The Rise Of The Filch

Quite a few commonly used words started off in Science Fiction. "Robot" is a good example.

With all the debste over bankers salaries recently - and the extremely wealthy in general - I wonder if the word "Filch" will catch on....

It's found in a 2003 novel by the author L.E. Modessitt Jr. The novel is called "Archform:Beauty" and is set a few hundred years into the future. Earth has suffered an ecological collapse but has generally recovered. Life for most people is good - but especially so for the filch - the filthy rich.

They still have class politics on this 24th century. To quote one passage about a proposed river diversion:

"Senator Cannon, you've opposed the Southern Diversion ever since you were elected to the Continental Senate. Why?"

"The Southern Diversion is nothing more than filch-food. Filch-food for the southwest. Eastslope needs its water... Every liter that goes south raises the cost for the people of Deseret that I represent. It's that simple...!

Senator Cannon, incidentally, is that slightly unusual character in SF - a flawed politician who is nonetheless one of the good guys....

"Crimes" By Caryl Churchill

Well gosh , it's months since I posted something. Not exactly writers block, but ... life has been kinda busy.

So to get back into posting , here's a video clip of something I just about remember watching back in the 80s.

The BBC had a short season of plays then entitled "Play for Tomorrow", all set in the near future. This is how one of them opens. The actress, Sylvestra Le Touzel, was given some great dialogue, and she certainly makes chilling use of it......

The Shortest You Tube Clip Ever?

So it's about time I got back to blogging again.

So why not begin with possibly the shortest YouTube clip ever.

One filled with astonishment - and hope.....

Future States

I was rather excited when I found the website for Future States - which explains itself as follows:

What will become of America in five, 25, or even 50 years from today? This series of 11 short films explores possible future scenarios through the prism of today’s global realities. Immerse yourself in the visions of these independent prognosticators as they inhabit a future of their own imagining.

The films aren't the best SF that I've seen - but certainly not the worst either. But have a look for yourself.

I've only watched two films so far - "Pia", about the interaction between a widow and an android, , and "Rise", about a change in the housing market.

Another one,  "Silver Sling", about surrogate mothers looks a bit too depressing for me at the moment.

You can watch "Rise" by clicking below:

You Must See The Dimly-Remembered Flip Side

I just thought I'd mention that one of the very bits of British SF ever is now uploaded onto YouTube.

It's the play "The Flip Side of Dominic Hyde" and part one has had only 2,523 hits - which is absurdly low.

Whether you are a fan of SF and watched ever minute of this season's Dr Who and "Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel", or think you loathe science fiction and prefer Jane Austen, do yourself a favour and watch this.

Dominic lives in a clean, quiet minimalist hit-tech future that's perhaps a little too quiet. The word 'happy' seems to have disappeared from people's vocabularies and been replaced by the word 'complacent'....

Eastern SF

On the foreignpolicy.com website, there's an interesting article about the return of politically charged Chinese SF. As an SF fan who had never even heard of any Chinese SF before reading this, I've been intrigued. The article centres on a new novel that was published last year in Hong Kong but is now circulating widely :

Chen Guanzhong's China 2013 presents a fairly Orwellian view of China's future. Although Chen has said he does not think his novel is like 1984, certain parallels between the two are pretty obvious. Key Orwellian concepts such as a "memory hole," "doublethink," and "newspeak" find echoes in Chen's novel, and the antagonist is a party official reminiscent of O'Brien, a character in 1984.

As the novel's plot unfolds, on the day that marks the beginning of an unprecedented world-wide economic crisis, the U.S. dollar falls by one-third. The same day, China officially enters what its leaders call "the prosperous time." Every Chinese person accepts this happy coincidence, except for two men and a woman. The three remember events differently: They believe that a month, somehow been lost from public memory, separates these two events. And they set out to recover memories of that lost month.

I don't know if it's translated into English yet...

Inalienable

This looks promising ...



Hat-tip : Volokh Conspiracy

Love And SF and Stuff

Please watch this...

There are two kinds of people in the world.... Those who will say this is wonderful, and those who will shrug and say it's a waste of time...

Well, I think it's wonderful. What's more it's SF, isn't it?

By the way, the film is called World Builder and the creator is Bruce Branit. Brian Paulette and Erin McGrane play the couple.... musical score by Randy J Skach

A Timely Trek

Not bad at all.

Hat-tip: http://padawanpooh.livejournal.com/453720.html (which has some other stuff too...)

Three Days To Fifty: Two Favourite Books

I'd be interested to know how many people have heard of "Little, Big" by John Crowley.

I describe it as 'a favourite' and I normally re-read my favourites, yet I have only read it the one time, about 20 years ago. (I still have the book, protected in a plastic cover). It's just too dense a book to pick up for a casual re-reading.

It's a fantasy that's hard to accurately describe (especially after two decades!) At it's heart is an American family who live on the edge of magic for several generations. The individual family members more or less know that something magical may be going on but aren't really sure what it is. Sons are unhappy that their fathers don't tell them more. Fathers wish that they could find the right moment to tell their sons the little they know.... All is by described with a writer with a wonderful gift of language. It's a work of beauty, and I was totally gripped by it deep, veiled richness.

I really am going to have to read it again....

A book that I have read and re-read is Lois McMaster Bujold's "A Civil Campaign".

Its science fiction - with more than a hint of Jane Austen about it. Bujold has written about a dozen books featuring a character called Miles Vorkosigan, who is an aristocrat from a conservative, militaristic world named Barrayar. Miles has the advantage of coming from the second most important family of his whole planet, and has tremendous charisma. However he has the disadvantage of having brittle bones and a dwarfish physique - in a society which is repelled by deformity or mutation.

After some years as a mercenary leader operating under a pseudonym, Miles has a respectable role as one of the Emperor's investigators. All he wants to do now is settle down and marry the woman he loves, a widow called Ekaterin. However she has no idea of his feeling towards her - and a previous career as a mercenary leader doesn't exactly give Miles the right training for wooing...

The book is extremely funny in places, and the characters and the dialogue are splendid. Plus there are several serious sub-plots - Barrayaran women have about as many rights as early Victorian women, and Miles has an opportunity to improve things a little...

You can actually read the first half of the book here.

Tuvok and Barack

When I saw this biting video by American Comedian Sarah Silverman telling people to go to Florida and get their Jewish grandparents to vote Democrat....




..... I knew I had seen her somewhere before:

A note for Gordon Brown

I found a list here entitled "The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord". For example:

No. 65. If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

One or two of the items are even profound. For example:

No. 61. If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.

Gordon Brown, please take note.

Going Cosmic

I was delighted to see Millenium Elephant writing about Olaf Stapledon, the philosopher who in the 1930s wrote science fiction on a cosmic scale. He's one of the writers who explores those great gulfs of space and time, and much of his work seems as fresh as anything written today.

The Elephant sums up Stapledon's work with two words - "Scale" and "Tragedy". Those words could also be applied to a new short novel I read online this week.



It's Missile Gap by Charles Stross.

We are about 14 years after the Cuban War of 1962 , the Cold War continues, and Earth's continents lie on a vast flat surface.....

Sounds absurd? It's well worth reading....

Posing the 100 Year Question: The Underkill Answer

One of Earth's possible futures is what PZ Myers calls "Wallowing in Poverty and War and Desperation". It's what happens if we run out of resources.

James White's 1979 novel, "Underkill" describes in detail what sort of life we might have in such a grim world. It's long out of print but a few copies are available secondhand from the likes of Amazon.

White's books are normally optimistic, with compassionate, determined individuals solving problems and crossing the stars. But "Underkill" is set in an Earth critically short of energy. Society is authoritarian, violent and stratified, food and resources are low , and terrorists are causing more and more casualties.

White's characters - husband-and-wife doctors Malcolm and Ann, and police inspector Reynolds - are still compassionate and determined, but they are fighting a losing cause.

"Hello Doctor Malcolm" , said the boy smiling "I'm sorry , I was dreaming about rats, and one of them bit my arm. Is Nurse mad at me?"

"Of course not", said Malcolm "But she would like you a lot better if you were to ask her for something to eat and drink, Tommy. I know you don't feel hungry, but that is because your stomach is very small and not used to much food. But you need food to help your broken arm and legs mend. Do you understand that? And it's nice , clean , food, like the Uppers eat".

Tommy later has a nightmare about school:

"You are a stupid, sneaking, snivelling wretched boy said the Senior Educator in his quiet, angry voice. You are nine years old and you still act as if you had just come out of the nursery"

"Nobody likes walking the wheel" he went on "But your wheel is one designed for a child half your age, and little more than a toy. Yet you cry and faint, and don't make enough power to light the room much less help run the machines. All you want to do is the tidying and cleaning jobs where you can work by yourself, because you say your classmates are a bit rough on you. Or you hang about when the older boys are at advanced classes. But remember boy, the knowledge of mathematics and reading and writing is not a gift. It is a privilege, which must be earned by hard work. Perhaps a few of our boys will eventually become technicians or planners or medics. But we are in the business of producing the future power walkers, food processors and artisans, the kind of responsible citizens which enable this city to survive"

So much of this book is horribly believable. Especially a confrontation between another doctor and a group of terrorists:

"You destroy from within by using the structure of society against itself. When fair-minded people bring in liberal laws, you turn them to your own advantage and discredit the people who are trying to keep the laws. The death penalty is bad, barbarous you say, but you yourselves don't hesitate to use it against people who have done you no wrong"

There is more to this story than pure doom. Reynolds suspects there are aliens somewhere on Earth influencing events :

"It worries me , Doctor" said Reynolds. "Gadgets like your scanner turn up in all sorts of places. But one finds that pre-Powerdown technology was never that good".

And indeed there are aliens, whose appearance and methods are just about unique, even in science fiction.

"Underkill" is worth reading simply as a Dreadful Warning, but it is much more than that, and the ending of the book left me stunned and perplexed. It greatly deserves to be reprinted, and would actually make a good TV drama.

Blogging invented by Russian in 1837 ?

The excellent Siberian Light blog quotes from Mosnews that blogging was described - if not actually invented - by the Russian Prince Vladimir Odoevsky in 1837 ! Odoevskiy was an intellectual and a science fiction writer who apparently wrote a book called "Year 4338"

According to Mosnews:

"Odoevsky suggested in future there would be a kind of connection between houses that would allow people to communicate quickly and easily, the way they do now via the Internet.

“Houses are connected by means of magnetic telegraphs that allow people who live far from each other to communicate,” Odoevsky wrote.

Even more interestingly, Odoevsky suggested every household would publish a kind of daily journal or newsletter and distribute it among selected acquaintances, a habit which Russian bloggers immediately recognized as blogging.

“We received a household journal from the local prime minister, which among other things invited us to his place for a reception,” one of Odoevsky’s characters tells a friend.

“The thing is that many households here publish such journals that replace common correspondence. Such journals usually provide information about the hosts’ good or bad health, family news, different thoughts and comments, small inventions, invitations to receptions.”

Mosnews got this story from a Russian Blogger Ivan Dezhurny, a Russian poet and singer.

Boring additional note:
I was rather suspicious of this story - could it be a Russian April Fool , perhaps? However it seems genuine. The Black Family's battered 1961 McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union describes Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevskiy (1804-1869) as a writer and musical critic who wrote a collection of philosophical fantasies "Russian Nights" published in 1844.

However according to a web-page I found Odoyevskiy was still in the middle of writing "Year 4338" when he died. So I'm not sure how this matches up with 1837.

But it still looks he was the first fellow to think of blogging.

What would James White Think?

I've felt angry and disturbed at the prospect of the teaching of "intelligent design" (creationism under another name) creeping into the US schools system. Perhaps the word 'evolution' will be banned in US schools in a few decades time. I'm sure the Taliban would approve.

I can't help think of the late science fiction writer James White. He wrote truly good books - not only were they well-written , but the characters within them tried to do good. Imagine Star Wars without Darth Vader, or Star Trek without the Borg? Well , James White created "Sector General", a vast space station hospital full of medics and technicians of dozens of different alien species, all trying to save lives.

When I say 'alien species' . these weren't just variations on the humanoid form, as in Star Trek. White had a fertile imagination. There were nurses that looked like giant caterpillars covered in beautiful, twitching grey fur, patients as shy as mice but with the size and natural weaponry of sea monsters, surgeons resembling flightless birds who used beaks instead of hands.

White frequently explained the evolutionary origin of these creatures so it's pretty obvious that he accepted the scientific evidence. But he was also a Catholic, and in one of his books "The Genocidal Healer" he looked at the possibility of religious belief in a vast universe filled with sentient beings.

One character says:

"My knowledge of the subject is incomplete , but among the majority of the intelligent species it is said that this omnipotent and immaterial being has manifested itself in physical form. The physiological classifications vary to suit the environments of the planets concerned, but in all cases it manifests itself as a teacher and lawgiver who suffers death at the hands of those who cannot at first accept its teachings. But these teachings, in a short time or long, form the philosophical foundation of mutual respect, understanding and cooperation between individuals of the species which eventually lead to the formation of a planetary and interstellar civilsation...

At one stage some of the hospital staff become concerned that after curing one patient (the one in the cover illustation above), he would return to his home planet and become a teacher and lawgiver himself....

James White knew that if a God does exist, he presides over a universe unimaginably vast and exciting. He would probably pity those so suspicious of science that they can't accept evolution.

PS White also wrote my favourite anti-war story, "Tableau"