Category: science/fiction

Me on Jon on Ron and Sean

The Great Ones

Somehow, I missed this when it first went up: The Forager Blog: Ron on Sci-Fi, Sean on Sci-Fi. This article is written by Jon Hastings, a player of Shock: and interesting guy. In it, he talks about my definition of science fiction (which, instead of writing in prose, I wrote as a game) and Ron Edwards’ take on it. Lemme quote Ron because he says some really nice things:

Anyway, to someone whose thinking inclines in the above direction, Joshua A. C. Newman is bucking for hero status. He is the only person with the guts to tackle this issue in RPG terms…Shock is a first, a de novo, an innovation. But more than merely an innovation, it’s not only what I wanted, but what I needed. In this day and age, I am not going to get science fiction consistently anywhere else. The person typing this post is Shock’s target audience.

… that is, Ron and I see this exactly the same way.

Now, I love SF short stories. Naturally, I have a great fondness for those read in my youth. Some authors really felt like they were talking to me. Bruce Sterling was one of them; he’d always thought about the same things I’d thought about and thought about them further. Ron, though, is ten years or so older than I (though you wouldn’t know it to look at him), so it comes as no surprise that he pegs optimal sci fi about ten years earlier than I do.

And that’s great. Because Shock: is for making your science fiction. It doesn’t reproduce science fiction. It’s a tool for making your own with your own aesthetics and your own moral connundra. It is not the product of scholarly study of science fiction; rather, it’s a technique I developed to make science fiction. I’m a designer, not a writer (a fact noted by so many), so I designed a science fiction system so I could tell the stories I wanted to tell.

This last point here came from a discussion I had with someone on RPGnet. In it, he asked me if I’d read his favorite couple of authors. I hadn’t. Later, he told someone else, when asked about Shock: that “the author doesn’t seem to know as much as he thinks he does.” Another person expressed concern that my sources listed were all “older” authors (Bruce Sterling is an old author! That makes me feel old!) That baffled me: one’s ability to build fiction is not based on how much other fiction one has read, it’s based on the number of stories told. I wrote Shock: so that those stories could have a structure — one that I recognize in the stories I like and one that I think works very, very well — and you can bring your aesthetic and moral machinery to the table and enjoy the process of creation.

Shock: is for your stories. Build what you want to build.

Shock: Ubiquitous Surveillance. Issue: Democide

Bir Maza, a burned town in northern Darfur.

There’s a website called Eyes on Darfur . In it, you can see satellite photographs of villages that have literally been destroyed by fighting there.

Let’s think about that for a moment. The core defense of the Government of Sudan has been “Nuh-uh!” for years. They’ve kept away UN observers and peacekeepers on the grounds that nothing’s going on. But the satellites fly overhead every few minutes. They see the smoke, they see the fire, and they see anything 2 meters wide and bigger. Like, say a Land Cruiser with machine guns mounted in the back.

Now, let’s consider using Shock: for something like this. Let’s talk about using Satellite photos or Google Earth as a Shock. Or the Space Station. Or camera phones. This might be a really interesting way to play. It loses the level of abstraction that, say, “Furries” and “Interstellar travel” give you, but it might gain some meat from familiarity.

Anyone who wants to, come over. We’ll play like this and see how it goes.

On August 29, 1997…

Warning: Self-Replicating Device

 It’s often said that the milling machine was the first tool that could be used to make copies of itself. I think that distinction goes to the hammer, but the point is not lost: a device of great complexity that can be used to make and modify itself is approaching a life-like complexity that makes the tool exponentially greater as a phenomenon.

Well, since 2005 or so, the RepRap project has been going on, making a machine that could make itself that makes open-source hardware possible. The creators claim that the device, when fully functional, will cost $400 to build. Or, of course, you could have your friend fab you up a copy. Presumably, it’s your duty to fab one for someone else at that point.

What’s interesting to me about this (and the creators) is that this does for hardware what’s happened with software since its inception: replication means that you can make complex things for cheap. So cheap that they asymptotically approach free. The RepRap can’t make a sandwich, as Jeff pointed out, and that’s actually kind of important: what a lot of the world needs is food, not tools and toys. But when food is to be had, the other things in life — transportation, communication, construction, and of course play — become very important. We’ve satisfied that craving over the last few centuries by buying stuff. Now we may be able to make it. And that may mean the re-emergence of a material folk culture. One not defined by Swooshes and Apples, but by a billion proud signatures and trade marks.

(Thanks to Tomorrow’s Trends for the “Caution: Self-Replicating Devices” sign at the post head.)

I think we should put some mountains here, otherwise, what are the characters going to fall off of?

Promethea

 From Judd, who got it from Warren Ellis, who got it from M John Harrison:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.

I don’t think I’d say this quite so strongly — I think worldbuilding is a fun game to engage in and it will be the core of Xenon: (if it turns out to be fun to play), but I really agree with this about theme-addressing fiction. It’s the reason that you build as you go in Shock: starting with only the most basic parts. You make sure the world is the one that says what you want to say because you build it to suit whenever you want to say something.

Shock: Proton Pump

Salamander limb regeneration in a newt. It got better.

Check out this article in Nature that posits that limb regeneration may be a surprisingly simple technical matter. This is real fountain of youth stuff; anything that doesn’t kill you outright could be regrown so long as scar tissue doesn’t form and there’s sufficient time to regrow a body part — any body part — before you die.

What kind of society might this form? One addicted to risk for trivial reasons, one where fear of nonfatal wounds is considered cowardice or neurosis? One where fear is abolished altogether? One where it’s witheld except for those in risky occupations, leading to an age of exploration?

And what about regrowing parts of a brain? How would that affect who you are?

There’s a lot of fun to be found in this one.

(Thanks to Mycoplasm Twitch, the Man of Tomorrow for the link.)

Science Fiction Globes

Platetocopia

 

Thanks to not one, but two awesome blogs, I now know of Planetocopia, the works of artist Chris Wayan. Many of them are future Earths, or alternates, where poles have shifted or some other catastrophe has taken place. Terraformed Mars and Venus are there, as well as a bunch of purely fictional ones.

It’s brilliant. It’s science fiction sculpture.

It Turns Out Shock: Fans Are Wrong.

Solaris

Over at his blog, a guy named Eric Raymond has posted an article about why Hard Science Fiction is inherently Libertarian and why Left-Wing political agendas in science fiction are irrelevant. From what I’ve seen, he’s really wrong.

First off, he discounts Bruce Sterling and, by implication, Kim Stanley Robinson, two tremendously influential SF writers. Both of them have decidedly complex but Left-sympathetic political leanings (at least insofar as I’ve derived from their writing — I don’t know either, though I’ve met and corresponded a bit with Chairman Bruce).

Secondly, he discounts the relevance of dystopian and apocalyptic science fiction which was the core subgenre in 70s SF cinema. Those movies had a decidedly Hippie perspective, from Planet of the Apes’ warnings about theocracy and unquestioned authority to Silent Running’s indictment of the failure of government to properly protect the environment. To be sure, there are Libertarian themes as well; they tend toward the anti-authoritarian from every direction, but Eric’s kind of ignoring that.

But the biggest evidence that I’ve seen is the extraordinary Lefty leanings of the Shock: games I’ve played. Social class is extremely common as an Issue and economic inequality almost always factors into the various other issues in some way; sometimes it’s proles selling advertising space in their own brains to feed their kids, or sometimes it’s the wealthy buying their way out of responsibility. It’s not that Shock: can’t be used to tell stories about Libertarianism and the Rugged Individual; it’s that the players I’ve played with — often strangers at conventions — tend to frown on its myths more than they frown on the myths of Socialism.

I wish Chairman Bruce would comment on it more than he has, though. Particularly by writing some SF that contradicts what he’s said. I have no doubt he can do it and do it well. I could do with some good Pinko, Cooperation-Makes-Us-Great SF.