Futurismic

If nothing else, Damien Walter’s post about positivity in sf has poked up the embers and got some debate crackling. But when I say “debate”, I may actually mean “knee-jerk reactions to someone suggesting that change wouldn’t be a bad thing”…

Jason Stoddard decided to codify his ideas in a Positive Science Fiction Manifesto, and Jetse de Vries chipped in again as well. Jason’s manifesto made the error of mentioning capitalism in a positive light, however, causing David Moles to mis-paraphrase him as saying “the problem with contemporary science fiction is that it doesn’t love capitalism enough“, and for io9 to do an unusually sloppy job of yeah-what-he-said bandwagoneering. Both posts address half a point out of the five that Jason lists… is it overly capitalistic of me to be keeping score?

Just for the record, I’m very fond of dystopic fiction but I’d quite like to see some more optimistic pieces as well; I don’t see why both can’t coexist, given the number of specialist niche venues in the market. What I find grimly amusing is to see the same knee-jerk reactions that the Mundane SF manifesto caused happening all over again… so much for sf readers being open to change, huh?

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Gordon Van Gelder - editor-in-chief of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction - has opened up a debate about genre fiction short stories and their online availability. Understandably, as a publisher of a physical ink-on-paper magazine, he’s wondering if the sheer quantity of free fiction online has devalued the form in general:

Here at F&SF, we’re open to experimentation and for the past year or so, we’ve been publishing one reprint a month on our Website. Last month, the free story was “The Political Officer” by Charles Coleman Finlay. A few days ago, someone posted on our message board that he wanted to read that story. I explained that it was no longer on our Website but he could buy a copy of that back issue from us or from Fictionwise.

As I did so, I realized that I was putting a reader in a position where he had to decide if he would pay for something he could have had for free just a few days earlier… which doesn’t strike me as a good position. I know that I don’t like being asked to make such a choice.

So I started to wonder: has short fiction been devalued by the fact that so many places offer it for free online nowadays?

This is a question that interests me too, for obvious reasons. I run Futurismic because I care about getting good writing in front of the eyeballs that enjoy it, and I compile the Friday Free Fiction posts for the same reason.

The answers to Van Gelder’s questions suggest that some people do indeed think short fiction is devalued by there being more of it available for free, but that strikes me as being counter to basic economic theory - surely the good stuff becomes more valuable when there’s lots of rubbish? [Caveat - I am, by no means, an expert in economics.]

Of course, one’s definition of a good story or book is a very personal thing, and doubtless has a lot of connection to the demographic the reader belongs to, so I dare say there’s no definitive answer.

But nonetheless, I’d like to ask Futurismic’s readers the same question, though with a different angle to it: do you perceive the short fiction we publish as being inferior because you don’t have to pay to read it? And what effect has the availability of free short stories had on your buying habits?

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The story, as it is, from Wired Science:

The Economist, that venerable British magazine about money, has opened a new online debate on the future of energy.

The debate presents the pro and con sides to the following proposition: “We can solve our energy problems with existing technologies today, without the need for breakthrough innovations.”

The debate is a closed discussion between the panelists but they’ve opened up parts of the site to user participation.  I’m not convinced that this debate is going to move any of the current arguments forward, as both sides will be tackling the topic through the global warming lens.  But, check it out here, on the Economist website.

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Two of the major criticisms of global warming theory I’ve seen recently have been that a) 1998 was actually the hottest year on record and since then it’s been cooler and b) that solar winds and cosmic rays are driving the climate change process, not human emissions.

These are valid points and scientists have been spending a lot of time researching their impact. Lancaster University have just released a major report on the latter, concluding from 20 years of data that global temperatures have little influence from solar activity. The original hypothesis, by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark, hypothesized that when the 11 year cycle of solar wind is weak, more cosmic rays make it through the earth’s atmosphere, making more clouds and cooling the earth. Correspondingly, when solar wind is strong, Svensmark’s theory expected more global warming. However, with solar winds currently near their minimum, global temperatures are still high. The Lancaster study used three different experimental methods to find little correlation between the two, contradicting Svensmark’s theory, which was heavily cited in the documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’.

Related to this discussion is the citing of 1998, the hottest year on record, as proof that global temperatures are going down. This is a compelling argument on the surface but when you look at other global weather patterns the reason for the difference in numbers becomes apparent. 1998 was incredibly hot in main part because it was in an El Nino cycle, in which the warming of the Pacific Ocean disrupts weather patterns. Today however, we are in the midst of a significantly strong La Nina event, the sister condition that dampens global temperatures. This means that whilst it will still likely be in the top ten hottest years, 2008 will not be a very hot year, due to that effect.

Both the cosmic ray and 1998 hypotheses were picked up as proof that global warming doesn’t exist. These criticisms are important because by either disproving or proving them to be right, our understanding of this science improves. When the outlying criticisms of climate change are themselves shown to be lacking, the consensus grows stronger and vice versa. Like all cutting edge science, it’s a learning process.

UPDATE: you can read the Lancaster paper here, whilst some of Svensmark’s papers are available on his website, although I can’t find any after 2001.

[via BBC Science, picture by Feuillu]

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Science teacher Greg Craven posted a video entitled ‘The Scariest Video you’ll ever see’ on Youtube in June 2007. The ten minute video garnered over 7000 replies including many criticisms from global warming sceptics. Craven decided to rebut these criticisms. He spent four months of his spare time researching data on the debate, ticking off each criticism that had been made. He then released “How It All Ends”, another ten minute video but this time with an ‘expansion pack’ of videos going into each of his arguments in exhaustive detail.

Interestingly, much of the content of the six-hour, 44 part series is not devoted to proving whether global warming is happening or not, or whether man is causing it or not. He looks instead at the four main outcomes: global warming exists and we do something, it exists and we don’t do something, it doesn’t exist and we do nothing or it doesn’t exist and we do something. He concluded the costs of doing nothing far outweigh the cost of doing something, so it makes sense to take action even if we don’t know whether global warming is happening or not.

A site has also started up devoted to the videos, where the forum members critique and find responses to each new criticism as it comes through on Youtube. The efforts of these people to encourage reasoned debate is heartening. Many of the arguments against combating climate change revolve around the fact that science doesn’t agree 100% with the precise outcome. Well, science never will agree, not totally, especially with oil industry-paid advocates in the mix. But even without more and more evidence leaning towards the ‘we need to do something camp’, the logical thing to do is to take action, even if it turns out we didn’t need to. There’s also a great interview with Kim Stanley Robinson at BLDGBLOG about this.

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