Monthly Archives: October 2009

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Dissociative fugue in D minor

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I felt the urge to pass this story on to you lot, not because it’s necessarily science fictional or futuristic (though it could be, in the hands of a good writer), but because I think it’s genuinely fascinating. The New York Times has an article about a young lady named Hannah Upp who went missing while out running in late August, only to reappear nearly three weeks later floating face-down (though still alive, barely) in New York Harbour.

Sure, people disappear all the time – what’s rare about Ms Upp’s disappearance is that she doesn’t remember any of it at all. It’s something that the psychologists call a dissociative fugue.

The medical condition diagnosed in Ms. Upp is so uncommon that few psychiatrists ever see it. Characterized in part by sudden and unexpected travel combined with an inability to recall one’s past, dissociative fugue demonstrates the glasslike fragility of memory and identity.

Its most famous sufferer is the fictional Jason Bourne, the secret agent made flesh on film by Matt Damon. The Bourne character takes his name from Ansel Bourne, a Rhode Island preacher who suffered the earliest recorded case of the condition when he was en route to Providence in 1887. The preacher continued to Norristown, Pa., where he opened a store and lived with another family, until one day he “woke up.”

The memory of how to perform mundane tasks like hailing a cab or even using the Internet remains intact. Victims lose only the memories tied to their identity.

A weird and fascinating tale, and a reminder that the human mind is something we only understand very poorly. The hat-tip goes to Tim Maly on Twitter, who we may well be hearing more from in the near future…

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Ashok Banker wants to disassemble science fiction publishing

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The last year or so has been punctuated by debates on the inherent racism and sexism of genre fiction publishing, but if you thought there had been some strong opinions stated boldly before now, you should really go check out the exclusive interview with Ashok Banker at the World SF News blog.

Banker is a hugely popular and prolific writer in his home country of India, but is virtually unheard of in the West… and he doesn’t pull any punches in his assessment of the Stateside publishing industry:

I won’t mince words here: SFF publishing in the US today is the Klu Klux Klan of the publishing world. It’s anachronistically misrepresentational in its racial mix, religious mix, cultural mix. The few exceptions to the rule only prove the endemic, systemic and deeply bred bias in the field. There are even editors who claim to champion ‘coloured’ writing, by publishing anthologies that segregate non-white non-Judeo/Christian non-American authors of speculative fiction from their ‘mainstream’ genre counterparts.

[…]

For decades SFF has been accusing mainstream literary critics, readers and authors of being snobbish and denying them their due. In fact, it’s the other way around: SFF’s pathetic cries of outrage and refusal to change with the times are proof of SFF’s own snobbishness and bias. SFF is dead and rotting. Long may it stay dead! We who love the elements that make great SFF don’t need the label so Klansmen can recognize work by other Klansmen. We don’t care if our milk was drawn by brown hands, black, or white. We just want our milk!

I think the Klan metaphor is perhaps a little strong (not to mention calculated to offend), but the man has a very valid point. The easy (and lazy) response would be to call him out for jealousy, but given that Banker points out that his earnings are far higher than most US or UK writers of genre fiction, that doesn’t really hold a lot of water. Banker doesn’t need the SFF industry; the question is, does it need him?

The wider business of publishing in general doesn’t escape Banker’s ire, either:

In four words: Publish less, publish better. If publishers and editors are so obsessed with commercial viability, then why are they so out of touch with what readers are looking for? Why are publishers so surprised when the next it new sensation comes along and upsets their apple cart? Why can’t they accept and understand that readers and authors decide what sells, not editors and publishers. Why are racial, cultural, religious backgrounds relevant when signing an author? Why not just good books, period? Why not just good books that readers respond well to and want to read? Get the fuck out of your offices and get down to the streets and live. Fire your marketing departments. Hire bloggers on per-hit pay-basis. Look at frontrunners like Cory Doctorow. Think about the Long Tail. Explore free publishing as a marketing model. Get bullish on ebooks, drop the prices and tighten your belts. Reduce print runs on the big sellers, reduce your risk and stop flooding the stores with ‘product’. Tell Dan Brown to go get a life. Stop letting James Patterson use the Warner jet and chopper. Spend money on authors, not on the business of publishing and the fairyland of PR. Let readers decide what should be published and what shouldn’t – put work for free out there online and let them vote. Then, once you know what they’ve picked, go in and edit it well, package it well, do your stuff. But remember that you’re a meat-packer, you don’t build the cow, you don’t eat it. You just pack it. So pack it well, or get packing.

There’s quite a few chewy home truths in that little screed… I get the feeling this particular interview will be a hot topic for a little while.

What do you think about Banker’s assertions of endemic racism in SFF publishing, or about the state of publishing in general? Drop in a comment below – but keep it polite, OK? In line with the Futurismic comments policy, any racist or ad hominem rants will be removed, so play nice.

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Space: awesome and inspiring, or an impossible dream?

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Are science fiction authors are wasting their time writing about interplanetary travel, space colonisation and the spread of mankind across the universe, given everything science has taught us about the realities, possibilities and costs of doing so?

That question is the topic for a discussion panel at the Sci Fi London Oktoberfest this coming Friday, part of the London Planetarium’s celebration of International Year of Astronomy, and yours truly is appearing on said panel alongside Brit sf authors Paul McAuley, Jaine Fenn and Philip Palmer – if you’re in London on Friday, why not pop along? (There’s other stuff on besides the panel, including a screening of the new Star Trek movie, no less.)

Futurismic veterans will no doubt notice the echoes of the Mundane SF manifesto in the question… which probably explains my inclusion alongside three authors who very surely don’t believe they’re wasting their time writing science fiction set beyond the gravity well! It promises to be a lively discussion, even though I’ll be playing Devil’s advocate to some extent.

You see, Futurismic may be devoted specifically to near-future sf but – much as I have some sympathies with the Mundane Manifesto – I’d never go so far as to say that space-based sf is a waste of time. Space opera and hard sf (plus the Space Shuttle missions of my youth, and countless books on the early space programmes) were a huge influence on my thinking, and an inspiration for my opinions on the general awesomeness of the universe, not to mention the potential of humanity as a species. Hell, they still are – look at this:

The Keeler gaap in Saturn's A Ring

That’s a recently-received image from the Cassini probe showing the Keeler gap in Saturn’s A-ring; the ripples there are the result of the little embedded moon Daphnis churning up those layers of dust and rock as it passes through. Scenes like that can only be caught once every fifteen years or so, thanks to the right combinations of orbital position, light source angles and so on… and even then, you need to have a probe in place to take them. If you can look at that and not feel your heart thump from sheer sensawunda… well, you’re a tougher cookie than me, that’s for sure. [via MetaFilter; image courtesy NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute]

That said, we do have a lot of more immediate and pressing existential concerns facing us here on Mother Terra, and science fiction surely has a role to play in inspiring us to tackle them head on – which is one of the many reasons I consider myself a supporter of the Positive SF movement, too.

What do you people think – should science fiction keep its feet firmly on the ground, or should it have its head in the stars? If you’ve got some points you feel I should raise on Friday, drop ’em in the comments below!

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EmoBracelet to remind traders not to be dicks

The *other* sort of emo braceletsBoy, those stock market trader guys sure can get the rest of us into a mess with their crazy high-jinks. But it’s not entirely their fault, you know – they just get a bit carried away in the heat of the moment. C’mon, we’ve all been there – emotions run high, you have to make a snap decision, and sometimes you get it wrong. Granted, for most of us there’s little chance of shafting the entire planet in the process…

But wouldn’t it be good if we could keep those traders calm? If we could lay a metaphorical cool hand of reason on their shoulders every once in a while and say “hey, maybe you’re thinking with your heart (or your dick) rather than your head”? Electronics giant Philips and financial behemoth ABN Ambro seem to think it’s a great idea, and have hence teamed up to develop a conceptual device called the EmoBracelet, which should achieve the same effect:

The gadget […]measures electrical signals from users’ skin to assess their emotional state. The technology is similar to a lie detector recognising the nervousness behind a fib.

The announcement by the two companies said online traders had nearly double the number of deals as those who traded through a broker and that online traders earned lower returns because of poor decisions.

”Driven by fear, they may sell too hastily when share prices drop. Driven by greed, they may be overenthusiastic,” the announcement said.

The EmoBracelet and another device, an EmoBowl, use electrical displays to show a person’s emotional intensity. The two items were designed to warn traders to step back and take a breather by alerting them to their heightened emotional state.

As a wearer’s emotions grow more intense, lights flicker faster on the bracelet and the colours inside the bowl change from a soft yellow to orange to a deep cautionary red.

Nice idea, guys, but I have to say that I’m not sure the EmoBracelet is going to prevent traders doing dumb things. After all, most of the folk I’ve worked with who were prone to agitation or emotional overinvolvement with their work would react rather badly to having their “heightened mental state” pointed out… and some of them would probably carry on pushing the envelope just to prove how on top of things they really were (in their minds, at least).

A version of the EmoBracelet that injected the trader with a hugely powerful soporific at the pertinent moment might be a little more useful, however… [story via Technovelgy; image by McWilliams Graphics]

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Rudy Rucker’s biosynthetic future

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digital rendering of DNARudy Rucker has been ruminating on synthetic biology in the wake of a September essay in The New Yorker entitled “A Life Of Its Own”, which is well worth the half hour or so it’ll take to read. [image by ynse]

In response, Rucker has reposted a piece he wrote for Newsweek on the same subject back in 2007… and if you love Rucker’s ability to flip-flop from hard science to way-out West-Coast weirdness within the space of a few paragraphs (as I do), it’s a must-read. For example, here are Rucker’s thoughts about the biotech “grey goo”scenario:

What’s to stop a particularly virulent synthetic organism from eating everything on earth? My guess is that this could never happen. Every existing plant, animal, fungus and protozoan already aspires to world domination. There’s nothing more ruthless than viruses and bacteria—and they’ve been practicing for a very long time.

The fact that the synthetic organisms are likely to have simplified Tinkertoy DNA doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be faster and better. It’s more likely that they’ll be dumber and less adaptable. I have a mental image of germ-size MIT nerds putting on gangsta clothes and venturing into alleys to try some rough stuff. And then they meet up with the homies who’ve been keeping it real for a billion years or so.

And if that’s a bit too serious for you, hands up who’d love to live in this future:

Of course, people will want to start tweaking their own bodies. Initially we’ll go for enhanced health, strength and mental stability, perhaps accelerating the pace of evolution in a benign way.

But, feckless creatures that we are, we may cast caution to the winds. Why would starlets settle for breast implants when they can grow supplementary mammaries? Hipsters will install living tattoo colonies of algae under their skin. Punk rockers can get a shocking dog-collar effect by grafting on a spiky necklace of extra fingers with colored nails. Or what about giving one of your fingers a treelike architecture? Work ten two-way branchings into each tapering fingerlet of this special finger, and you’ll have a thousand or so fingertips, with the fine touch of a sea anemone.

Ah… just me, then? 🙂