C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

( Read more... )Dear Uncle Matt,
How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop? Please do NOT ask Mr. Owl, as he cheats!!
- Pop Tootsie
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Dear Uncle Matt,
I've noticed more and more people involved in polyamorous relationships lately. Whatever happened to good old fashioned fidelity?? Is keeping one's pants fastened around people other than one's spouse no longe fashionable?
- God Wears Prada
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Dear Uncle Matt:
I am in search of the PERFECT cup of coffee. Where can I find it?
- Roast Grind
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Dear Uncle Matt,
So, explain this to me: why lobsters?
-Puzzled
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Dear Uncle Matt,
I laughed when I read about your college and how they have a rule against optical intercourse and making eye babies. Were you ever tempted to watch a movie of people having optical intercourse. And what is the best optical intercourse you've ever had.
- Cornea Porn
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I'm still breathing, so it can't be that bad, he tells himself hopefully. Remember, if you break your neck during a botched parachute landing and then a mad conspiracy-theorist injects black market nanomachines into you, it's highly unlikely that anything worse can happen before sundown, he tells himself in a spirit of misplaced optimism.

Appeals Court by Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross is the sequel to another of their collaborations, Jury Service. Their powers combined, these two stories form a novella titled "The Rapture of the Nerds," now available free online in its entirety.

Remember how hilariously surreal Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was? I used to think science fiction humor had to be absurdist comedy like that. But hilariously surreal is the phrase I use to describe this team. Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow constantly throw dizzying and head-swimming curveballs, while setting the wierdness in the hard science fiction near term, ripped from the headlines of genetic, nano and A.I. research with their own political twist. Frankly, some of you might not be ready to directly inject the neuropetrol of Stross & Doctorow. I dare you to read it! But read them in order. Start off with Jury Service first.

Several months ago I signed up to receive Google Alerts of any new mentions on the web of Greg Egan, who as you know is my favorite author of all time. Unfortunately, there are at least two other Greg Egans who get more press than the Australian science fiction master, so I've had to modify the parameters of the persistent search to exclude the words "hockey" and "wrestler".

Also, it kind of upsets me that www.gregegan.com leads to a placeholder page for a defunct website that has nothing to do with him, while Mr. Egan himself uses gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au. If I wrote to Mr. Egan and offered to buy that domain for him and pay for it to be maintained, I wonder if the reclusive and invisible author would even respond?

While on a panel at ConFusion 2004, Karl Schroeder once said that Greg Egan doesn't go to conventions, hardly anybody even knows what he looks like, and it is humorously rumored that he may actually be an artificial intelligence. Later, this hypothesis was repeated near the end of a hilarious article by Paul di Filippo in Locus Online.

Well you know what? The way my luck has been going lately I bet he would respond to me! I'll try it!

I just purchased Charles Stross' Hugo-and-Nebula nominated story "Lobsters" from Fictionwise.com. While reading about the protagonist getting slashdotted, I'm wondering how the internet is changing not just the content of science fiction, but how we read it. Back in the good old days, as Eric S. Raymond describes in this essay, SF readers had to educate themselves in SF tropes to fully appreciate what they were reading. Reading SF is not a passive experience; the reader participates in figuring out jargon in the context of an unfamiliar world. Today, not only did I obtain the story I'm reading instantly, while reading it I googled Wikipedia to instantly research some of the SF tropes and political/business/religious/ideological/historical references used in it. The process Raymond describes is streamlined. And here I am blogging about reading it while I'm reading it, bringing the interaction full circle.

As reported by BoingBoing.net, Science fiction author Charlie Stross has started a Wiki called Singularity! A tough guide to the rapture of the nerds. The stated intent is to learn about the Singularity, but this would only be true in roughly the same sense that QuackWatch is a site to "learn about" alternative medicine. What Stross has written in his wiki so far is pretty funny, but it's difficult to interpret his intent as anything but debunking and ridicule. I recommmend Eliezer Yudkowski's mind-bending Shock Level 4 Wiki to those interested in learning about the Singularity.

Charlie Stross has written serious fiction that is fascinating and enjoyable for those interested in the Singularity, such as the delightful "Toast: A Con Report." But from a self-marketing perspective, what effect does he expect to have on his readership by expressing off-handed contempt for them in this site? Consider how his sometimes-collaborator Cory Doctorow gains readership and sells books by positioning himself as the champion of our media consumer rights, thus shaping the actual future. Both of these self-marketing strategies-- Doctorow's brilliant one and Stross' apparent lack of one-- are unrelated to the writing talent of the author, and of course both of these authors would not have succeeded unless they were talented, but it's a fact of life that attracting the necessary attention to succeed in media is about understanding who is making what entertainment choices and the psychology behind it.

For instance, I used to read Orson Scott Card voraciously until he turned the center of his public platform into his religious views, instead of his fiction. (Homosexuals and secular humanists did not do that, he did. Those who want to keep their private religious views from affecting their sales are wise, and don't write newspaper editorials about it.) These days I shrug and "ho-hum" over his novels even though they are no less brilliant. It's natural for authors to prioritize writing talent over all other concerns, but do they understand that not all their fans are like that? We're not just "the readers," we continue to exist after we put the book down. That means we don't care about quality fiction as much as we care about our own passions, from which our reading choices stem.

Charlie Stross could take a lesson from the approach of Matthew Woodring Stover's interview with The SF Site. Stover criticizes problems with the fantasy genre as currently seen on store shelves, but unlike Stross he does not have fun at the expense of those who enjoy it, he flatters them with having a craving for better. His criticism is in earnest, he cares enough to repair fantasy rather than discard it, and he describes how he does so. As a result, this interview was the first time I felt a real interest in reading fantasy, and if I do it will be Matthew Woodring Stover.

This is the correct approach to pointing out problems (of which there are many) with the Singularity meme for anyone who wants to be an SF author. Point out issues with Eric K. Drexler and Ray Kurzweil in that way and we will flock to you; if the best you can do when we are introduced to you is call us goobers for having taken them seriously, we will not be motivated to read you. As Eliezer Yudkowsky has said about certain Singularity fiction authors in a conversation with Damien Broderick, "The Singularity is not an ironic commentary on the rate of change." As that rare creature, a science fiction fan who still actually believes in the future, I know what it's like to thoughtfully ponder outrageous possibilities, with an eye that is critical without being an antagonistic outsider. I want to read an author only when I can tell that she or he knows what that is like.