Posts Tagged ‘SF’

Art Is About the Lonliness of Sentience, Especially SF

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

f you haven’t read it already, I rec­om­mend you go check out Jetse de Vries’ story in Clarkeworld today, “Qubit Conflicts.” I am kind of spoil­ing part of it here in this post, so if you are against that kind of thing, go read the story and then come back here.Interesting, wasn’t it? I like the uncon­ven­tional sto­ries, that take risks with not hav­ing con­ven­tional char­ac­ters and sto­ry­lines. I can’t write them, but I love read­ing them. Anyway, the end­ing of this story, I think, could be read as an inter­est­ing response to some of the ideas of Mundane SF. And it gets to some­thing that I am only just now pick­ing up on, which is maybe what pur­pose art serves and why we cre­ate art at all.

The end of the story has this super intel­li­gent sin­gu­lar­ity AI remark­ing on how maybe it was a mis­take to set a think­ing pace so fast (Planck speed), and ulti­mately how lonely it is, wait­ing for aliens to con­tact it. And it got me think­ing about some­thing I read recently, a quote of the late great Kurt Vonnegut, about how every being needs to be reminded that they are not alone, that there are oth­ers like them out there.

I think there’s some­thing inher­ent about the nature of our sen­tience that brings along a cer­tain lone­li­ness. I can’t quite put my fin­ger on why being able to think and being self-​​aware means that we pine for the minds of oth­ers, to know them, but we do. Maybe it’s a side effect of being the evo­lu­tion­ary end prod­uct of a social species. Maybe a sen­tient soli­tary preda­tor wouldn’t have this prob­lem, and it’s only a pecu­liar side effect of our own sen­tience. But any sen­tient cre­ations of ours will have this prob­lem, as Jetse seems to con­vey. I think I agree with that. Their intel­li­gence, while arti­fi­cial, will be mod­eled after ours. And we def­i­nitely seem to be lonely, every one of us, and I think we cre­ate and con­sume art because it soothes that fear that we’re alone. We get to, through a com­plex invented sys­tem thou­sands of years in the mak­ing, enter the mind of another being. No mat­ter what the nar­ra­tive is, there is that, in the back­ground, that comfort.

And SF takes that them and makes it explicit in tales of the extrater­res­trial. Fantasy does the same thing. Honestly, I don’t find SF/​F that com­pletely rules out the idea of the Other Mind very sat­is­fy­ing. It can be com­pelling and enter­tain­ing, but aliens and elves and all of it, they are a salve that we have invented to soothe a pain of which we’re barely aware.

Oh no. What if our species is the Emo Kid of the Galactic Lunchroom?

Today’s Hypothesis About What Science Fiction Is

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Science fic­tion is a body of lit­er­a­ture in which it is held implicit and true that tech­nol­ogy, and by that exten­sion, human­ity, can change the world for bet­ter or worse. It holds true, essen­tially, that the world is muta­ble, and not static.

This would require that there is a body of lit­er­a­ture that does not hold this true. Thoughts?

The Central Problem with SFWA’s Main Website, And Solutions

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The Central Problem with SFWA’s Main Website, And Solutions

The cen­tral prob­lem with the func­tion­al­ity of SFWA’s web­site is that it doesn’t know who it is attempt­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with. This is under­stand­able, as there are sev­eral pos­si­ble audi­ences for the SFWA web­site: a poten­tial mem­ber, the mem­ber, and the gen­eral inter­ested pub­lic. You might argue that indus­try members/​publishers/​editors are also another audi­ence, but I would just group them in with the gen­eral public.

A lesser prob­lem is that the site is sim­ply dated in design. A quick look at the html code indi­cates pretty seman­tic mark-​​up, but an odd mix of inline styling and stylesheets. There’s a heavy dose of javascript required for the drop-​​down menus to func­tion, which I think is just fine. The links mostly lack title attrib­utes, which might cause prob­lems down the road with show­ing up prop­erly in search engines, but prob­a­bly not a huge deal there. But the real prob­lem is that it just isn’t very inter­est­ing to look at. This is the group of peo­ple that have inspired more big-​​budget amaz­ing action pic­tures with cool eye candy than any other genre of fic­tion. Their web­site should rep­re­sent this, while still being designed with acces­si­bil­ity in mind, of course. But there is a lot you could do to spice up the look.

The infor­ma­tion and tools are orga­nized in a fairly hap­haz­ard way. Why is the Search tool grouped with with the mem­ber login and con­tact infor­ma­tion? Why does the “Why should I join SFWA?” infor­ma­tion take prece­dence on the front page over the press infor­ma­tion? I would rethink the orga­niz­ing and impor­tance of infor­ma­tion here. The piracy cam­paign stuff? I would remove it entirely. It’s an impor­tant issue prob­a­bly, but does it really deserve such front page real estate? Also, I’m sorry, but web rings went out of style in 1998. This really serves to make the page look dated. Of all the pro­fes­sional writ­ing orga­ni­za­tions I looked at, the only one still fea­tur­ing a web ring is SFWA. That goes for the badge images as well. These are all signs of a designer that hasn’t really kept with the times, and are more indica­tive of a pri­vate web­site than a pro­fes­sional orga­ni­za­tion. If you dis­agree with me, just scroll down to the links entry on this blog from a few days ago and look at the other orga­ni­za­tions. Even the worst of them have this right. SFWA’s web­site should get it right too.

Among other sug­ges­tions I will be detail­ing in the future, I rec­om­mend chunk­ing the nav­i­ga­tional infor­ma­tion together bet­ter. Focus the outward-​​facing web­site for prospec­tive mem­bers and the gen­eral pub­lic and remove all infor­ma­tion for exist­ing mem­bers to the log-​​in sec­tion. Prominently fea­ture a log-​​in screen some­where on the page for mem­bers, but have the site behind that be designed to their needs. It’s a dif­fer­ent project and a dif­fer­ent site.

Also, I highly rec­om­mend using some of the wasted screen space now to include a side­bar that rotates on a ran­dom basis from a list of sub­mit­ted authors. Call this Featured Member and have it include 50 words on an author along­side a nice photo of the author or the cover of their lat­est book.

Junk every­thing in the right col­umn and start over, basi­cally. None of that belongs here. And it’s all ugly and out­dated in look.

So these are just a few of my ini­tial thoughts on the web­site. As I am not a mem­ber, I can’t really speak for the pri­vate mate­ri­als behind the login page, but I think there is plenty of work to be done on the public-​​facing side of things.

Jetse de Vries on What Should be Left Unsaid in Fiction

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Jetse de Vries on What Should be Left Unsaid in Fiction

Jetse of Interzone has made a post talk­ing about the bal­ance of answered vs. unan­swered ques­tions in fiction.

This is an attempt to pin­point one of the things that makes a story res­onate: that is, one of those qual­i­ties that makes a story stay with the reader long after she/​he has fin­ished read­ing it. I’m aim­ing at what should be left unsaid in a story.

Different read­ers are going to want dif­fer­ent things out of a story. One thing I used to get burned on in crits was that every­one wanted more, but the “more” that they wanted, background-​​wise, was dif­fer­ent. I think as a writer, I end up try­ing to focus on only what is imme­di­ately impor­tant to the story, and then let­ting the reader fill in the rest. On my Kansas Jayhawk vs. The Midwest Monster Squad story pub­lished in Interzone, one of the fun things some of my reader friends did was come up with the daikaiju mon­ster mas­cots for other states. That’s the kind of reader par­tic­i­pa­tion I whole-​​heartedly endorse.

Jason Stoddard Has a Blog (And He Knows How to Use it)

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Jason Stoddard, a fan­tas­tic SF author that we pub­lished in the last issue of the Fortean Bureau, and with whom I have shared at least one issue of Interzone, I believe, has a blog, and lately, he’s using it to pro­pose a model for a SF mag­a­zine that could not only sur­vive, but thrive, in our cur­rent media envi­ron­ment. He says many things I have been try­ing to say for the last five years, and says them a hell of a lot bet­ter than I can. For instance:

Great. Now go back and read the above. Yeah, there are a bil­lion blogs out there, but most of them are noth­ing more than an exten­sion of a sophomore’s Livejournal. You’re the edi­tor of a major pub­li­ca­tion, or a pro­fes­sional writer. You have inter­est­ing things to talk about. Hell, you have con­tent. Set it free. There’s end­less inter­est in proto-​​science-​​fiction com­mu­ni­ties such as Slashdot, SomethingAwful, and BoingBoing about pub­li­ca­tions and authors. Use this.

YES, god yes. Listen to this man. How in the world SF mag­a­zines got left in the dust on the web rev­o­lu­tion is com­pletely beyond me. Time to catch up. Now. Or cease to be.

Fantastika

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Fantastika

Today, in his email newslet­ter, Warren Ellis offered this word as the Russian equiv­a­lent of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion: fan­tastika. I love it lots for rea­sons I can­not explain. The word has the mouth-​​feel that I want from a word describ­ing what I do. Would it be pre­ten­tious of me to adopt this word as my genre? Probably so. I will try it out for a while any­way. To see if it fits.

Been doing writ­ing most days on my lunch break from the day job lately. It’s about all my poor tired brain can stand, maybe 45 min­utes of sus­tained work. The prob­lem is, the piece I am work­ing on is lack­ing in the gonzo imag­i­na­tion that I want. I’ve been think­ing too much inside the greater box. I need to break out and really go side­ways with this one. For instance, I was writ­ing a small inter­ro­ga­tion scene, and I ended up writ­ing it straight cliche. I real­ized that most of the story was com­ing out that way. I wasn’t think­ing hard enough. I shall go to din­ner now and talk it over with Sarah and see what I can do to break free of my own medi­oc­rity this time. I’ve done it before. I know it can be done. I just need to moti­vate myself.

On Gaming and Writing

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

On Gaming and Writing

The sim­ple rea­son as to why I have not been post­ing much is that I have devel­oped an active social life that keeps me out of the house. It’s a very geeky social life, though. I am spend­ing three to four nights a week gam­ing with new meat­space friends.

On Tuesdays, I’m run­ning a D&D cam­paign. I’m not a huge fan of D&D, but it’s like oat­meal. It may not taste very good, but it can be filling.

On Wednesdays, I spend the evening at Gryphon Gaming & Comics. I pick up the new comics for the week and then play board games and card games with who­ever shows up. I’ve met some really inter­est­ing peo­ple this way, and tried a lot of new games that I have never heard of before attending.

On Thursdays, I’ve picked up a lit­tle war gam­ing sys­tem called Warmachine/​Hordes. I play the Hordes side of things, because I find the idea of run­ning an army of gigan­tic, unstop­pable trolls just irre­sistible. I find the paint­ing part of things very relax­ing as well. It’s not as hard on my right brain as the day job is, but it’s bet­ter than just turn­ing into a full-​​fledged couch potato too.

In addi­tion the the above, I’m in talks to run a monthly one-​​shot game at the store, and I’m talk­ing with some­one about play­ing a cam­paign of Shadowrun. I think I will draw the line at 4 days of gam­ing com­mit­ment. I need to get some writ­ing done at some point.

Speaking of writ­ing, I recently sold a story, “Groob’s Stupid Grubs” to Black Gate. I don’t remem­ber if I’ve posted that yet. Anyway, with that sale and a rejec­tion from Asimov’s this week (mov­ing, but didn’t work. I need to learn how to write sto­ries that work. At least I’m get­ting pathos now, which is an improve­ment on the old me), I only have one story out, the Yeti thing with Shawna.

Right now, I’m just enjoy­ing life, and enjoy­ing not spend­ing 60 hours a week alone behind a key­board. I’m tak­ing notes and read­ing, and I am not giv­ing up on my writ­ing. But I am def­i­nitely sidelin­ing it for a while so I can enjoy hav­ing friends and being around peo­ple again. It’s been a long time coming.