For the curious reader of science fiction (scifi) and fantasy
It’s been a funny winter, here in the Boston area. Here it is, mid-February, and we still haven’t had a proper snowfall. On the other hand, yesterday was a carnival of sleet, sleet mixed with snow, and freezing sleet. Last night and today, everything was ice—including the snowplow ridges at the ends of the driveways. Ours was no treat to get out of, but we were better off than a neighbor who decided to drive over the ridge.
Here is the result, caught by my cell phone camera.
Back in the mid 1980s, my novel The Infinity Link first saw print. The main character, a young woman named Mozy, had her complete mind and personality uploaded to a spacecraft that was going to investigate alien visitors in the solar system. (Side note: The novel took me five and a half years to write, a record I hoped never to match. I just exceeded it, with Sunborn.)
The other day, I was reading in the latest issue of The Atlantic Monthly an article about computer backup systems. One of them is called Mozy. Writer James Fallows says, “Mozy mirrors your computer’s data not on a detachable drive or another machine but somewhere in the galactic cloud of Internet storage.” Now, that coincidence struck me as being pretty cool. If it’s not a coincidence, that would be even more cool. I emailed the company and asked them where their name came from. I’ll let you know what they say.
I finally wrote up some answers to questions that people keep asking me by email—questions like, can you blurb my novel, and how can I find an agent? It’s up on a new page on my web site. If these are questions that trouble you, or even just interest you, take a look at Getting Published, at http://www.starrigger.net/published.htm.
Today’s news was awash in stories that made me reflect on the vagaries of human nature, especially in the crazy world we live in. I’m going to assume you’re familiar with the stories, but if you’re not, just click the links for more information. The tales run from bizarre to tragic to uplifting, with a side trip to controversy.
The first one that hit me today was the story of the NASA astronaut, Lisa Nowak, accused of driving from Texas to Florida with the intention of murdering a romantic rival. I don’t follow astronaut personalities the way I did when there were just seven of them, but I remembered Lisa Nowak from the coverage of the shuttle mission last summer: she was bright, competent, strikingly pretty, and by all accounts a great role model for girls and young women. What in the world happened, that she could do such a bizarre thing? Does she suffer from a psychological disorder that was hidden until now? Did she simply crack from the stress of being simultaneously an astronaut and a mother? I feel a mixture of sympathy, pity, puzzlement, and a bit of fear. Could any one of us crack this way? Does this dark side lurk in all of us? It makes me shiver a little, and vow to get more sleep.
Next came the furor over released cockpit video from two U.S. A-10 pilots who, in the early days of the Iraq war, mistakenly strafed friendly trucks, killing a British soldier. The incident was declared an innocent mistake and the pilots cleared of wrongdoing, back in 2003, but only recently was the cockpit video (containing the radio conversations) provided to the British government and subsequently leaked to the public. I watched the video—it’s about 15 minutes long—and the first thing I noticed was how businesslike and calm it all seemed until the mistake was discovered, not at all the image of combat one gets from the movies. The guys saw orange panels on the roofs of the trucks—the sign of friendly forces—but because they were assured by their ground controller that no friendly forces were in the area, they concluded that they were looking at orange rocket launchers. And they opened fire. In hindsight, it’s pretty easy to conclude that they made a dumb call—especially given how hard it is to see things on the ground from a cockpit. But it would also be a cheap shot, since I wasn’t there.
What I really noticed was how different I felt about it after watching the video, versus reading the stories. The news reports said the pilots cursed, wept, and were distraught after learning that they’d just shot a friendly. But the selected quotes also made it sound as if they were mainly concerned about how much trouble they were in. Watch the video, and you get a different picture. They were beside themselves. Yes, they obviously knew they were in trouble, but they were also kicking themselves around the block for the error. The news reports one pilot saying to the other, Is your tape still running?—after which the recording stopped. What the pilot actually said was, My tape ran out; is yours still running?—and this when they were well on their way back to base. What comes across in the news story is, Can we cover our asses? Watch it, and you get something quite different. So…I guess this story made me think less about the possible culpability of the pilots than it did about just how easily the truth gets distorted. And how we have to form opinions and make decisions all the time, based on this kind of incomplete—or misleading—information.
On the flip side of the war, you have the court martial of Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused to go with his unit to Iraq, because he believed the war was illegal and immoral. From the San Jose Mercury News:
“…He took to heart a superior’s advice to make exhaustive preparations for missions. What he found — in reading international law, the history of war and the history of Iraq, and articles by governmental and independent agencies, journalists and scholars about the situation in Iraq — changed his mind.
As he told the Army Times, he was in turmoil. “I found out this administration had gone to great lengths to deceive Congress and the people of this country to go to this war.”
With complete respect for those who are in Iraq right now, including one of our wrestling coaches, my hat’s off to Lt. Watada for being willing to take a stand on principle, knowing he could be court-martialed, but believing that these things had to be said.
Of course, I’m basing that opinion on news reports. See earlier paragraph.
Finally, I read of actor Richard Dreyfuss’s current passion—not acting in films, but teaching civic responsibility in schools. Among other things, he’s working with a school system in Massachusetts to help create a civics curriculum for elementary schools, hoping to find ways to make this exciting for kids. You go.
Funny, I was not always a huge fan of Dreyfuss in the movies, especially his earlier ones—but I thought he was great in the quietly forgotten TV series, The Education of Max Bickford.
Which, coincidentally, is where I first encountered the actress Katee Sackhoff. Starbuck.
Well, I suppose a lot of people knew. But I didn’t. Thanks to an alert young writer who emailed me, I found out that my free online writing guide, WriteSF.com, is currently listed on SciFi.com as Site of the Week.
Flattery will get you…well, I’m not sure what. It reminds me that I’ve been meaning for ages to spend some time finishing the thing, and finding some better graphics, and eventually even getting some video clips up. (Stick that on my to-do list, will you? Along with revamping my regular web site. Thanks.)
Meanwhile, I’ve been collecting stories and links, and I’ll share a few of the ones I’ve managed to not lose.
Allergy vaccine: If, like me, you’re subject to allergies, have hope: New Scientist reports major steps forward in the development of vaccines for allergies. One group has developed vaccines for dust mites, pollen, cat hair, and bee venom and tested them on cells from susceptible humans. Another study is in clinical trials. (Unfortunately for those of us in the U.S., these studies are in Europe; no word on how long it will take for treatments approved in Europe—assuming they reach that point—to make it to the U.S. But I’m ready to line up to be part of the trials.)
String theory: Can you explain it clearly in two minutes or less, on video? Discover Magazine has a contest underway, to see who can best convey the essence of string theory to a reasonably intelligent nonscientist. String theorist and popularizer Brian Greene will be the judge. Hurry—you’ve only got until March 16—two minutes!
Desert songs: Have you ever been a beach that made interesting squeaking or scrunching sounds as you walked on it? We have one in our area called Singing Beach, in Manchester-by-the-Sea, north of Boston. Well, there’s a guy named Stéphane Douady who has made it his mission to record the sounds of sand dunes. And it’s pretty cool. Put on your headphones or play these through a good stereo system. (I first tried to listen on my tinny laptop speakers, and I could barely hear anything. So don’t do that.)
Finally, 181 Things To Do On The Moon: you know, in case you find yourself there one day with nothing else on your agenda. NASA has released a list of 181 things worth doing on the moon. This page has highlights. (The full list is in a hard-to-read pdf file. Ah, we can go to the moon, but can we put the reasons into an easy-to-read format that won’t crash our browsers or ask for the 2-millionth update to Adobe Reader? Nah….)
One of the reasons I haven’t been around much lately is that I had a homeowner’s emergency to deal with—not my own home, but my in-laws’ apartment not too far from us. Frigid temperatures, frozen pipes, and a croaked boiler all contributed to the fun. Nobody was there at the time—they live in Puerto Rico, but are using this as the first step to living closer as the trials of the senior years creep in. It’s a lovely, quaint old apartment. And by quaint, I mean drafty and poorly insulated, as a part of its charm. Dealing with this took a surprising amount of time and energy, starting with a couple of hours with the shop-vac, sucking water up out of the basement. That was just for starters.
One good thing about the cold temperatures, though. It’s eased my fears that global warming is coming at us like a runaway freight train. Maybe it’s only coming at us like a lumbering freight train.
I probably ought to let people know where I’m going to be appearing in the near future. (Other than at the supermarket, I mean.) It sort of defeats the publicity angle if I don’t let anyone know.
This coming weekend, I’ll be at a small convention called Vericon, held at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass. In conjunction with that, I’ll be signing books at the Harvard Bookstore in Harvard Square. (Saturday Jan. 27, at 1:00 p.m.) According the schedule, I’ll be signing along with Marie Brennan. I don’t know her, so this will be a chance to make a new acquaintance.
The weekend of Feb. 16-18, I’ll be at Boskone, New England’s largest regional convention. That’s in Boston, at the Westin Waterfront. I don’t know my schedule there yet.
Starting on March 19, I’ll be teaming up once more with Craig Shaw Gardner to teach “The Ultimate SF Workshop,” in the basement of Pandemonium Books and Games, in Cambridge. It’s a 10-week intensive workshop for people who are really serious about learning the craft of SF writing. We ran our first workshop last fall, and it was very successful. Terrific group of writers, many of whom I definitely expect to see in print one day soon.
In April, during the school spring break, we’re hoping to run a workshop strictly for teens. More on that later.
The weekend of May 11-13, tentatively, maybe, if I can afford New York City prices, I’ll join a horde of other writers, editors, agents, etc., for the Nebula Awards weekend.
Later in May, I’ll be teaching for the second year at the New England Young Writers Conference, at Bread Loaf in Vermont.
In July, I plan to be at Readercon, near Boston.
You know, I’d better put all this information up on my web site right now while I’m thinking of it. Excuse me while I go fire up Dreamweaver….
I wrote earlier how I had been tapped to play a small role in a very small indie film. My role? Pops, the homeless man with his ear to the street. Well, they had the premier screening for cast and families the other night, and—yep—there I was. For about, oh, twenty seconds or so. Maybe thirty. I thought I was pretty convincing as a scruffy homeless man, and we’ll just leave it at that and not think about how little it took to make me appear that way. (Wearing entirely clothes from my own wardrobe!)
The film is called Children of the Street. It’s an earnest work that actually tells an important story about runaways and homelessness. (Very rough around the edges, and clearly shot on a budget of approximately zero—but still, it was rewarding to be in.) I got an email from someone at our church today, saying he’d gone to see the public showing (not knowing I was in it), and was quite surprised by the homeless guy!
Maybe it will show up online someday. If so, you’ll hear it first here.
Recent issues of Discover Magazine (Feb. 06*) and the New Yorker (I think it was last week’s, but now I can’t find it to check) both had articles about Amory Lovins, the wizard of small technology, or perhaps more accurately, appropriate use of technology in terms of energy efficiency and benign effect on the environment. His Rocky Mountain Institute carries on a lot of his work, and appears to be gaining the attention of numerous large companies, which are discovering that building energy efficiency and environmental awareness into new facilities can not only help the environment, but also save them money. Both articles are well worth a read. The one in Discover will tell you more about the science and technology, while the New Yorker focuses more on the man. It sounds like if you ever meet him, you can expect to have a thick stack of white papers pressed into your hands.
The leading edge of Small, of course, is nanotechnology—machines and structures engineered at the atomic and molecular level. Nanotech offers all kind of promise, but also possible hazards. One of the possible hazards is the potential biological effects of tiny fibers from products based for example on nanotubes as they degrade, or are disposed of. There is at least some risk that nano-fibers in the environment might prove to be the next asbestos. Well, according to the Washington Post technology section, some forward thinkers at a place called the ETC Group in Toronto have already observed that it would be useful to have a universal warning sign for nano-materials, and have started a competition to see who can come up with the best warning sign. Entries have poured in. You can view a large gallery of them at http://www.etcgroup.org/gallery2/v/nanohazard, and even cast a vote; or just view the finalists at http://www.etcgroup.org/gallery2/v/finalists/.
*Okay, it’s a year old. But I just finally picked it up and read it, so it’s recent to me.