One Singular Sensation

I've had a post in my draft folder brewing for a few months now about something called singularity that keeps popping up in my sci-fi readings these days. It's basically the idea that there is some kind of technological evolutionary point that we are approaching at an exponential rate. Just what that point is and what will come about because of it is the unknown factor in the theoretical equation. Extended life-spans? Download-able conscience? True Artificial Intelligence? A Sarah Palin sex cyborg? We just don't know.

It's the exponential rate of growth of our technology that is the key to understanding or accepting that this rapidly approaching singularity is a possibility. At least for me. Moore's law describes a trend in computer technology in which the number of transistors that can fit on an integrated circuit has doubled roughly every two years. Anyone who has thought out the classic math question of whether you would rather be given $1 million right now or 1 penny doubled each day for a full month* knows where that is heading.

*Always go for the penny doubled each day for a month.  After 28 days you would net $2,684,354.55.  After 30 days it would be $10,737,418.23.  And if it were one of the longer 31 day months you would wind up with $21,474,836.47!!!

It's both exciting and frightening stuff. Especially the unknown factor of where it's going to all wind up. Because that's the nature of this idea. The result of this so-called singularity will be so far from we are now able to technically understand that it would be like explaining an iPad to someone born 1000 years ago. Except maybe even they would be pissed that it didn't multi-task or do whatever else the geek-world wants it to do.

So I had no idea where I was going with this topic or why I wanted to write about it, other than thinking it was a nerdy cool idea, when I spied the following article on io9 yesterday from Annalee Newitz.  She basically says everything I wanted to say and more, although I'm really not sold on the term post-Humanity like they are over on that site.  Whatevs.  But there are some cool links to nerdy sci-fi stuff in there, so feel free to poke around.  No...not in THERE!  Sheesh!

What Is The Singularity And Will You Survive To See It?

(check, check, check...check it out!)

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Note: Remember to play the Badgerdaddy Trivia Challenge every day. Skynet says "Fear me!".

Hugo Challenge Update - month 1

OK, so I'm a month into my Hugo Award challenge for 2010, and I'm not doing as well as I had hoped. I had originally challenged myself to read 29 Hugo Award-winning books twelve months.  Just the winners that I hadn't read before.  Upon further examination I was able to reduce it by one book as I had already read Startide Rising by David Brin.  I had merely forgotten about it until I saw the cover at the local library.  So 28 is the new magic number.  And I'm going to have to pick up the pace a little to achieve my goal as it's one month down and I've only read two of the offerings.  The Forever War and Forever Peace, both by Joe Haldeman. 

On to the quick reviews.

The Forever War was a fantastic book, and a great starting point for this journey.  The scope of the tale is tremendous as it follows the life of soldiers fighting in a war against a race of aliens that takes place over the course of thousands of years.  The relativistic nature of space travel means that decades and centuries were passing on earth while these soldiers were traveling to distant star systems via collapsers, a sort of black hole that allows travel between two distant points in the galaxy instantaneously.  The near-light travel to and from these collapsers is the reason for the time disparity. 

The broad changes in humanity over this expanse of time were unexpected and extraordinary.  Sexual politics, gene modification, cloning and the development of a super-conscience were just a part of it.  All in the name of a war that is eventually found to have been started and perpetuated without significant justification.  Sound familiar?  Well that was kind of Haldeman's point. The author was a veteran of the war in Vietnam and it reflects his experiences there.  Quite a few analysts have compared it to Heinlen's Starship Troopers even though the soldiers in Haldeman's universe were conscripted into war by virtue of their IG and genetic profile while Heinlein wrote about the virtues of volunteers and public service.  I haven't read Heinlein's book yet, but it's on my list so I 'm looking forward to it.

Forever Peace is a kind of a sequel to The Forever War, but it focuses on a terrestrial conflict very early on in the war and it takes place much closer to the present day.  So it's not a direct sequel, but it takes place in the same fictional future.  This one focuses on a war between two international armies on Earth fought on one side by soldierboys.  Remote controlled robots driven by human mechanics safely hidden miles away from the conflict.

The soldiers, and certain civilians, are jacked-in.  Connected to each other through surgically implanted jacks in the back of their skulls.  This allows for greater communication and dexterity during combat.  It also allows for much greater intimacy between any group of people jacked together.  An obvious extrapolation of the process is to use it for sex, and there is an entire black market industry that revolves around it.  But the theme of the book is the idea that peace can eventually be attained by humanity by jacking together for a long enough period of time.  The very idea of violence would become abhorrent once you've walked a mile in everyone else's shoes, so to speak. 



It took me a while to get into Forever Peace, but once I was in I was hooked.  Took me about two weeks to read the first 50 pages and a night and a half to read the next 300 or so.  Written it 1997, it predicted the fears of some that a large particle accelerator (like the Large Hadron Collider) could have an apocalyptic effect on the universe.  The conflict between the "terrorist" group hoping to shut it down and the "Enders" who embraced the universal re-start button with religious fervor was deftly handled and extremely enjoyable.

I would highly recommend both of these novels.  Each a look at future warfare from slightly different points of view.

Next up: The Dispossessed by Ursala K. LeGuin and The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge. 

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Forever and ever, amen.

Turbine City

image via designboom

As a fan of science-fiction (duh!), I had certain expectations for living in the future.  And by the future, I mean 2010.  Some of those have expectations have been realized.  Gia does her job every day with her own Star Trek tricorder.  Cell phones, the Internet and programmable television are all neat.  But where are our flying cars?

Sorry, I digress.  Anyway, one of my own expectations was that our urban landscape would look a bit like the above picture by the year Twenty-Ten.  Great, innovative cities built upon the sea or other foreign landscapes like a remote mountain, Antarctica or the surface of the Moon.  Renewable energy powering it all.

Well, this dream could become a reality off the southern shores of Norway, according to some reports.  You see, the unique geography and weather patterns of this part of the world makes it an ideal candidate for wind power.  And some designers have taken it upon themselves to suggest an entire turbine city, run by the power of this wind farm.

At first the turbine city would be more of a tourist attraction.  Something to show off the potential power of this particular technology.  So it would be mostly hotels, shops, restaurants and the like.  But I can see it blossoming into something more.  Entire functioning cities on the technological edge, ushering in a new era in human living.

I like it.  I like it a lot.

Too bad our own country is so reluctant to embrace the technology. And it's not just the government.  A proposed wind farm off the south coast of Long Island has been stalled mostly because some residents would consider the large structures to be eyesores.

I think they look beautiful.

I think they look like the future. 

PS - Now go wish him a happy birthday.  I command it.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Seriously...where the fuck is my flying car?

Dark Companion

I love when there is science and stuff that scientists and stuff can't figger out. Or they kinda know, but they still haven't got all the stuff...ya know, figgered out.

Say hello to the binary star system Epsilon Aurigae.

Normally in a binary star system, you get two stars of varying magnitude that orbit around a common center of mass.  Now, I don't know what any of that means, but usually you got two stars doing some kind of celestial boogie around each other.

But something different is going on with Epsilon Aurigae.  You see, this mother-fucker is an eclipsing binary system.  And that means that every 27 years, it gets eclipsed by...something.  Something real big and something real dark.  And these science guys don't really know what that large something is.  Sure, there are all kinds of theories.  A large semi-transparent star.  A black hole.  Your mother.

But mostly they think it a large disk of dust that blots out the sky for anywhere from 640-730 days every 27 years or so.  That doesn't seem likely.  I'm gonna still go with "your mother" as the answer.  But wait...that's only part of the story.  During the middle of the eclipse period there is a period of brightening.  Like there is a hole or something in the middle of the dark object.  And that hole, like your mother, is getting bigger as recent evidence suggests.  So now some of those eggheads think that there may be a planet or even a smaller star at the center of this massive dark cloud of dust.

Well, guess what is going on right now?  That's right.  Epsilon Aurigae has begun it's eclipse phase and space nerds all over the planet are just tugging at themselves with joy.  And they are looking for our help.  So if you fancy yourself an amateur astronomer go check out the Citizen Sky project and you join them over the next couple of years for a prolonged session of theoretical star-fucking.

Me?  Well, I don't fancy myself an amateur astronomer.  But I do fancy your mother.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. It's what Martin Luther King, Jr. would do.

2010 - The Hugo Awards

One of the things that I am hoping to accomplish in 2010 is something that I really should have done by now already. As a fan of science-fiction, I really should already have read every novel that has won a Hugo award. I haven't and that's something I plan on rectifying this year.

For those of you who aren't quite nerdy enough, and you know who you are, the Hugo Awards are given to outstanding works of science fiction or fantasy and they are named after Hugo Gernsback, the man behind the sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories.  You gotta love a guy named Hugo.  They give out awards for Best Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Non-Fiction Book, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  But I'm only gonna focus on the Best Novel winners.

So I'm gonna give it a go. I've read a bunch of them, but I have my work cut out for me as I don't really read quite as much as I used to. So wish me luck. Here are all the winners since 1953 with those that I've read in boldface:

1953 - The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
1954 - no award
1955 - They'd Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley
1956 - Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein
1957 - no award
1958 - The Big Time by Fritz Lieber
1959 - A Case of Conscience by James Blish
1960 - Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
1961 - A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1962 - Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
1963 - The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
1964 - Here Gather the Stars by Clifford D. Simak
1965 - The Wanderer by Fritz Lieber
1966 - (tie) Dune by Frank Herbert
1966 - (tie) ...And Call Me Conrad by Roger Zelazny
1967 - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
1968 - Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
1969 - Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
1970 - The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
1971 - Ringworld by Larry Niven
1972 - To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer
1973 - The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
1974 - Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
1975 - The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
1976 - The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
1977 - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
1978 - Gateway by Frederik Pohl
1979 - Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre
1980 - The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
1981 - The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
1982 - Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh
1983 - Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov
1984 - Startide Rising by David Brin
1985 - Neuromancer by William Gibson
1986 - Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
1987 - Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
1988 - The Uplift War by David Brin
1989 - Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
1990 - Hyperion by Dan Simmons
1991 - The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold
1992 - Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
1993 - (tie) A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
1993 - (tie) Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
1994 - Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
1995 - Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold
1996 - The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
1997 - Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
1998 - Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman
1999 - To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
2000 - A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
2001 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
2002 - American Gods by Neil Gaiman
2003 - Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer
2004 - Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
2005 - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
2006 - Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
2007 - Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
2008 - The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
2009 - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Phew!  57 seven winners since 1953 including ties and I've read 28 of them.  I was hoping it was gonna be closer to 35 or 40. 

That leaves 29 books that I am tasking myself to read in 2010.  I know that I'm glad that I read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell when it first came out because I don't think I could go through that again.  Don't get me wrong...it was great.  But it was about 5,000 pages long or so.  OK, maybe not that long, but it was pretty massive.

I don't know in what order I am gonna tackle this list.  Maybe by author since there are a lot of repeat winners up there.  I dunno.   Time to break out the old library card.

Again...wish me luck!

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. A return to reading for 2010!

Jupiter

"Jupiter and Callisto" by Peter Paul Rubens*

Easily my favorite planet.

Why? It's just so freakin' huge and cool, how could you not love it? In fact comets sometimes fall so in love with Jupiter that they will decide to stick around for a few years as a temporary moon!

How badass is that?

Comet: "I'm just about the coolest thing in the solar system.  Yeah, I guess that the Sun is pretty cool too, but the Sun doesn't get to scare the shit out of the Earth nearly as much as my friends and I do.  There is nothing I would rather do than take long elliptical orbits around the sun.  Nope.  That's the life, my friends!"

Jupiter: "Hello" <- deep baritone voice.  Think James Earl Jones.

Comet: "Um, hi!  Mind if I stick around for a half dozen years or so?"

Don't even get me started on the possibility of one day colonizing Jupiter's moons as a sort of way station that would help fuel our progress even further into the heavens. 

The sci-fi geek in me weeps with joy at the mere thought.

*Looks like a couple of women getting it on, right?  Turns out that the goddess Diana had warned Callisto about the evils of men.  So Jupiter, always the willing rapist, took the form of Diana one day and it was on like Donkey Kong. Jupiter was a baaaad mother-fucker.  In fact, in one of the myths, he may have actually fucked his mother.  I don't recall, but I wouldn't put it past him.  This is a dude who wanted to get it on with all of his sisters, fer crissakes!

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Titan?  Titan?  Give me Callisto any fucking day of the week.  Twice on Sundays.

Mr. Science

Mr. Science says "a boomerang, when thrown correctly, will always return to the person who threw it. EVEN IN ZERO GRAVITY!!!"

So you think that all the experiments in the International Space Station are of the ground-breaking, scientific discovery type, eh? Nah! Sometimes those dudes just want to see some fucked up shit in space. In this video, Japanese astronaut Takao Doi throws a boomerang in zero gravity and the motherfucker comes right back to him! Dude!

In his next video he is gonna play hacky-sack and smoke a big bowl while listening to Widespread Panic. Just to see the science behind it all, man.

PS - So there is this Japanese professor who thinks that Kim Jong Il died way back in 2003 and has been replaced by up to four body doubles ever since. And we think America is fucked up.