A Busy Year

Its been a busy year in science fiction... or more like, in science fact. Yes, its that time again.. the year of the blog .00357, in which reviews are begun to be reviewed. Its seen many new and startling developments... everything from the heightening of a paranoid culture in which Albert Hoffman died, to the bizarre technology of the memristor selective memory wipe (baby sleeper?), to the rise of such notable science fiction authors as Dr. Ronald Chevalier. And behind it all, the rise of massive databases of cross reference science fiction, and science fact, of which technovelgy is the premiere. (good selection of rudy rucker bopper items in there..). Anyway, the other contributors are preparing their reviews of various stuff, and we'll be putting them up slowly over the next couple months... if anyone is still around.

Science Fiction vs Reality

Sites like technovelgy that farm old scifi texts for evidence of imaginative foresights that become reality are pretty cool, but memristors may take the recent award for what apparently may be a relatively close future for artificial intelligence stuff, ala bladerunner and almost every other kind of quasi-sentient AI. Now thats cool.

Why not give up writing already?

A survey of recent state-of-the-arts in technology suggests some things may be finally becoming more exciting than old skool science fiction books. Surveying the news from events like SXSW and other weird, hyper-rationalized conferences of all things technical and technocratic, you get a weird feeling in the pit of the pit. Things like powerpoint presentations on space spiders, do it yourself blimp drones, invisible things beginning to speak, and facebook: alive and evil all pretty much point to a future of immersion far from plain vanilla reading. But hope comes in small packages, but it may be a completely non-western future. What is the state of the art for chinese science fiction, anyway? time to do some research.

A word about Kage Baker

Published just last year, Kage Baker's The Sons of Heaven wraps up a lot of the company threads. If you havent been following the series, youve got some catching up to do. But the thing id like to talk about here is her skill at tying the human to the business of evolution. Thats right, the *business* of evolution. At some point, someones going to realize that the massive proliferation and permeation of the corporate entity in our lives is a little bit different than how things were before. Furthermore, that as the prime holders of our constructed wealth, they have been in the twentieth century the prime directors forcing our soft bodies in their structures of progress and development: ie, the agent of evolution. So her novels, like those of some excellent soviet science fiction, like the Strugatsky Brothers Definitely Maybe or Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub , are perhaps the best contemporary scifi ive read that integrate overall corporate or bureaucratic structures inherently to the plot. It'd be great to see more heavily laden scifi along these lines. Up till The Sons of Heaven I was hoping it would spin even deeper into the intrigue... heck, itd be like Kafka's The Castle! But alas. The human tradgedy of our short short lives. Thought for the day.

Soon I Will Be Invincible... Comix, Again?

Many recent books in the great Comicon Ouevre known as the graphic novel, etc etc, seem to make a lot about the literaryness of the medium.. Micheal Chabon, Neil Gaiman, etc etc... par example, witness this book review of Soon I Will Be Invincible, which compares it to a modern version of Rabelais. Please. But, etc. etc., if one is in search of what modern pulp has become, one must pay heed to the ancestoral roots of the comic form, etc. etc., and thus, resign oneself to a long sigh and a good settle down with a stack of old marvel or dc comix. Just remember, like an old fellow I recall, who became so engrossed in a late-70s LeCarre spy potboiler, the 1000 pages plus variety, that he forgot to drink, or eat, and peed and potted himself to the point where he had to be removed on a stretcher to a hospital for dehydration treatment: remember to drink.