirmation of joy in our genre and the worlds that we love, worlds created by some of the best and brightest. Opportunity to talk with so many talented, kind, and outstanding members of the industry. A chance to stand by one of my heroes, someone whose work I’ve read most of my life and who has been one of my role models, and see her body of work recognized. A chance to be in a place where people treated each other with respect as peers and took pride in each other’s accomplishments, where there weren’t the sort of pettinesses that belong on the playground rather than among fellow professionals. A chance to tell people some of what SFWA’s been working hard at in the past year, and some of what’s coming down the pike.
And Liz Argall is still buzzing about Henry Lien’s Radio SFWA.
(16) CONVERT MADE. Say what you like about Seveneves, Bill Gates wrote on his website that it’s got him back reading sf.
“What Bill Gates says: “I hadn’t read any science fiction for a decade when a friend recommended this novel. I’m glad she did. The plot gets going in the first sentence, when the moon blows up. People figure out that in two years a cataclysmic meteor shower will wipe out all life on Earth, so the world unites on a plan to keep humanity going by launching as many spacecraft as possible into orbit.
“You might lose patience with all the information you’ll get about space flight—Stephenson, who lives in Seattle, has clearly done his research—but I loved the technical details. Seveneves inspired me to rekindle my sci-fi habit.””
(17) STAY INVESTED IN THE FUTURE. Helen Sharman speaks out — “First UK Astronaut calls for more Brits in space”.
Britain’s first astronaut has said the UK risks becoming a “backward nation” if the government does not pay to send more people into space.
Helen Sharman believes the country would lose many of the benefits of Tim Peake’s mission if a commitment to more flights is not made very soon.
Ms Sharman said that this was the UK’s “last chance” to be involved “in the future of the human race”.
She spoke to BBC News on the eve of the 25th anniversary of her spaceflight.
The government has effectively paid for one spaceflight, Tim Peake’s, according to Ms Sharman. After he returns to Earth in June, it is unlikely there will be more UK astronauts in space unless the nation makes a further commitment of funds at a ministerial meeting of European Space Agency (Esa) member states later this year.
(18) MR. ROBOT SEASON 2 TRAILER. The Hollywood Reporter summarized the preview video.
“This is what revolution looks like,” the text of the trailer reads. “Control is an illusion.”
Although they were successful in their hack, fsociety will face more obstacles in season two. “They need to know we haven’t given up,” Darlene (Carly Chaiken) says. “That we meant what we said about changing the world.”
However, the most worrisome image in the clip is Mr. Robot himself (Slater) as he puts a gun to Elliot’s head. “Our revolution needs a leader,” he tells Elliot.
(19) NEWS FOR HITCHHIKERS. “Towel Day” is coming on May 25, and Nerdist reports a candy store is readying its supply of babelfish.
The fandom of Douglas Adams and his writing is intense, to say the least, and has even resulted in a holiday to honor the late author. Every May 25th, fans around the world celebrate “Towel Day” which itself is a reference to what Adams thought to be the most important item you could have with you through your galactic travels.
As a way of showing their love of everything Hitchhiker’s, a candy shop in Florida that specializes in nerdy confections decided to celebrate by creating some Babel fish of their very own. Using an antique 19th-century drop candy roller, the folks at Public Displays Of Confection rolled out a serendipitous 42 bags of these fish shaped candies just in time for Towel Day, and we can only assume that they went with piña colada flavor because it’s just too hard to perfect the essence of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
[Thanks to Hampus Eckerman, Cat Rambo, Chip Hitchcock, Steve Davidson, Tracy Benton, Darren Garrison, Steven Saus, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
@JJ: Hmm, I read that when it happened (I follow Jim’s blog AND File 770), and forgot. Maybe saying it once on a few blogs isn’t enough for it to sink in. So why so coy now, 6 months later, that they can’t say it was Jeffrey Tolliver? We’re still talking about Frenkel and Walling… although none of these harassers have been kept out of any cons AFAIK. And this one’s done it again after his apology. Concoms, try walking the walk and not letting Jeffrey Tolliver attend.
By the way, guys, NBD, but yesterday issue 1 of a comic WRITTEN BY WILLIAM GIBSON came out. Archangel 1 (of 5) written by Gibson and created with Micheal St John Smith, art by Butch Guice, published by IDW.
(I…did not mean to change my name to ‘written by William Gibson’ and I don’t know how I did it. If you buy my book under the impression that I am a pen-name for William Gibson, or that I am an autonomous meta-fictional construct created by William Gibson, you will be in for a…. surprise?)
I, for one, am refusing to be filed, stamped, indexed, or numbered. Also pushed, briefed and debriefed but for different reasons.
So what Tribe does Walters think he himself belong to? Or is it just everyone else he sorts into Tribes, himself being the lone manly rebel that dares to be independent?
I am not a number! I am a FREE FAN!
Free-Fri-Fro-Fan,
I smell the stench of tribal man
Belong to Militia or LitFic clan,
I’ll file and stamp you to fit my plan
I think I shall just point Bruce Arthurs, Charon D., and indeed Damien Walter at the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge and leave it at that….
(I’ve read and enjoyed David Weber, Philip Dick, Andy Weir and Tanith Lee, to name but a few. Which tribe do I belong to? Should I be divided up between them, and if so, which tribe gets which bits? Am I now required to beat myself up? These are deep waters, Watson.)
@Charon D.: You left out (ix) Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush and (x) Those that, at a distance, resemble flies.
EDIT: Okay, how did I miss Steve Wright’s post?
Steve Wright: Which tribe do I belong to? Should I be divided up between them, and if so, which tribe gets which bits?
I really didn’t need that visual image, thank you very much. 😉
… I think I’d better just drop this topic, really.
I used to have a golf problem. I solved it as follows:
1. I vowed not to play again until I took some lessons.
2. I never took the lessons.
.Bruce:
Alas, my method was: turn page. pick up a bean. read. snap bean. read. get caught up in reading. pick up a bean in slo-mo. read. come to end of page, turn page and keep reading. Find self holding bean, snap it … Both two-handed and stunningly inefficient.
(sarcasm) Yes, because extending your hand in front of you and touching air is much less fatiguing than resting your hand on a mousepad. (/sarcasm)
VR may be useful for games and for augmented reality applications, but for a general, every-day computer interface, it is the answer to a question that very few people are asking.
Cora:
“That sensayer dude” is a secondary character, it’s mostly Mycroft’s POV.
The world depicted is not a utopia, except by comparison with all the dystopias out there. It’s a topia, that’s all.
@Doctor @Cora. Oh I definitely think that there are laudable, and absolutely unthinkable elements to Palmer’s future world.
> “The world depicted is not a utopia, except by comparison with all the dystopias out there. It’s a topia, that’s all.”
A mediopia?
I used to have a golf problem.
I sprained my ankle playing golf. I stopped playing after that.
Three readers got lost in the literary jungle and were captured by a sci-fi tribe.
The tribe was not friendly to outsiders and this became clear when the three were taken before the tribal leader: “We don’t take kindly to strangers, but we try to be fair. I offer you a choice – MilSF or Hard Sci Fi!”.
The first reader says “well, MilSF sounds pretty bad, but Hard Sci Fi scares me. I’ll take MilSF”, whereupon the tribe drags the poor reader off into the jungle and subjects him to MilSF.
The second reader watches and listens to this and is scared out of his wits, but “…I too will take MilSF – anything has to be better than Hard Sci Fi”, whereupon the tribe drags him off into the jungle and gives him the ol’ MilSF treatment.
The third reader, a bit more prideful than the others decides to rest on his dignity; “MilSF is nothing more than weapons porn,” he says defiantly. “I’ll keep my dignity. I’ll take Hard Sci Fi!”
The tribal leader nods. “Good! Hard Sci Fi by way of MilSF it is!”
That brings something else to mind–for those of you who haven’t noticed, all episodes of Ulysses 31 are available on Youtube.
When the Macintosh was still relatively new (late 80s) I had a friend who complained about having to take his hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. (He thought everything you do with a mouse should be done with arrow keys, etc.) Now I get annoyed when I have to take my hands off the mouse (or more often the trackpad) to use the keys.
Xtifr: I’ve noticed quite a lot of people from Language Log turning up on science fiction sites, and vice versa. There are obvious links between the worlds – Tolkien, for one, and Klingon, for another. The site also played a significant part in rising interest in Ancillary Justice.
Jack Lint
Strong feelings here! I liked that my PC made it possible to do just about any menu command from the keys, so I could just power (type) through my work without having to stop, find the mouse, do the thing with it, then find the keyboard again (which inevitably seems to include typing wrong letters to start off because finding my way back to the home row was forgotten years ago in order to memorize some damn TV jingle or other). Any time I can program a new keyboard shortcut for a regularly recurring mouse action, I end up feeling happy and sort of smart.
Damien in (1) did have the beneficial effect of making me say, “Isn’t there a term for the kind of categorization error he’s making regarding other genres?” And indeed there is. Thanks, college psychology class!
Remember the keybord nubbin? I think there were also some keyboards that had a rocking key (not to be confused with a “rockin’ key”, which is a musical term) that acted as a mouse (the “J” key, IIRC.)
I suppose the next divide is those who want to touch their screens and those who are happy to never touch their screens. So the progression seems to be making physical connection between units -> punch cards -> keys -> mouse -> touch screen -> hand wavy gestures -> talking at your computer -> controlling the computer with your mind.
One of the broadband/digital service providers is offering a remote control unit you talk at. (Like “play me a romantic movie!” or “Play me a thriller” because they’re all the same, right?) They’re selling this an improvement in service. Honestly, I’d be perfectly happy if I never had to speak to my remote.
VR is the future!
Speaking of keyboards, take a look at this one reviewed by Shrimpy Famous-on-the-internet-author. Cool, but needs to drop a zero off the price.
The “talk to your remote” thing makes me a little nervous, and I don’t consider myself a paranoid person. Because it’s an always-on listening device in your home. It has to be, or it won’t hear “remote, find me….” or whatever the command sequence is. (As best as I can tell from the commercials, it doesn’t require hitting a button, like Siri does.) How hard would that be to subvert into surveillance?
Ok, so maybe I’m a little paranoid. But still.
(Also, what happens when that remote hears a TV commercial for voice activated remotes? Does it change the channel? I’ve wondered similarly with “The Clapper” whether people who had it installed on their lights had their lights turn on and off when the commercial played…)
I’m sure that both of these things actually happen. On a similar note, here’s what can happen with an Amazon Echo.
The thing that amuses me the most about that particular putdown of Brad’s is that Brad isn’t even famous on the internet and Scalzi has hit list numerous times and therefore is pretty damn popular outside of “the Internet”
The thing that amuses me the most about that particular putdown of Brad’s is that Brad isn’t even famous on the internet and Scalzi has hit list numerous times and therefore is pretty damn popular outside of “the Internet”
I want to know how being famous on the internet nets one a $13 million book deal. I’m sure BT will explain that to us any day now.
The interview with Timothy the Talking Cat has been published. You can all enjoy it here
(11) there is some great irony about the dude responsible for the Open Source Boob Project adding his two cents to the debate about what to do with people at conventions who are a “missing stair” but I can’t think of a witty way to put it. Perhaps it just highlights the fact that part of the problem of dealing with convention/geek spaces harassment is how to deal with those who have an “everyone but me” attitude towards the problem of harassment, that some of the people who the harassment rules apply to most also seem to come away from reading the rules with the message that it’s always about some other dudes who are the problem but not them.
1) Sigh. So much sighing.
There might be something useful to pull out of that, but the “literary tourists” pissed me off. I was an SF/F fan as a kid and then spent 15 or 20 years deep in the “capital-L” literary tenches only to return to SF/F after discovering some SF/F authors who work for me, and I can tell you a couple things about that assessment: it’s still mostly just the fringe of the mainstream “literary” world who knows or cares who Kelly Link is (she’s had some brief flashes of mainstream notoriety, but it’s still mostly just the McSwy’s crowd, and in my experience she matters way more to SF/F readers), and Justin Cronin gets about as much respect as any other general fiction author, which is to say they are envious of his sales but don’t much respect the work itself, and don’t really think of him as being ‘literary’. No genre is a monolith, and it would be unhealthy if it was.
You get literary folks accepting genre writers when they show an interest in and aptitude for the things they find most important, just like you get genre folks accepting literary writers when they show an interest in and aptitude for the things they find most important (and there’s way more crossover than a lot of people want to admit; the parts are all there, it’s mostly the emphasis that’s different).
steve davidson, thanks for the heads-up. On an unrelated note, did you know it’s unprofessional to laugh out loud at work….?
Did someone say new William Gibson?? 😀
(1) For some reason this makes me think of the old chestnut “There are three groups of people out there, those who can count and those who can’t”
(2) I am one of those people, as I tend to scroll Facebook while watching TV so I keep the sound off on my laptop, it’s interesting I had no idea other people were doing the same thing with the sound of videos.
@Sunhawk,
That particular incident happened in 2008, and involved consenting adults wearing buttons.
THIS incident is about a guy harassing people.
I think it’s not unfair to say it’s much, much different.
August: not this SF fan. Of the “literary giants” who have deigned to dabble in what they believe to be science fiction (or that others have identified as some poor attempt at what they believe might be science fiction), I find nothing but poachers – authors who seem to think that playing with the tropes of SF and mashing it up with their “literary” see/hear/touch/feel/smell sentences groping for just-the-right-obscure word somehow qualifies them to write the stuff. I’v read nothing but poorly conceived world-building, science that descends into mysticism and the re-hashing of concepts SF dealt with decades ago.
If you want to write science fiction, give the genre some respect and learn a little bit about it before you start scribbling….
(Michael Chabon is an exemplar of doing it the right way – unless he was entirely responsible for the final shooting script for John Carter, in which case I withdraw my accolades.)
Cassy B: I Can’t be held responsible for workplace discipline… 🙂
Steve Davidson: I’m going to quote you something William Gibson once said to me in response to that.
…and still is in my book. You’re free to quote one author with a contrary view – good for Gibson.
I think if we’re going to look deeply into that statement, the first thing that needs to be examined is “what exactly is a sophisticated reader”? followed closely by – “nice judgement made on an entirely subjective subject.”
Did you live through having to hide your “unsophisticated” reading matter (including works that influenced Gibson) because of the “trash” branding it received from academia and the nose-in-the-air literary sophisticates? Are you familiar with the decades long penchant of mainstream reviewers denying that a work was SF because it was “good”? Have you listened to your friends lament the poor compensation and disrespect they get from publishers because of the “popular trash” they write?
I had to fight to get SF considered as a literature at my high school; I had to take “SF” as an independent study in college because it was so poorly regarded by literary “trend setters” in academia – despite the fact that my advisor – who arranged the study for me – was the chairman of the English department (and a closet fan because admitting his engagement with the genre could have cost him his position)
Gibson’s position is fine and dandy – for an SF author who managed to gain the attention of the hoity-toity, but his experience is not that of the majority of authors in the genre.
Look around you: our entire world is the result of inspirations from science ficton. Now take a look at the lack of compensation and the general disrespect its creators receive. A bit off kilter there, I think. And evidence, to this day, of what I speak of.
(1) GENRE RECAPITULATES ONTOLOGY
No doubt I am pre-recapitulating the reactions in previous comments I haven’t read yet (which is a grand metaphor for the underlying problem) in noting that someone who can say this seriously is not at all familiar with the internal category structures of crime, romance, and thriller fiction.
(8) Small spelling correction: Gringotts doesn’t have an apostrophe.
Speaking of LitFic and SFF, I’m wondering if I should rec “Too Like the Lightning” to my mother. She is: 91; still w/all marbles; fan of Faulkner, Nietzsche, Lawrence Durrell, and history, myth, & religion of all periods. She doesn’t understand what I see in SFF, and keeps asking me to explain — which is exhausting, because she’s intellectually relentless. U. Chicago alum, history major, I was why she dropped out of grad school (U Wisc Madison).
How readable do you think TLtL is for someone who’s not an SFF reader, but who would get all the classical & Enlightenment references? Is there too much inclueing for an out-of-genre reader to do?
@sunhawk: I heard there were only two groups of people. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data
@Doctor
There are flying cars, and bits of other tech here and there, but like a Jack Vance novel, they aren’t the focus at all. The focus of the novel is much much more on the culture, and the social situation, and the societies. I feel like I didn’t get anywhere near as much as I could out of the novel because my knowledge of the Enlightenment isn’t as good as it could be (Even if the novel does “train” a reader)
> “Of the ‘literary giants’ who have deigned to dabble in what they believe to be science fiction … I find nothing but poachers …”
Really? Thomas Pynchon? Emily St. John Mandel? Iain Banks? Doris Lessing? Walter Tevis? Ira Levin? George Orwell? Jack London? Kurt Vonnegut? Margaret Atwood? Aldous Huxley? All “poachers”?
I think the interface shift that VR can bring to general purpose computing will have little to do with replacing input methods.
VRs big strength right now is immersion. You could be in a 2×3 cubicle and feel like you’re on a wide open plain. As the tech improves it will be possible to give you a completely customizable work area without the troublesome hardware getting in the way. 5 monitor setup to watch markets on every continent? easy. Single window with absolutely no distractions? a keystroke away.
There may be interface gains we don’t see yet. The mouse improved some tasks tremendously. There are still people who refuse to even use a GUI, though, so whatever change does come our way, it will be fragmented and slow to roll out.
Regarding “always on” digital assistants… I have an Echo. I don’t use it for much, mainly weather reports and novelty. It does occasionally wake up to a movie that’s playing or something.
Last night I was on the phone with a woman I’ve been on a single date with. We were getting to know each other a bit and planning a second date. Something I said triggered the Echo and it started talking (I’m not even sure what it said, but it was probably to the effect of “I don’t understand that query”)
Queue the question from the other end of the phone: “Is that a woman talking to you?”
Ah, technology. What form of social interaction can you NOT screw up? 🙂
Just in case someone was making the same mistake I was: This is not MarsCon, in the Twin Cities, that’s being discussed. This is MarCon.
All “poachers”?
Well, there’s no point in being a gatekeeper if you aren’t keeping out stuff that really ought to belong.