Sounds: M83 - Outro, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming

Whoa:


M83 - Outro from dudikaz on Vimeo.

Video: Peyote Spirit Quest, Al Lover & The Haters

Some limey bastard made a video for my band, Al Lover & The Haters, and it effin' rules!

I guess we were vibing on the right wavelength, cause a lot of the imagery, especially the early spaghetti western images, were exactly what we were going for. Or at least what I was going for. Take a gander:

Short Story Sale: "The End" at Tales of the Zombie War

Hey, hey, hey! I sold my Clarion West Week 2 short story, "The End", to Tales of the Zombie War! And it's free! Take a read and leave a comment here, especially if you hated it. Let's get all that shit out in the open. 

This was my Second Week story last year up at Clarion West. I workshopped this with my cohort and Nancy Kress, Queen of Hard Sci-Fi. Thanks, Nancy!

On Her Iron Throne

And thanks to my Clarion West cohort, as well as my first readers/editors: Mike G., Kristina Gelardi, Dan Billo and Patrick Scott, for all the feedback and support. And finally, to Caleb Mhorkh (pronounced 'Moore') for helping me gestate this idea. (Zombie Gestation. Sounds like a death metal album.) We were at the Buckshot watching Dead Snow and throwing ideas back and forth about using Zombies as a viable form of renewable/sustainable/green energy, and one thing led to another thing that's best left unsaid. And this story was all that remained.

Thanks, all!

Behold: Blade Runner Sketchbook

The 1982 Blade Runner Sketchbook, edited by David Scroggy, which records the production design and drawings from Syd Mead and Ridley Scott. Need I say more? Wipe your drool up before you leave.

Open publication - Free publishing - More blade runner

Book Report: Blindsight, by Peter Watts

4 of 5 stars

This was a hard book to review. There's a significant amount of buzz about this book (Charlie Stross, Elizabeth Bear, Jeremy Lassen, Starlog, Interzone, ∞), and I would say, by and large, it's mostly deserved. Mostly.

Blindsight is the story of a small four man crew (with a few back up popsicles in cryosleep) who go out to meet up with an alien ship that's entering our solar system. It's a scientific exploration of philosophy dressed up as a First Contact story.

The term I heard the most in reviews is "tour de force". And it was. Blindsight was a tour de force of everything Peter Watts. Or, at least, it certainly felt like it (especially in reading the end notes where the personality and "voice" of the author carried across from the fiction). It's a flashy book with slick prose and ideas flying around like fists in a bar brawl (I hate it when reviewers get figurative). And it was a problematic read.

Outer Space

Created by filmmaker Sander van den Berg this video is pieced together from photographs mined from NASA archives. Just watch. Drool:

Outer Space from Sander van den Berg on Vimeo.

Quiet Arcs: Aurora Australis as seen from the ISS

Footage taken by Expedition 28 of the International Space Station on September 17, 2011. The green "curtains" are photons emitted by oxygen (and nitrogen) atoms returning to ground state after being excited by solar winds. Observe and drool:

Quiet Arcs are A- when the aurora form long solid curtains, and B- the perfect name for a post-rock band, from some town in the middle of nowhere (but probably not near any aurora).;  B - are a hardcore band from Philadelphia.

Book Report: The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi

Left hook, straight punch. But no knock out. That's pretty much my review of Hannu Rajeniemi's The Quantum Thief. Often miscategorized as Science Fiction, sometimes even as "Hard" Science Fiction, this Science Fantasy book packs a galloping adventure of post-humans fighting for... well, I'm not totally sure what they were fighting over. In fact, can anyone tell me why exactly Mieli busted le Flambeur out of the Dilemma Prison? And why did the zoku take over a population of gogols (mind copies) indentured into a Mars terraforming prison that was data-scrambled after the Spike (the explosion of Jupiter) in a deal with the Cryptarch (former warden?), who seems to be an incarnation of Jean le Flambeur, and then buffer said deal by creating the tzaddikim to counter the Cryptarch's power? It's not just your head that's spinning.

Here's a breakdown straight from the book

An interplanetary thief is building a picotech machine out of the city itself while the cryptarchs take over people's minds to try to destroy the zoku colony in order to stop the tzaddikim from breaking their power.

Course the book doesn't actually answer why any of this happened.

Attack of the Lyrids as seen from the ISS

You might not have known it, but the Earth was attacked in April from the Lyrids. Their bombardment peaked on April 21st, followed by the largest hit which came from an object estimated to be about the size of a mini-van and coming it at 43 kilometers a second: the Sutter's Mill meteorite. It hit on April 22nd with an energy yield of ~4 kilotons of TNT. Take a look for yourself from footage taken from the ISS, the blue-white explosions are meteor strikes:

This video is gorgeous! You got a view from the ISS of cities at night against the curve of the earth, a backdrop of stars, and a layer of Aurora. Mind is blown.

Interview with Fine Print Magazine

Check out this quick interview I did over at Fine Print Magazine, discussing the Mist Giant mystique. And leprechaunism. Click.

4-Inch Polished Metal Ball In Zero-Gravity

Just what I said:

NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Expedition 30 flight engineer

Ranch Dressing Vs. Ketchup

Ant-Cam

Yup. Ant-Cam:



Stream videos at Ustream

Info-Graphic of Disruptive Consumer Technology

Some dude just sent this to me. It takes a long circuitous route to get to the point (okay, it does mention it in the first paragraph), which is: we've done so much and yet so few, globally, have access to technology that could reshape our politics, our economy, our societies, our planet. But, it's pretty good content and it looks snazzy, if a bit long. The gulf of the digital divide is so wide it's kind of mind boggling. And I want to use iCow.

Robot Folding Socks

That sounds like a line from a haiku. But the video below looks like an act of war. Yes, war: it starts with socks, and it ends with folding human bodies into suitcases that the robot overlords (the Pod?) shoot into the sun.

It actually kinda sorta looks like Rosie the Robot Maid:

An Inconvenient Film

Wow. This video was banned because it "violated human rights". Never mind the drug war, videos that show the truth must be stopped (you don't need to speak Spanish to watch):

Mist Giant's Latest Release: Glass Walls

Come and check it out! My band's latest release: Glass Walls. You can hear it here or on bandcamp, where you can also pick up a copy. We're also on Velvet Blue Music (our label), iTunes, SoundCloud, and under your bed. Let me know what you think!

ADmented Reality: Google Glasses 2

As per my post yesterday, someone out there feels exactly the same way I do:

20 Years Ago Today Isaac Asimov Died

Isaac Asimov died 20 years ago today. I thought I'd throw up this interview he did on Fresh Air with Terri Gross (she sounds so young!) back in 1987.

You might know him as the most famous nerd of all time, but he was also a writer/editor of some 500 books. That's right: 500. And where did he find the time to write 500 books? Well, if you've ever read any of them I'm sure you noticed they're a bit... dry. Let's just say there are aspects of storytelling that he just didn't bother himself with. Such as character, dialog, pacing, style. Well, actually 'no style' was his style. Still, he had wonder and insight. Come on, you know it's true. He even admits as much in the interview below. Little known fact: Asimov died of AIDS.

 

So much of the industry has changed, and yet, so much of it is the same. The biggest difference is that people aren't as receptive to boiled down pulp. Nowadays all the editors are looking for character, depth, emotional center. This is a good thing. But they haven't raised the pay! They want more for the same price they've been paying for 20 years +. And with inflation that's really more for less. Anyhow, this is about Asimov, not the industry.

It's hard to really encapsulate how much we lost with his death from AIDS. Not just a genius humanist, but also an opportunity to look at the human cost of the AIDS epidemic and the embarrassment over the public reaction to Arthur Ashe and Anti-AIDS prejudice. Back then AIDS=Gay and Gay=Evil, when in reality AIDS=Human and Human=all us mortals.

Lots of people remember Old Asimov:

Kinda creepy, goes to lots of Cons.

But let's not forget Young Asimov:

Kinda hunky. I bet he had some moves.

Project Glass Gives Me The Willies

It's coming. It's near. The Singularity.

Actually, it's probably been around for some time. Since the 60's. Maybe sooner, maybe since the Industrial Revolution (at what point on a exponential curve can one demarcate the beginning of the curve?).

It's a point of no return, really: by the time you realize you're there you've been so for some time and can no longer get out (think waterfalls and event horizons). So, we've actually been in the Singularity for a while (it would have been very difficult for me to explain to 14 year old me in 1990 how Facebook and Twitter would dominate popular interactions). For me, there's no greater emblem of the rate of technological change than interactive augmented reality. We have it on our camera phones and now we're about to have it in our field of view: Project Glass.

It's Vingean Heads-Up-Display (Fire Upon the Deep, Deepness in the Sky), it's Strossian Glasses (Accelerando), it's every first-person-shooter (Doom, Halo), it's RoboCop's targeting system (at 5:25, though the whole video is frikkin' awesome). This technology will start a bridge between the virtual and the Real. Imagine a book with blank pages. Slip on these glasses and the pages fill with text as the video feed is edited en route to your eye. Play first-person-shooters in the Real. You'll be able to handle faux-objects that exist only in cyberspace (imagine the tamagotchi they'll come up with). You'll be able to tele-presence. 3D viewers and photography will be obsolete as 3-dimensional looking objects will be able to appear in your field of view (maybe not obsolete, maybe finally rendered realistic and manageable, no need for projectors other than those in the Glasses). You'll be able to book mark locations, and leave faux-graffiti notes on Real objects for your friends who are tuned into your 'channel'. The Web will exist in the Real. You'll be able to walk into a webpage, thumb through the blog, fold up text and put it in your pocket. This is great, this is the future, this is knowledge at my fingertips. 

So, then why when I watch the video above do I feel abject revulsion?

Perhaps because of how it's presented: a better way to consume. A better way to advertise. "Where's the music section?" Seriously? That's what you're going to do with your Glasses? Ask directions to where you can buy more crap you don't need? Actually, yes, that is what you're going to do with your Glasses. Makes me feel like, "Oh, it'll be that much easier for them to advertise to me. Wonderful. All I need is Visual Spam." Reminds of a recent Stross Diary entry: 

a) All advertising tends towards the state of spam (which is merely free-as-in-dirt-cheap-and-unregulated advertising),

b) Funding content via ad sales holds our public arts hostage to a boom/bust bubble economy. Furthermore, there is an incentive for web publishers to prioritize paid ads over editorial content, and to censor editorial content that threatens advertizing revenue,

c) The idea that "most people only want to consume" is profoundly offensive and serves the interests of abusive "producers" who tend towards rent-seeking,

So, the future will be the Gap scene in Minority Report? More data gathering, more marketing? Will Google sell off what I've been looking at? Pump ads tailored from what I've been viewing in the Real? Will they sell it all to the NSA (and don't give me no paranoia/conspiracy shit until you read this)?

Another aspect of the Singualrity is something that Vinge wrote about in Deepness in the Sky: Ubiquitous Policing. We think, because of Twitter revolutions and Facebook activism (and advertising that fosters these images. Wait, what am I saying, those revolutions are the greatest ads those companies could have hoped for) that the internet exists as this system of unfettered expression, democracy, and information. And it can be. But what if the GPS in your baby's pacifier is also being monitored by a police parolee surveillance program, or is gathering data for a custody and divorce case you don't even know is coming your way? Or the urinal you're pissing in can also test for THC and can cross reference who's pissing when by querying your WiFi-enabled desk chair when you got up, and pinging your phone and Glasses for position? (If you haven't yet, take a look at episodes 2 and 3 of the BBC mini-series Black Mirror). I personally don't think it will all be this doom and gloom tech-paranoia dystopia (well, anymore than it already is). The point is, it easily could be. David Wall, in his book Cybercrime: the Transformation of Crime in the Information Age, puts it this way: "Unless checked, the 'ubiquitous policing' that follow this 'hard-wiring of society' could contribute to the destruction of the democratic liberal values". Okay, maybe that's putting it on a bit thick. But, still, watch the above, tell me it's not creepy. Tell me I'm wrong. Please.