Personal Information: episode 55
Personal Information is a new serial sci-fi webcomic from Sarah “Does Not Equal” Ennals.
The Interrogation: a brief tale of AI and revolution
Hat-tip to George Mokray for emailing me about this one; Global Voices Online is carrying a translation of a short story by the once-imprisoned Chinese dissident netizen known as Stainless Steel Mouse… who, as her nickname might suggest, is well into her science fiction. “The Interrogation” is pretty short, highly allegorical (or so I’m assuming), and probably loses a great deal in translation, but personally I’m pleased to see sf ideas being used as metaphors for social change, and Stainless Steel Mouse’s courage and persistence – and that of others like her – should be an example for those of us in the West complaining about our governments running amok over our freedoms. In the grand scheme of things, we’ve still got it pretty easy, and the best most of us can manage is ranting about it in the comment threads of internet news stories.
The physiology and psychology of living in space
Via BigThink, Robert Lamb of Discovery News has compiled an overview of the physical and mental adjustments a human being makes to living in the microgravity of an orbital space station:
Stage Three: Sometime between week six and week 12, you can expect things to get a little moody aboard the old space station. Russian observations found that a number of the symptoms were linked to boredom and isolation. You become hypertensive, irritable and less motivated. Expect to fly off the handle whenever a crew member drifts into your personal space or borrows your iPod without asking. You can also expect increased sensitivity to loud noises, changes in musical preferences, exhaustion, sleep disturbances and loss of appetite. It should come as no surprise that this sometimes results in an “accusation of negative personality traits.”
Mundane/hard SF writers, take note – plenty of scientifically verifiable story triggers in there. Especially in Stage Four, which is all about “prevailing feelings of euphoria” and “new insights into the meaning of life and the unity of mankind”… so, kinda like watching 2001 with a headful of Owsley’s Old Original, then. (I’m kidding, of course. Well, mostly.)
Of course, the above research can, perforce, only describe the effects of a relatively short tenure at the top of the gravity well; for anything longer than a five-moth stretch, you’re probably gonna want to go cyborg…
Podcast interview with Tim Pratt
Title says it all, really; Tim Pratt’s a mean lean fiction writing machine, and his appearance here at Futurismic with “A Programmatic Approach to Perfect Happiness” is just one publication among very many. Over at SF Signal, you can hear Karen Burnham and Patrick Hester in conversation with Tim, which strikes me as an ideal way to screen out the tedium of April 1st on the internet. I’ve not listened to it yet, but I’m hoping it contains news about the potential global syndication of the #officebaby franchise…
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