The Possible Emergence Of Post-HyperCapitalist Economics

In computer games, which already have a global economy, albeit largely virtual at the moment.

Another List, Yadda Yadda

Robert Thompson asked me to contribute to his Fantasy Book Critic's 2008 Review/2009 Preview feature, and the piece, shorter than those of the other, alarmingly well-read, contributors because I simply didn't have to time to read as much as I would have liked, last year, has now been posted. I have no idea what I am thinking about, in the alarmingly dour photograph. Don't even go there.

BSFA Award Nominations

Best Novel
Flood by Stephen Baxter
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod
Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Best Short Fiction
"Exhalation" by Ted Chiang (Eclipse 2)
"Crystal Nights" by Greg Egan (Interzone 215)
"Little Lost Robot" by Paul McAuley (Interzone 217)
"Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment" by M. Rickert (F&SF, Oct/Nov 2008)

Best Non-Fiction
"Physics for Amnesia" by John Clute (talk given at the Gresham College Symposium "Science Fiction as a Literary Genre")
Superheroes!: Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films by Roz Kaveney (I.B. Tauris)
What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid (Beccon)
Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan)

Best Artwork
Cover of Subterfuge, ed. Ian Whates, by Andy Bigwood
Cover of Flood by Stephen Baxter, by Blacksheep
Cover of Swiftly by Adam Roberts, by Blacksheep
Cover of Murky Depths 4, by Vincent Chong
Cover of Interzone 218, by Warwick Fraser Coombe

Andy Cox has kindly put up pdfs of my story 'Little Lost Robot' and Greg Egan's story 'Crystal Nights' at the TTA Press site. Thanks to all who nominated me!

The View From Orbit, Yesterday

Picture taken by the Geoeye-1 satellite, via Popsci.com.

Untitled

Like most people who won the emigration lottery and didn’t sell their prize to one of the big corporations or to a redistribution agency, or give it away to a relative who either deserved it or wanted it more than they did, or have it stolen by a jealous neighbour, a spouse or a child or a random stranger (UN statistics showed that more than four per cent of emigration lottery winners were murdered or disappeared), or simply put it away for a day that never came and meanwhile got on with their lives in the ruins of Earth (and it was still possible to live a life more or less ordinary after the economic collapses, wars, radical climate events, and all the other mess and madness: even after the Jackaroo pitched up and gave us access to a wormhole network linking some fifteen M class red dwarf stars in exchange for rights to the outer planets of the Solar System, for the most part, for most people, life went on as it always did, the ordinary little human joys and tragedies, people falling in love or out of love, marrying, having children, burying their parents, worrying about being passed over for promotion or losing their job or the lump in their breast or the blood in the toilet bowl) -- like everyone, in other words, who won the emigration lottery and believed that it was their chance to get out from under whatever muddle or plight they were in and start over (more UN statistics: thirty-six per cent of married lottery winners divorced within two months), Jason Singleton and Everett Hughes wanted to change their lives for the better. They wanted more than the same old same old, although that’s what most people get. People think that by relocating themselves to another planet, the ultimate in exoticisism, they can radically change their lives, but they always forget that they bring their lives with them. Accountants ship out dreaming of adventure and find work as accountants; police become police, or bodyguards to high-end corporados or wealthy gangsters; farmers settle down on some patch of land on coastal plain west of Port of Plenty or on one of the thousands of rocks in the various reefs that orbit various stars in the network, and so on, and so forth. But Everett Hughes and Jason Singleton were both in their early twenties, and as far as they were concerned anything was possible. They wanted to get rich. They wanted to be famous. Why not? They’d already been touched by stupendous good fortune when they’d won tickets to new and better lives amongst the stars. After that, anything seemed possible.

Blue Monday

Allegedly, it's the gloomiest day of the year (the sky hailed on me today, so I'm not arguing). So here are some Doctor Who chases, Benny Hill style, to cheer us up.

Blast Of Silence

A month ago, I posted a quick review of an odd little early 19060s noir, Who Killed Teddy Bear?, shot largely on location in New York. I promised that I'd publish my review of Blast of Silence, another 1960s noir, also shot on location in New York. It appeared in Crime Time 54, and you can read the whole magazine here. My review starts at the bottom of page 41, after a nice piece on Fu Manchu films by Kim Newman.

Briefly

I'm busy with a particularly gnarly piece of work right now, so as a place marker here are some scientist action figures. From left to right: Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Nikola Tesla. I don't know if Madame Curie is glow-in-the-dark, whether Charles Darwin really did play Hamlet, or why Tesla looks like Edgar Allan Poe, but they're kind of cute all the same. Which other scientists deserve a figure? First on my list would be Galileo, whose made his first observations of Jupiter's moons four hundred years ago, and was the prime mover in displacing us from the centre of the universe.

Special bonus link: The Handsome Family perform Tesla's Hotel Room.

Out Today

It's a collection of new stories about Artificial Intelligence, edited by the inestimable Peter Crowther. (For what it's worth, I wrote the introduction.)

UPDATE: Can't find a TOC anywhere on t'web, and I tidied away the copies of the stories I was given, but authors include Stephen Baxter, Brian Stableford, Eric Brown, James Lovegrave, Adam Roberts, Tony Ballantyne, Steven Utley, Marly Youmans, Robert Reed, Paul Di Filippo, Patrick O'Leary, Garry Kilworth, Keith Brooke, Ian Watson, and Chris Roberson. A pretty cool bunch.

Your Moment Of Zen

At Christmas, two versions of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' occupied the first and second place in the UK singles chart. The number one slot was taken by X-Factor winner Alexandra Burke; in second place, thanks to an internet campaign, was the lovely and haunting version by Jeff Buckley (Cohen's version came in a number 36). But more lovely than even Jeff Buckley's version of 'Hallelujah' is this song by his father, Tim Buckley, first aired on, of all places, The Monkees TV show (that's Micky Dolenz's voice introducing him).

Now I really must get back to work...

The Little Robots That Could

The rovers Spirit and Opportunity* were successfully delivered to Mars five years ago today. Designed to last just three months, after surviving dust storms and hibernating through five winters of freezing temperatures and low sunlight the solar-powered robot explorers are still going strong (although thanks to a faulty wheel Spirit is now forced to forge on backwards). As NASA proudly reports:

The rovers have made important discoveries about wet and violent environments on ancient Mars. They also have returned a quarter-million images, driven more than 21 kilometers (13 miles), climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and aging hardware, survived dust storms, and relayed more than 36 gigabytes of data via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. To date, the rovers remain operational for new campaigns the team has planned for them.

It's a fantastic achievement. And let's not forget that while the two little robots have been climbing mountains and descending into craters and crossing sand dunes, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft is still working away in orbit, on its third two-year extension of its original mission, ESA's Mars Express has just celebrated its fifth year, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has recently completed its primary, two-year science mission, taking high-resolution photographs of Mars's surface (including shots of Spirit and Opportunity, and a great photograph of the descent of this year's lander, Phoenix).

Yeah, it would wonderful to see the first astronaut (or taikonaut) stepping onto the surface of Mars. And I hope I'll be around to see it, despite arguments that NASA should focus on the Moon rather than Mars in the near future. Meanwhile, the two brave little rovers and their robot companions are doing some wonderful science, and have helped immeasurably in turning Mars from a remote blood-red dot in the sky to a real world crammed with real wonders.

UPDATE: Well, Spirit landed on January 4. Opportunity followed three weeks later on January 25.

Fireworks Over London

The last burst of this rather fantastic display was just visible from where I live.

Turn Turn Turn

A Happy New Year to all my readers.

The future's as uncertain as ever (luckily enough for me, or I'd be out of business); let's hope that it won't be anything like this (via Jack Womack), but more like this.

Getting Personal

I was reading through the proofs of my short story ‘The Thought War’, which is included in Jonathan Strahan’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 3, when I received an email from Gardener Dozois, who wants to use two of my stories, ‘Incomers’ and ‘The City of the Dead’ in The Year’s Best Science Fiction 26. Gosh.

I was amused to note that the introduction to ‘The Thought War’ asserted that I was living in Scotland, a meme that’s proving rather difficult to eradicate. It’s true, I used to live in Scotland, but I moved to London when I quit my job, more than twelve years ago (the longest continuous period I’ve ever lived anywhere; I was born in Stroud and lived there for seventeen years, but spent one year in the middle of my childhood elsewhere). Again: gosh.

Author’s bios are odd little packages of information. Those of established writers generally list their bestselling novels and prizes they have won: proof of pedigree. Those of new authors often list previous jobs (the more exotic the better) to make them seem like a regular citizen of the world. Some attempt humour; a few even succeed. One of the best of the latter is Jonathan Lethem’s bio for his first novel, Gun, With Occasional Music:

Jonathan Lethem was born in the sixties, watched television in the seventies, and started writing in the eighties.

Neat, huh? Almost all bios note where the author currently lives. Often it’s the only piece of personal information - something that has no bearing on the novel in hand unless it’s actually set in the author’s home town. My current bio is unexceptional. It lists the the prizes I’ve won, and mentions that I’m a former scientist (although that in no way qualifies me to write science fiction), and that I live in London. Although only three of my novels have been set in London, and I wasn’t living in London when I wrote the first of those, Fairyland. No, at the time, I was living in Scotland.

UPDATE: 'City of the Dead' will be included in Infinivox's audiobook "year's best" anthology, The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction.

Spotted In Cambridge

Christmas Card

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Tom Waits.

Happy Holidays.

Forty Years On

Oliver Morton's excellent op-ed piece in the New York Times.

On This Day, Forty Years Ago

'And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, and a Merry Christmas to all of you, all of you on this good Earth.' John Borman, Commander Apollo 8.

Beyond Coffee

In the commentary section of the science journal, Nature, a group of academics go cyberpunk, and call for serious consideration of the use of cognitive-enhancing drugs to make students smarter:

Human ingenuity has given us means of enhancing our brains through inventions such as written language, printing and the Internet. Most authors of this Commentary are teachers and strive to enhance the minds of their students, both by adding substantive information and by showing them new and better ways to process that information. And we are all aware of the abilities to enhance our brains with adequate exercise, nutrition and sleep. The drugs just reviewed, along with newer technologies such as brain stimulation and prosthetic brain chips, should be viewed in the same general category as education, good health habits, and information technology — ways that our uniquely innovative species tries to improve itself.

After the Cold War, the IQ race ...

Updike On Mars

Via io9, John Updike's National Geographic article on Mars. With plenty of fine photos. (But why didn't they ask Kim Stanley Robinson?)

PS the photo of the sunset was, as mentioned here before, taken on my 50th birthday. It's the background picture on my computer.