All posts by Paul Raven

In praise of Uxo

Fellow Friday Flash Fictioneer (and good friend) Shaun C Green has been nothing short of effusive about Futurismic’s return to the fiction field. Shaun had this to say about Eliot Fintushel’s “Uxo, Bomb Dog”:

“The tale itself is brilliantly written, with a distinctive voice and a playful approach to its arduous subject matter […] Fintushel’s tongue is planted firmly in his cheek throughout, as evidenced by the dominant, um, pseudo-religious movement of his USA being Naderism (complete with rubber noses, street parades and general amnesties). Fintushel’s characters are endearing and lovable; they’re not whole, many missing digits or limbs or worse, but they’re not broken. Not least of these memorable names is the eponymous Uxo, the last Bomb Dog – a Colonel in the United States Military and the recipient of a Purple Heart, no less. And they’re what gives the story its heart, its love of the living over dead machines and bombs. It comes down to a contest, too, with the living breathing Uxo put up against a cold de-mining machine under the moniker Volkovoy.”

If you’ve not read it yet, “Uxo, Bomb Dog” is waiting for you – bookmark it for later if you’re busy.

And if this seems a little self-congratulatory, well, maybe it is – I’m proud we’re publishing again, and I’m proud we’re publishing such good material. But I think it’s more a case of congratulating Fintushel – and if a webzine can’t big-up its authors, what can it do, eh?

Wired interviews the VanderMeers, gives away chapbook

Cover art: Jeff VanderMeer - The Situation Those VanderMeers are everywhere at the moment – and not just in the traditional venues of genre fiction enthusiasts. Wired‘s GeekDads blog (which strikes me as a slightly sexist masthead – are there no GeekMums?) has an interview with Jeff and Ann VanderMeer that shows them off as candid, interesting and very smart people … and explains why they’re appearing in those unusual venues:

JV – “The main thing is, the internet and the way memes move now, there is no monolithic thing called “genre” or “literary mainstream” any more. There’s all of this fascinating cross-pollinations and collaborations that you never really saw before. […] I think I like to write stuff that can connect with different kinds of readers in different ways. Like, a fantasy reader is going to perceive The Situation one way, whereas somebody who works in front of a computer all day but doesn’t read fantasy is going to take something else out of it, for example.”

Well worth a read. And even though it’s well in advance of Friday Free Fiction, I might as well mention that Wired are giving away a PDF of Jeff VanderMeer’s new PS Publishing chapbook The Situation alongside the article. Bonus!

You can find out more about PS Publishing (an excellent UK-based bespoke small press) at their website – why not order something while you’re there? [Cover art image lifted from Wired interview]

Cyber Goggles – wearable memory aid

Tokyo-University-Cyber-Goggles More Japanese cyber-technology! These Cyber Goggles have been developed at the University of Tokyo; they record video footage of everyday objects, run them through an object recognition routine and file them away in a database. End result – a searchable visual log of where you last saw something, suggested as an ideal aid to the elderly whose memories aren’t so sharp as they once were. [image from Pink Tentacle article]

Sure, they look a little clunky right now, but that’s just a prototype – size and bulk won’t be a problem by the time they get these things to production.

The real problem, as pointed out in the comments, is how to make sure the forgetful user doesn’t forget where they left their Cyber Goggles …

Rudy Rucker disassembles the Singularity

simulated-solitons If I could choose one science fiction author in whose head-space I could spend a lengthy holiday (equipped with copious note-taking equipment and a barrel of synaptic cognition enhancers, naturally), Rudy Rucker would be my first choice by a country mile. Despite having a justified reputation as a quirky and colourful writer, he’s a ferociously smart guy. [image by JonDissed]

Here he is debunking the Singularity – or at least the “even better than the real thing” Singularity that some people advocate – by explaining that no Virtual Reality will ever be able to simulate Real Reality accurately, because Real Reality is already running on an incredibly complex and rich computational substrate:

“VR isn’t ever going to replace RR (real reality). We know that our present-day videogames and digital movies don’t fully match the richness of the real world. What’s not so well known is that computer science provides strong evidence that no feasible VR can ever match nature. This is because there are no shortcuts for nature’s computations. Due to a property of the natural world that I call the “principle of natural unpredictability,” fully simulating a bunch of particles for a certain period of time requires a system using about the same number of particles for about the same length of time. Naturally occurring systems don’t allow for drastic shortcuts.”

Rudy Rucker – substantial proof (if proof were needed) that science and hippiedom are two sides of the same coin. There’s masses of free fiction and non-fiction on his website, by the way.

The rise of the subnotebook computer … and the fall of the computing economy

Asus-Eee-subnotebook-computer Slashdot notes a story that quotes a big wheel at Sony as being worried about the potential mainstream appeal of the Asus Eee and its ilk:

“”If (the Eee PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That’s just a race to the bottom,” said Mike Abary.”

The Slashdot poster observes:

“Presumably by ‘we’ he means all the hardware manufacturers who sell over-priced, full-fat laptops. […] Looks like what’s bad for Sony may be good for the consumer.”

In the short run, certainly, he may be right – but what about the long game? A drop in hardware prices for us consumers would be nice, sure, but there’s bound to be more consequences than that. [image by Scrambled Egg]

This is an issue that Charles Stross broached late last year (right after purchasing his own Eee, naturally). You should read all of Charlie’s thoughts about the inevitable (and long-overdue) commoditization of computing technology, because they add weight to his final blow:

“… how deep will be the recession that follows once the personal computing industry deflates to its natural value (i.e. peanuts)?”

Ouch.