A science fiction community and weblog
The future of science fiction is so bright it has to wear mirrorshades
Submitted by Capt. Xerox on October 4, 2008 - 2:40pm.
New Scientist is planning a special feature in November that looks at the future of science fiction. In anticipation, they are asking people to pick their favourite science fiction movies and books, something that fan never seem tired of debating. To kick things off, the magazine listed their favourite (and least-favourite) genre books and movies. There aren't many surprises in their lists, but there are a few obscurities to make it worth checking out.
We all know that picking favourite books is very subjective. Often there is one book on your list that is something that you read at an impressionable age that remains with you for a lifetime. This lovely comic evokes that attachment.
Back to the subject of the future of science fiction, The Guardian wonders whether it always has to be so gloomy. I don't think so. Do you?
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Gospodin Libar + BigBrother: Conservative calls for "BBC Vision"
Gospodin Libar/Mister Bookseller/"All But One" is as magnificently honed an instrospective illustrated storytelling as I've seen in a long while; beautiful and heartbreaking. Thanx Cap.
/BEGIN SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT/
If you haven't read Mister Bookseller (as provided by Captain X in article above) and plan to, please skip this paragraph if you plan on reading it. and return when you do. imo it's well worth the trip.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
.
.
S
P
A
C
E
R
...right, if you've read it, this will no longer be a spoiler, if you haven't, and read the next line, well, you have been advised this contains a spoiler.
Still 'ere? K, good.
*tug down on shirt*
I actively look for what the bookbuyer is given, in USBs and the like.
Though it's not limited to books. I once found a baseball hat with my brother's name in it at a lawn sale. Since my brother committed suicide, it means a lot to me. It perfectly reflects his personality too; it's light colored (I can still see his bright blond hair peeking out from under it) and aesthetically pleasing.
I have a lot of baseball caps, because none of them ever look just right, either the rim is too long, too short, looks wonky or the top is too small, too large, too pointed, et cetera, so I picked up another one, and then another, and so on.
Until now, where I have about 30.
Interestingly my lawn-sale-found brother's bb cap is probably the last I'll ever buy, it's the one that looks the most aesthetically pleasing, the most balanced, friendly and cool, yet cool without looking like you're trying to look cool. unpretentious with style. The coolest of them all.
Like he was when we were kids.
There's a scene in one of the shorts in The AniMatrix that hits Bookseller-sim beauty-and-majesty-and-melancholy of childhood chords, where the children are playing in a rift in the Matrix.
Everytime I see it, I remember, that really IS what childhood was like, climbing over fences and finding MAGIC there.
I still live there in that rift, sometimes.
I think a lot of us still do, from time to time.
But for now, back to reality.
re: The Guardian wonders whether (the future as depicted in SF -Ed) always has to be so gloomy. I don't think so. Do you? - Captain X.
Not exclusively no, I agree.
I think SF at its best is at its core social-commentary with a bit of an attempt at social-engineering tossed in.
I don't think of current SF as _un-necessarily gloomy_ or dystopic for glooms sake per se, I think it's often necessary.
IYAM if you want to promote a better system, it starts with first pointing out what's potentially wrong with the current one, and/or other possible ones vying for the public's attention.
The Current British Conservative's for example are now going gangbusters at an attempt to bring BigBrother to the BBC.
I jest ye not.
They are suggesting that the government withhold/slash the BBC's budget if they don't start bringing some "VISION" to BBC programmes.
/BEGIN British Telegraph Article Excerpt/
He said: "They get a £3.3 billion guaranteed cheque every year and with that investment by the nation's taxpayers comes huge responsibilities. What I'd like to see from the BBC is a broader vision of how they can help us tackle the big broken society issues: the rise in knife crime, gun culture, broken families - all the things that are really intractable problems that people in Westminster scratch their heads trying to solve."
He adds: "If I could see how BBC3 was going to play its part in changing social norms
and reducing the number of people who carry knives.
If I could see that link I'd feel much more comfortable about the BBC spending that money but I don't think simply having large audiences is enough."
/END British Telegraph Article Excerpt/
read complete article ((here))
Maybe it sounds reasonable, to some.
But "If I could see how BBC3 was going to play its part in changing social norms"
sets all my social-engineering via propaganda alarm bells off.
(mostly thanks to SF which advises us to be on the look out for this sort of thing)
And that is where I draw the line.
The BBC is a mass media outlet, an arts promotion institution, a communications hub, and a news organization.
It already educates the public in line with traditional British values, in terms of *some* of the content of its programs.
When we listen to an audio play version of a book that was originally promoted/read in a British school, for example, the BBC are _already_ acting as an extension of the school, and therefore as an extension of the British system. To a certain degree.
BUT
For the BBC to be forced to adopt this conservative "VISION" (read: agenda) of "guiding the public"; to effectively introduce PROPAGANDA as a primary critiera of programmes on the BBC
and therefore by dangerous extension (because of how they're interlinked at the BBC) promoting propaganda as primary programming criteria in:
1. "mass media"
2. "arts"
3. "communications"
and
4. "news".
That is about as bloody DANGEROUS/ORWELLIAN as you can get.
We can't avoid propaganda, it exists everywhere in some form, but for a political-body to publicly suggest that propaganda should become a primary tool of the BBC
"or else we will slash your budget/put you out of business"
ought have the British public breaking out copies of 1984, and doing a double-take.
As I see it, as long as these BigBrother philosophy-AND-government-policy espousing sorts of people exist within the power structure in the western world, SF really NEEDS to deal with them.
To highlight them and their potential dangers.
Otherwise, we just move deeper and deeper into a REAL dystopic world.
I prefer my dystopias as fictional-tools thank you very much!
I agree SF ought not be ALL about the dangers of fascism and corporate/government control of the proletariat, there's room for all different sorts of SF, but until we can expose these sorts of people and their BigBrother agenda, I think SF must remain vigilant in exposing what the current and near-future dangers within our system are.
There's room for happy-fun-time too of course.
imo the best SF
* educates
+
*incoroprates philosophy
+
*social commentary
+
*a -bit- of social-engineering.
to the extent that SF can provide a positive _alternative_ future for man _to consider_.
+
*entertains.
but I don't think it ought move one inch away from its current goal of exposing the current dangers in our system.
If that means having the work labeled "dystopic" that's a price I'm willing to pay.
It seems to me that "dystopic" has become a catchall negatively connotated phrase used by critics (mostly the sort that don't like SF to begin with, I notice, New York Times I'm lookin at you *cough*) to widesweepingly take a shot at SF.
As if "oh it's dystopic *frown* *roll eyes*" were some sort of legitimate literary argument or criticism.
Norman Co-Ordinate.
It's not anything but an observation on a dynamic within a sub-genre, or more properly an (extrapolation -Ed) tool used to expose where the current dangers in our system lay.
And imo it's an extremely important one.
Dark futures point out where we're in danger of going wrong, we need that if SF is to remain the champion of our future.
But I agree, optimally the best work includes both the potential dangers in our current system, and examples of where we can steer things positively.
I'd add that, in my view when it's really at its best, it's funny too.
The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.
"All But One"
I once found a baseball hat with my brother's name in it at a lawn sale. Since my brother committed suicide, it means a lot to me.
Sorry to hear about your brother. Finding his hat that way is eerie. I mean, what are the odds? The odds that the hat survived to be held out without being just thrown away as garbage. The odds that it was put out for sale the very day you came along. The odds that you were even in the vicinity of the sale taking place. And the most staggering of all, the fact that you were looking for hats and even recognized it for what it was.
I still live there in that rift, sometimes.
I think a lot of us still do, from time to time.
Yes. Its hard to describe, but every now and then it's like you are in another place and time despite knowing full well that nothing has really changed. Some places, like UBS' seem to foster that feeling more than other places.
"All But One" was a great comic story (Nice find Cap). I'm sure most people here have found copies of old childhood treasures while perusing UBS' or garage sales. Usually stuff you weren't looking for. Stuff you had long forgotten about. And then you get a little jolt when you see it and the memory comes back.
~ Lazarus ~
The Strange Universe + How The Lottery Clerks Are Cheating
re: Sorry to hear about your brother. Finding his hat that way is eerie. I mean, what are the odds? The odds that the hat survived to be held out without being just thrown away as garbage. The odds that it was put out for sale the very day you came along. The odds that you were even in the vicinity of the sale taking place. And the most staggering of all, the fact that you were looking for hats and even recognized it for what it was.
Thanks Laz, ja the universe works in mysterious ways.
"Logically" as All But One illustrates, the odds of finding something that ought be an _extremely rare_ find increases when *something* may be causing us to go hyper-actively looking for these things (from our past) in UBS's, garage/lawn sales, and the like.
We may not even be entirely aware of it at the time, but we're looking for these things.
But then as you point out, something seems wrong with the math. Because as All But One also illustrates, you find stuff that you really statistically _oughtn't_ even if you are looking for it, because the odds seem so high against it.
"Seek and Ye Shall Find"
always sounded a bit like religious hokum to me, but it does seem to be one of the elemental truths of our existence that the Gods of the universe actively support.
Life is certainly odd sometimes, *gaze left* *gaze right* I find that life is sometimes not unlike TNG's "Encounter at Farpoint" episode, where when we need a thing, it finds a way to appear.
Doesn't sound terribly scientific, but I find that happens quite a bit.
I notice that pattern of finding-what-I'm-looking-for emerging to greater and greater degree in my life, or maybe it always happened but I'm just noticing it more now, in either case there does seem to be some sort of repulsor or dampening field in place, where it's
1. based on subconscious more than conscious focus.
2. is focussed more on need than want.
Attempts to focus on having the universe aid in finding a winning lottery ticket, for example appear to be thwarted.
Though even there I may have actually found one and fragged it up through my own stupidity.
Approx a year ago, when I noticed this odd trend of things appearing that I had on some level been looking for, it became such a prominent occurence that I thought I'd run an experiment and see what would happen if I _focussed_ on finding something.
I chose a lottery ticket as my experiment's focus point.
I found a lottery ticket that day that was three months old, put it in my pocket, and then decided this line of thought was unscientific and daft, and talked myself out of it, and subsequently forgot all about it.
Approx a month later I found the ticket in my pocket, and on a whim brought it into a store to have it checked.
The store owner took my ticket, then a few moments later tossed it in the garbage can behind him, shaking his head in the "sorry, not a winner" manner.
As I left, I felt something was wrong, but I wasn't sure what, his largely his demeanor struck me as odd, and I was in a hurry, so I registered the odd sensation and left to go about my business.
Later as we found out (on the news) there was an statistically unlikely/un-natural occurence of Store owners and Lotto Terminal Operators winning lotteries.
Based on deconstructing my own experience, I think I know how they're doing it.
In short: They toss your ticket in the can behind them (instead of returning your ticket to you) and tell you you didn't win, when you did.
Then they fish it out of the can and cash it themselves.
To make matters worse, everytime I go in that store, they act oddly, nervously, like they're guilty of something.
But of course, it's all circumstantial, I can't prove anything, and I don't know anything. And I don't actually assume that I won. My stupidy and the uncertainty combined with what was going on with the lotto ticket defrauding, just bothered me.
It's always been nagging at the back of me head, that I fell for that technique. The bottom line is that regardless of whether I had a winning ticket or not, the clerk should have returned my ticket to me.
That he didn't illustrates (to me) an attempt to acclimate his customers to a situation in which he *could* (if so inclined) defraud customers of their winning tickets.
In any case, as a result of all that, It also occurs to me that there MAY be a way to catch them doing this.
IF they actually insert the ticket into the machine (and I don't think the smarter clerks do, they pretend they do and check your ticket for real after they retrieve it from their garbage)
but in any case, as GREED is a function of nature for the sort of person that would defraud lotteries, I will wager many of them don't just NOT insert the tickets, I would wager they've also worked out how to insert the ticket and tell you it isn't a winner.
ie. IF you watch to ensure they're inserting the ticket and the ticket is a winner, a winning-sound should go off.
In order for them to effectively keep the winning tickets that they have inserted into the lotto machine, it seems to me they would 'ave to have _disabled the speaker_ in the lotto machine.
And that would be evidence.
That'd be my sugg on how to catch them anyway.
(that and don't let them keep your lottery ticket no matter what and give em hell when they try to -Ed)
The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.
The Stranger Universe: Time Travel Lottery Experiment Part II
Well, you're not going to believe this, and I wouldn't blame anyone for that, because my life is quite bobly quite mindbogglingly bizarre at the moment.
A few days ago, shortly after posting the above recounting of my previous lottery ticket seek-and-ye-shall-find experiment/experience, yes, you guessed it, as I was walking down the street a batch of lottery tickets blew about the hedges (to the right of me) and into my line of sight.
so I did a double-take, nah'd, walked off, paused, walked back, and picked them up.
(Super 7 tickets, which is otherwise not a lottery TAG plays when he pays - Ed)
They were for 10/10's lottery, so I picked up the results and I jest ye not, one of them is a winner, though only for a free ticket.
So now I'm wondering where optimally to take it from 'ere in line with this incredibly UNscientific sounding groggy 5am experiment-think that seems to want to play out to some sort of conclusion in me life (or at least head - Ed).
I have a sneaking suspicion that the universe is trying to tell me something that I haven't quite worked out. I have a feeling it's s'posed to be mindnumblingly simple to suss, but I haven't got a clue what it is.
but it's early in the morning, so we'll see where this stream of consciousness takes us.
Anyway my Q is, what do you think I should do with the free ticket?
Do I play a random set of numbers selected by the lotto computer, or do I play the same numbers on the ticket, or do I play my fave 6/49 numbers?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm(n) it occurs to me another insane experiment could be running here.
If time-travel is inevitable, and I believe it is given enough er time then assuming that this blog is archived somewhere on the net in the future, someone from the future could stumble onto this post, then travel back into the past ..and drop off a bunch of Super-7 tickets (into my line of sight) one of which being a free ticket.
Which is consistent with what has happened (so far - Ed) in that I did find a winning free super-7 ticket amongst the batch of Super-7 tickets that caught my eye.
(that raises a problem, how does whomever travels into the past know where to drop the tickets off so you'd find them and find the winning free ticket? - Ed)
Good point. I'd have to have said where I was going to be right?
So let's do that.
A couple of days ago, I was visiting a friend and walking east on cote-st-luc street (between ol Marymount High School now Cote-st-Luc highschool to near the school board)
OK, so one way to time-travel and drop off winning numbers to someone in the past, it seems to me, would be for the numbers on the free-ticket/found Super 7 ticket, to _also_ be the winning Super 7 numbers for the next next friday's draw.
You could work that out if you were in the future and had access to a database of winning Super 7 numbers from the year 2008.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm(n)
I think I'll play the numbers on my found free ticket.
In groggy early-morning (insane - Ed) think, that actually makes a bit of sense to me.
Problem is, if my understanding of Quantum mechanics is right, I could win, but not necessarily on this Earth in this DimensionTime.
[Pathud - Ed]
And another problem occurs, if I post this, and time-travel to change the past is frowned upon in the future, just as someone could find this post in the future and travel back in time to plant a free-win lottery ticket containing upcoming winning numbers for me to find, *someone else* could also go back in time and make sure that the other person didn't change the timeline
..by replacing the ticket s/he left for me, with a non-big-winning-numbers one.
Ah excrement.
The act of posting this message, could kill me big win.
But not posting it, would kill it just as well, since future-person must be made aware
1. that I'm running this experiment at this point in time
2. where I'll be to find the ticket a couple of days ago.
Now the question is, how would you workaround the time-travel lottery-win pooh-poohing poc?
How do I let one time traveller know where I'm going to be and what experiment I'm running at this point in time, without having the other time-traveller interfere and replace the winning-numbers ticket with a losing one?
(I know I find "a" winning ticket, because I did, so I've got it half right, so far YAY!)
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm(n) unfortunately part II (winning the big one friday - Ed) seems incredibly difficult to pull off, if time-pocs are reading this msg in the future too.
It seems to me that one way would be to suggest to future time-traveller lottery friend (*wave* hi!) that you delete this msg in the future, right after you read it. So the time-pocs don't find it and don't know wot's wot.
So friend, If you can delete this msg before you read it, and yet remember you read it, even better.
(and my head just exploded - Ed)
[Pathud]
The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.
[stepping sideways] SpaceTime vs Quantum DimensionTime.
I still live there in that rift, sometimes.
I think a lot of us still do, from time to time.
Lazarus wrote:
Yes. Its hard to describe, but every now and then it's like you are in another place and time despite knowing full well that nothing has really changed. Some places, like UBS' seem to foster that feeling more than other places.
---
If you mean occasionally 'aving the sensation that you've somehow somewhere suddenly stepped sideways into an *almost* identical yet can't-put-your-finger-quite-on-why perceptively slightly different parallel dimension, where then hoo boy do I know wot you mean.
When that happens, I sometimes entertain the notion that a possible variant example of Quantum mechanics theory is rearing its head and maybe it's more than a temp displacement phenom.
ie. In my view, one school of Relativistic Quantum Physics posits that an sub-atomic particle is actually in ALL possible rotational places at once, and it's only looking at it, that makes it appear to be in that location.
Sort of like bouncing a ball hyper-rapidly 6 feet in the air, and staring at the 3rd foot, you will see the ball appear at the 3rd foot, if you're staring there, but it's not the only place it is located.
Then things get weird because Quantum physics (as I've extrapolated it anyway) seems to imply that this is also true of reality and the choices we make.
Where all possible choices are played out in slightly different dimensions.
Interestingly that would make time travel to the past for the purpose of changing the future impossible in the traditional sense.
because each choice we made/changed in the past, wouldn't change the future we came from, instead it'd result in the birth of an entirely new and slightly different timeline that would exist in an entirely different dimension.
If we extrapolate that further, it seems to me it would imply that all possible futures actually play out in parallel dimensional versions of Earth.
A sort of hmmmmmmmm(n) Quantum "DimensionTime" effect.
(with a different set of laws to those of "SpaceTime")
So maybe (when it's late and we've had too much drink -Ed) that feeling of stepping sideways into a slightly-different dimension that we sometimes get, is more than just a feeling.
^Raise-Eyebrow.
Well, it's a thought.
(yes, but a loopy one - Ed)
[Pathud]
The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.
Hi Stephen Hawking!
Hey Stephen Hawking!
I'm not meaning to put myself forward as an expert on Quantum Mechanics, these are just some thoughts based on a (very - Ed) rudimentary understanding.
So, feel free to drop in and correct my extrapolations on Quantum Physics.
(nice try - Ed)
I'm sure he has google. He might grace us with his presence Ed!
(yes, it's about as probable as ..your understanding of Quantum Physics and your theory on DimensionTime being any good TAG - Ed)
[Pathud]
The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.
Post new comment