Sci-fi on the decline

[Steffen Lemkamp]

Recent years have not seen major TV productions in sci fi. At least here in Germany, there haven't been any on the telly. There haven't been any serious sci fi cinema films, either. You can find a great many sci fi books, sure, but few of these books can be taken seriously. No profound and sophisticated reads, in any case.
Or are there? (Please dont say Banks or Miéville (but for his 2 first books) or Stross - they're not really that good) A. Reynolds is the only one worth mentioning from those i know.
Why is that, is it because young males stopped reading?

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <2e9a1729-af5c-4be3...@googlegroups.com>,

Steffen Lemkamp <steffen...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>Recent years have not seen major TV productions in sci fi. At least here
>in Germany, there haven't been any on the telly. There haven't been any
>serious sci fi cinema films, either. You can find a great many sci fi
>books, sure, but few of these books can be taken seriously. No profound
>and sophisticated reads, in any case.

>Or are there? (Please dont say Banks or Mi�ville (but for his 2 first

>books) or Stross - they're not really that good) A. Reynolds is the only
>one worth mentioning from those i know.
>Why is that, is it because young males stopped reading?

"Serious" is in the mind of the beholder to some extent. The recent
"Battlestar Galactica" reboot addressed some serious issues from time to
time, though the science was nonsensical.

As for the weakness of writen SF, IMHO it is because we now realize that
future humans or whatever they are will have very little in common with us,
and that makes for very difficult writing *and* reading.
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[Rod Speed]

Steffen Lemkamp <steffen...@googlemail.com> wrote

> Recent years have not seen major TV productions in sci fi.
> At least here in Germany, there haven't been any on the telly.

There has been one scandinavian one that showed up in Australia, dubbed in
english.

> There haven't been any serious sci fi cinema films, either.

Fashion is always a big part of that.

> You can find a great many sci fi books, sure, but few of these books
> can be taken seriously. No profound and sophisticated reads, in any case.

> Or are there? (Please dont say Banks or Mi�ville (but for his 2 first

> books)
> or Stross - they're not really that good) A. Reynolds is the only one
> worth
> mentioning from those i know.

> Why is that, is it because young males stopped reading?

Plenty of them clearly did read with Rowling wrote.

[Will in New Haven]

On Mar 11, 11:44 am, Steffen Lemkamp <steffen.lemk...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

> Recent years have not seen major TV productions in sci fi. At least here in Germany, there haven't been any on the telly. There haven't been any serious sci fi cinema films, either. You can find a great many sci fi books, sure, but few of these books can be taken seriously. No profound and sophisticated reads, in any case.
> Or are there? (Please dont say Banks or Miéville (but for his 2 first books) or Stross - they're not really that good) A. Reynolds is the only one worth mentioning from those i know.
> Why is that, is it because young males stopped reading?

Is this a joke? First you bring up TV SF and then you complain that
the written SF you see is not profound or sophisticated for you. You
certainly have a double standard if you want profound and/or
sophisticated but TV SF matters to you.

--
Will in New Haven

[Quadibloc]

On Mar 11, 12:54 pm, Will in New Haven

<bill.re...@taylorandfrancis.com> wrote:

> Is this a joke? First you bring up TV SF and then you complain that
> the written SF you see is not profound or sophisticated for you. You
> certainly have a double standard if you want profound and/or
> sophisticated but TV SF matters to you.

Why should this be a joke? No doubt he would like profound and/or
sophisticated TV SF, but that is, of course, too much to hope for.

Even in the English-language world. In the German-language world,
where Star Trek was butchered when dubbed into the language, the land
of Perry Rhodan, one has to learn to have realistic expectations.

People can engage in both serious and light reading, and listen to
both serious and light music - so one can read serious books and watch
entertaining movies, and bewail a lack of supply of either.

John Savard

[Robert Carnegie]

On Monday, 11 March 2013 17:53:52 UTC, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> "Serious" is in the mind of the beholder to some extent. The recent
> "Battlestar Galactica" reboot addressed some serious issues from time to
> time, though the science was nonsensical.

Also, Disney are making new Star Wars movies! Or will be...

[Christian Weisgerber]

Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Recent years have not seen major TV productions in sci fi.
> > At least here in Germany, there haven't been any on the telly.
>
> There has been one scandinavian one that showed up in Australia,

_ï¿œkta mï¿œnniskor_

> dubbed in english.

Subtitled, actually.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de

[Jorgen Grahn]

On Mon, 2013-03-11, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
...

> As for the weakness of writen SF, IMHO it is because we now realize that
> future humans or whatever they are will have very little in common with us,
> and that makes for very difficult writing *and* reading.

Surely if we have learned something, it's that people are kind of the
same everywhere? Even people in the Old Testament are recognizably
human.

IMHO it's because we can no longer see any interesting future, just
worn-down versions of the present.

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <slrnkjss60.a...@frailea.sa.invalid>,

Jorgen Grahn <grahn...@snipabacken.se> wrote:
>On Mon, 2013-03-11, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>...
>> As for the weakness of writen SF, IMHO it is because we now realize that
>> future humans or whatever they are will have very little in common with us,
>> and that makes for very difficult writing *and* reading.
>
>Surely if we have learned something, it's that people are kind of the
>same everywhere? Even people in the Old Testament are recognizably
>human.
>
>IMHO it's because we can no longer see any interesting future, just
>worn-down versions of the present.
>
>/Jorgen

People in the past are recognizably human. Trans-humans are not.

[Gary R. Schmidt]

On 12/03/2013 2:44 AM, Steffen Lemkamp wrote:
> Recent years have not seen major TV productions in sci fi. At least here in Germany, there haven't been any on the telly. There haven't been any serious sci fi cinema films, either. You can find a great many sci fi books, sure, but few of these books can be taken seriously. No profound and sophisticated reads, in any case.

> Or are there? (Please dont say Banks or Mi�ville (but for his 2 first books) or Stross - they're not really that good) A. Reynolds is the only one worth mentioning from those i know.

> Why is that, is it because young males stopped reading?
>

So, no new "Doctor Who" on the telly in the old country[1], and the
translators are doing a crappy job with the highly idiosyncratic English
usage of some of the better authors around today.

Sounds normal.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

1 - Well, my father's "old country", I'm a typical mongrel[2] Aussie, a
bit of this, a bit of that, and so on.

2 - At least two meanings intended!

--
When men talk to their friends, they insult each other.
They don't really mean it.
When women talk to their friends, they compliment each other.
They don't mean it either.

[Drak Bibliophile]

True, but is it a *fact* that trans-humans will exist?


--
*
Paul Howard (Alias Drak Bibliophile)
*
Sometimes The Dragon Wins!
*
--------
*

[JRStern]

On 11 Mar 2013 17:53:52 GMT, t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan

<tednolan>) wrote:

>As for the weakness of writen SF, IMHO it is because we now realize that
>future humans or whatever they are will have very little in common with us,
>and that makes for very difficult writing *and* reading.

Or maybe it's that we now realize they will have too much in common
with us, and it's depressing to explore.

J.

[David Johnston]

I seriously doubt that. It's not as if authors in the golden age of
science fiction generally wrote their characters as that much different
from us.

I think though, that it may have something to do with having lost our
innocence. We're much more aware now that the solar system is empty and
the stars are not something we can reasonably travel to. The future
looks more and more like a dead end.

[Don Kuenz]

Steffen Lemkamp <steffen...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Recent years have not seen major TV productions in sci fi. At least here in Ge
rmany, there haven't been any on the telly. There haven't been any serious sci f
i cinema films, either. You can find a great many sci fi books, sure, but few of
these books can be taken seriously. No profound and sophisticated reads, in any
case.

As far as the written word goes, it feels to me like an epic feast
coming out of a cornucopia as big as Cincinnati. Who needs new when
there's a mountain, a whole range of mountains, of old classics to
explore?

Lots of decent (to me at least) SF movies also got released over the
past decade. Hollywood went absolutely hog wild on PKD:

Minority Report (2002)
Impostor (2002)
Paycheck (2003)
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Next (2007)
Radio Free Albemuth (2010)
The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
Total Recall (2012)

Most of those movies [1] are based upon PKD stories. "Based upon" being
the operative phrase, as all receive the Hollywood treatment. But, do we
really expect anything less of Hollywood?

Note.

[1] "Most of those movies," because _Radio Free Albemuth_ seems
impossible to find and unavailable.

--
Don Kuenz

[Rod Speed]

"Christian Weisgerber" <na...@mips.inka.de> wrote in message
news:khlirj$1s5h$2...@lorvorc.mips.inka.de...

> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > Recent years have not seen major TV productions in sci fi.
>> > At least here in Germany, there haven't been any on the telly.
>>
>> There has been one scandinavian one that showed up in Australia,
>
> _ï¿œkta mï¿œnniskor_
>
>> dubbed in english.
>
> Subtitled, actually.

Yep, with the title Real Humans here.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2180271/?ref_=sr_1

[Robert Carnegie]

On Tuesday, 12 March 2013 01:46:36 UTC, Gary R. Schmidt wrote:
> So, no new "Doctor Who" on the telly in the old country[1], and the
> translators are doing a crappy job with the highly idiosyncratic English
> usage of some of the better authors around today.

I think you're saying that the German-speaking audience
has missed out on "Let's Kill Hitler", in which the
guy from Austria has a fairly small role, with more
important things going on. Or, Daleks soaring through
the air screeching "Exterminieren" - when /they/ use a
word, it means what... well, it usually means they're
going to kill you. Brilliant scientists, not such
great linguists. It's not like it bothers them.
And then there's the recurring role of Winston Chuchill
in the show... I can see why it /might/ be passed up.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <tY6dnSL-V_tvF6PM...@giganews.com>,

Well, I don't know obviously, and of course in the worst case,
civilization collapses and we get Conan Of The Future, but
it's hard to imagine unenhanced humans like us going about our
business 200 years from now, and at some point enhancement
tips over into singularity or trans-humanity. I remember thinking
when I read Vinge's bobble stories that he was destroying the playing
field. Moon has played around on the fringes, but in the end the
theme made her Slotter's Key books a bit unsatisfying. Other authors
just ignore it and have Mark 1.0 humans zipping along like Doc Smith did,
but while that's fun (and basically what I want to read), it's no longer
a serious possibility.

[JRStern]

I think we're currently in some kind of age of stupidity, and
forward-looking optimism is just out of style.


J.

[Peter Huebner]

In article <e5bc4ad3-9225-4538-b690-dfc33284ced7
@iq8g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>, jsa...@ecn.ab.ca says...
>
> On Mar 11, 12:54ï¿œpm, Will in New Haven

Upon first read-through my reaction was much like Will's: "Is this a
feeble attempt at trolling?"

I have yet to see any tv treatment of sf that had any depth to it (ok so
I haven't watched tv for the last 15 years) other than a late night
broadcast of Tarkovski's Solaris ...
... but then for him to go on and say that neither Banks nor Mieville
have any depth is a bit of a hoot, n'est ce pas? Not to to into a goodly
number of other capable sf authors, from Bujold to Williams to Reynolds
to Wrede. Plenty of good stuff out there in recent years.

At the very least I can say that his expectations and/or definition of
what comprises quality vary hugely from mine. (trying hard not to be
judgemental).

f.w.i.w., y.m.m.v. e.t.c.

[Rod Speed]

"Ted Nolan <tednolan>" <t...@loft.tnolan.com> wrote in message
news:aq7lnd...@mid.individual.net...

> In article <tY6dnSL-V_tvF6PM...@giganews.com>,
> Drak Bibliophile <drakbib...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>On 3/11/2013 7:17 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>>> In article <slrnkjss60.a...@frailea.sa.invalid>,
>>> Jorgen Grahn <grahn...@snipabacken.se> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 2013-03-11, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>>>> ...
>>>>> As for the weakness of writen SF, IMHO it is because we now realize
>>>>> that
>>>>> future humans or whatever they are will have very little in common
>>>>> with us,
>>>>> and that makes for very difficult writing *and* reading.
>>>>
>>>> Surely if we have learned something, it's that people are kind of the
>>>> same everywhere? Even people in the Old Testament are recognizably
>>>> human.
>>>>
>>>> IMHO it's because we can no longer see any interesting future, just
>>>> worn-down versions of the present.
>>>>
>>>> /Jorgen
>>>
>>> People in the past are recognizably human. Trans-humans are not.
>>>
>>
>>True, but is it a *fact* that trans-humans will exist?

> Well, I don't know obviously, and of course in the worst case,
> civilization collapses and we get Conan Of The Future, but it's
> hard to imagine unenhanced humans like us going about our
> business 200 years from now,

Don�t see why, we've done quite well in the last 200 years.

> and at some point enhancement tips
> over into singularity or trans-humanity.

Don�t believe it.

[Rod Speed]

"JRStern" <JRS...@foobar.invalid> wrote in message
news:jggtj8l1ivlcpet9q...@4ax.com...

I don't with science and medicine alone.

> and forward-looking optimism is just out of style.

Don't buy that either. There wouldn't be so much self help crap if that was
true.

Things have certainly changed since the 60s hippys etc, but nothing like how
you say.

[Stephen Harker]

Possibly due to eating trans-fats?

--
Stephen Harker s.ha...@adfa.edu.au
PEMS http://sjharker.customer.netspace.net.au/
UNSW@ADFA

[Wayne Throop]

:: it's hard to imagine unenhanced humans like us going about our

:: business 200 years from now,

: "Rod Speed" <rod.sp...@gmail.com>
: Don t see why, we've done quite well in the last 200 years.

So if it wasn't done in the past, it'll never happen in the future.
Very unpersuasive rationale, I must say.

Of course... if the issue is, there will still *exist* unenhanced
humans like us 200 years hence, and they'll still go about comprehensible
activities much like us does now, that's entirely possible, much like
critters such as most mammals go about their business as they have
for millions of years. It's just they won't be the cleverest
monkeys on the block anymore.

Note that Vinge *often* (almost always) has human characters lingering
on after transhumans appear. (As did Anderson in "Brain Wave".)
Either because the singularity burns out (in The Witling, Marooned
in Realtime, etc etc), or there's co-existance (several of his short
stories, and/or the formalied version of it in the Zones of Thought,
wrapping back around to Brain Wave).

Hm. Possibly the closest Vinge came to having transcendent characters
on-stage in a significant way, and said something about their motives
and activities, was in Bomb Scare... and almost all of that story is
from the POV of un-transcended somewhat-human-like non-humans.

Of course, dealing with incomprehensible transcended characters
has been done by many for a long time. Eg, oh, Cordwainer Smith's
Instrumentality is a post-transcend-but-partly-role-playing-humanity
setting, and of course Campbell's "Forgetfullness" is pretty directly
on-point. One might almost include the gods in Duncan's more-recent-
than-classical-SF "A Man of his Word" et al. And soitny after reading
Crystal Mumble series, Liaden is seen as a post-transcend setting with
godshatter (the dramzillas).

[Rod Speed]

Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote
> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote

>> Ted Nolan <tednolan> <t...@loft.tnolan.com> wrote

>>> it's hard to imagine unenhanced humans like us
>>> going about our business 200 years from now,

> Don t see why, we've done quite well in the last 200 years.

> So if it wasn't done in the past, it'll never happen in the future.

Never ever said anything even remotely resembling anything like that.

If you propose something extraordinary, like was done at the top,
you need something more than just a proclamation, fuckwit.

> Very unpersuasive rationale, I must say.

You wouldn't know what a real rationale was if it bit you on your lard
arse...

> Of course... if the issue is, there will still *exist* unenhanced
> humans like us 200 years hence, and they'll still go about
> comprehensible activities much like us does now, that's
> entirely possible, much like critters such as most mammals
> go about their business as they have for millions of years.

You quite sure you aint one of those rocket scientist terminal fuckwits ?

> It's just they won't be the cleverest monkeys on the block anymore.

Easy to claim...

Have fun explaining how come we have been for millennia now.

> Note that Vinge *often* (almost always) has human characters
> lingering on after transhumans appear. (As did Anderson in
> "Brain Wave".) Either because the singularity burns out (in
> The Witling, Marooned in Realtime, etc etc), or there's
> co-existance (several of his short stories, and/or the
> formalied version of it in the Zones of Thought,
> wrapping back around to Brain Wave).

That's fiction, stupid.

> Hm. Possibly the closest Vinge came to having transcendent characters
> on-stage in a significant way, and said something about their motives
> and activities, was in Bomb Scare... and almost all of that story is from
> the POV of un-transcended somewhat-human-like non-humans.

See above...

> Of course, dealing with incomprehensible transcended characters
> has been done by many for a long time. Eg, oh, Cordwainer Smith's
> Instrumentality is a post-transcend-but-partly-role-playing-humanity
> setting, and of course Campbell's "Forgetfullness" is pretty directly
> on-point. One might almost include the gods in Duncan's more-recent-
> than-classical-SF "A Man of his Word" et al. And soitny after reading
> Crystal Mumble series, Liaden is seen as a post-transcend setting with
> godshatter (the dramzillas).

Ditto.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 3/11/13 11:28 PM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> On Tuesday, 12 March 2013 01:46:36 UTC, Gary R. Schmidt wrote:
>> So, no new "Doctor Who" on the telly in the old country[1], and the
>> translators are doing a crappy job with the highly idiosyncratic English
>> usage of some of the better authors around today.
>
> I think you're saying that the German-speaking audience
> has missed out on "Let's Kill Hitler", in which the
> guy from Austria has a fairly small role, with more
> important things going on. Or, Daleks soaring through
> the air screeching "Exterminieren" - when /they/ use a
> word, it means what... well, it usually means they're
> going to kill you. Brilliant scientists, not such
> great linguists. It's not like it bothers them.\

And are YOU going to walk up to them and try to correct their use of
language?



--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

[Quadibloc]

On Mar 11, 7:54 pm, Drak Bibliophile <drakbiblioph...@comcast.net>
wrote:

> True, but is it a *fact* that trans-humans will exist?

No. Civilization could collapse into barbarism, and technological
progress could stop.

The trouble is that this leaves us with only a fraction of subgenres.

Basically, _if_ one is attempting to write SF that isn't post-
apocalyptic, except for positing a society that bans certain
technologies for religious reasons, it's very hard, given current
technological trends, to justify the absence of transhumanity from a
future.

Obviously, that doesn't have to deter every author. One can go ahead
and write space opera set in a world like that of Star Trek or Star
Wars, like Flash Gordon's Mongo, Superman's Krypton, or John Carter's
Barsoom, without any pretense of serious extrapolation.

But that stuff has *already been done*, and done quite well, thank
you. To write something that couldn't have been written before, one
way is to take advantage of what we now know about the future that the
past didn't - specifically, that the future not contradict the
present.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Mar 11, 8:35 pm, David Johnston <davidjohnsto...@block.com> wrote:

> I think though, that it may have something to do with having lost our
> innocence.  We're much more aware now that the solar system is empty and
> the stars are not something we can reasonably travel to.  The future
> looks more and more like a dead end.

It's true that the lack of Martians has hurt SF, but that was a
problem even in the 60s. Today's malaise owes more to the oil embargo
of 1973 - from then to global warming, it's clear that We're All
Doomed!

Both Uranium-238 and Thorium-232, however, can be changed into usable
nuclear fuel by being hit by neutrons. So we can maintain
technological civilization for hundreds of years without spewing
carbon into the atmosphere.

However, it isn't economically competitive - and the world's nations
are bound by treaties which ban protectionism, so they're in absolute
thrall to whatever is cheapest on the free market.

And terrorists could steal the stuff and make bombs!

So it's better to just pretend the problem isn't there, since it's not
like our coastlines will flood very soon. No, just massive famines in
Southeast Asia, and who cares about that?

Even though I know there's a way out, I find it hard to avoid
cynicism.

John Savard

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

The original dramlizas weren't trancended humans iirc. They were seomthing
else entirely that got bonded to humans.

As to Vinge keeping regular humans around for storytelling -- yes. That's
kind of my point: it's hard to tell stories about mark2+ humans. People
(ie: me :-) want to read about people. You can read about post-singularity/
transhumans as an intellectual exercise, but that's not by and large what
pepole (ie: me!) read for..

[Cryptoengineer]

On Mar 11, 11:44 am, Steffen Lemkamp <steffen.lemk...@googlemail.com>

wrote:

> Recent years have not seen major TV productions in sci fi. At least here in Germany, there haven't been any on the telly. There haven't been any serious sci fi cinema films, either. You can find a great many sci fi books, sure, but few of these books can be taken seriously. No profound and sophisticated reads, in any case.

> Or are there? (Please dont say Banks or Miéville (but for his 2 first books) or Stross - they're not really that good) A. Reynolds is the only one worth mentioning from those i know.

> Why is that, is it because young males stopped reading?

Since when have 'young males' insisted on the 'serious, profound'
stuff?

Perhaps Steffen can clarify what he means by 'serious', 'profound',
and 'sophisticated' in this context. My kneejerk reaction is that this
sounds like a 'German thing'; a notion similar to the Anglo-American
academic conceit that there is 'serious literary novels' as opposed to
'popular trash': If Doris Lessing writes about spaceships and aliens
it's one, and if Iain Banks (your assertion that he's 'not really that
good' begs for justification) does the same, its the other.

pt

[Bill Dugan]

However, the trans-humans are likely incomprehensible to both author
and reader. That makes it almost impossible to write a readable story
about them.

[Robert Carnegie]

On Tuesday, 12 March 2013 06:17:48 UTC, Rod Speed wrote:
> "Ted Nolan <tednolan>" <t...@loft.tnolan.com> wrote
> in message news:aq7lnd...@mid.individual.net...
> > In article <tY6dnSL-V_tvF6PM...@giganews.com>,
> > Drak Bibliophile <drakbib...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >>True, but is it a *fact* that trans-humans will exist?
> >
> > Well, I don't know obviously, and of course in the worst case,
> > civilization collapses and we get Conan Of The Future, but it's
> > hard to imagine unenhanced humans like us going about our
> > business 200 years from now,
>

> Don’t see why, we've done quite well in the last 200 years.

But, robots are taking more and more jobs nowadays. I foresee
corporations that are entirely meat-free, and then where are we?

[Brian M. Scott]

On 12 Mar 2013 03:28:45 GMT, "Ted Nolan <tednolan>"
<t...@loft.tnolan.com> wrote in
<news:aq7lnd...@mid.individual.net> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

> In article <tY6dnSL-V_tvF6PM...@giganews.com>,
> Drak Bibliophile <drakbib...@comcast.net> wrote:

[...]

>>True, but is it a *fact* that trans-humans will exist?

> Well, I don't know obviously, and of course in the worst
> case, civilization collapses and we get Conan Of The
> Future, but it's hard to imagine unenhanced humans like
> us going about our business 200 years from now, and at
> some point enhancement tips over into singularity or
> trans-humanity.

I'm not convinced that enhancement must reach such a point.

> I remember thinking when I read Vinge's bobble stories
> that he was destroying the playing field. Moon has
> played around on the fringes, but in the end the theme
> made her Slotter's Key books a bit unsatisfying.

I certainly did not find them so.

[...]

Brian

[Rod Speed]

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote

> Drak Bibliophile <drakbiblioph...@comcast.net> wrote

>> True, but is it a *fact* that trans-humans will exist?

> No. Civilization could collapse into barbarism,

Have fun listing even a single example of that ever happening.

> and technological progress could stop.

Or that for long either.

> The trouble is that this leaves us with only a fraction of subgenres.

> Basically, _if_ one is attempting to write SF that isn't

> post-apocalyptic, except for positing a society that

> bans certain technologies for religious reasons,

There have been plenty of examples of that.

And not just for religious reasons either, the Japanese
just banned guns for quite a while for example.

> it's very hard, given current technological trends, to
> justify the absence of transhumanity from a future.

> Obviously, that doesn't have to deter every author. One can go
> ahead and write space opera set in a world like that of Star Trek
> or Star Wars, like Flash Gordon's Mongo, Superman's Krypton, or
> John Carter's Barsoom, without any pretense of serious extrapolation.

> But that stuff has *already been done*, and done quite well, thank
> you. To write something that couldn't have been written before, one
> way is to take advantage of what we now know about the future that
> the past didn't - specifically, that the future not contradict the
> present.

And that's a pretty big ask.

[Wayne Throop]

:: Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
:: Basically, _if_ one is attempting to write SF that isn't post-

:: apocalyptic, except for positing a society that bans certain
:: technologies for religious reasons, it's very hard, given current
:: technological trends, to justify the absence of transhumanity from a
:: future.

Needn't be for religious reasons. Could be safety. The recent "Koban"
series by Stephen Bennett, for example, iirc bans certain technologies that
have a possibility to runaway, because they started to, and folks didn't
like it, because it made many of them late, as in the late Dent Arthur
Dent. There's some hint of related-but-distinct non-religious reasons in
"Learning the World", where transcendance tends to be "Fast Burn", leaving
dead regions (sort of like the disappearance of transcended species in
Across Realtime, but with more ... disturbing remnants left behind),
but the bulk of humanity unchanged; the lightspeed barrier limits the area
that's burned. So, story told from the viewpoint of one of the large
majority, and the majority tend to skirt away from things that seemed
related to Fast Burn transcendence, leading to a quasi-stable mix with
lots of close-enough-to-MkI hoomans around. All without needing to
invent the Zones of Thought. Oh, and of course there's quite a bit of
hints of that in "Aristoi". And then there's the Culture. Plenty of
humans to give MkI viewpoints, kept as pets. And most transcended
just Go Away (leaving behind odd monument planets and such).

: Bill Dugan <wkd...@ix.netcom.com>
: However, the trans-humans are likely incomprehensible to both author

: and reader. That makes it almost impossible to write a readable story
: about them.

Hence the large number or ways folks have edged in on the problem sideways.
One could even take Childhood's End thataway. The overlords and the one
saved specimen. Or, Spin, with machine intelligences transcended, with
incomprehensible motives and powers and abilities and such, and one
human left with Godshatter who sort-of understands a tiny thumbnail.

However, note, most of these latter (and some in the previous paragraph)
do NOT feature *absense* of transcended critters; just justification(s)
for populations of MkI hooman beans to observe them as a storytelling
viewpoint.

[David DeLaney]

Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>On 3/11/13 11:28 PM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>> I think you're saying that the German-speaking audience
>> has missed out on "Let's Kill Hitler", in which the
>> guy from Austria has a fairly small role, with more
>> important things going on. Or, Daleks soaring through
>> the air screeching "Exterminieren" - when /they/ use a
>> word, it means what... well, it usually means they're
>> going to kill you. Brilliant scientists, not such
>> great linguists. It's not like it bothers them.\
>
> And are YOU going to walk up to them and try to correct their use of
>language?

Shouldn't need to; they've almost GOT to be Internet-capable, right?

Dave, longdalek is long
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[Rod Speed]

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote

> David Johnston <davidjohnsto...@block.com> wrote

>> I think though, that it may have something to do with having lost
>> our innocence. We're much more aware now that the solar system
>> is empty and the stars are not something we can reasonably travel
>> to. The future looks more and more like a dead end.

> It's true that the lack of Martians has hurt SF, but that was a
> problem even in the 60s. Today's malaise owes more to the
> oil embargo of 1973 - from then to global warming,

Bullshit.

> it's clear that We're All Doomed!

Only for the headless chickens.

> Both Uranium-238 and Thorium-232, however,
> can be changed into usable nuclear fuel by being
> hit by neutrons. So we can maintain technological
> civilization for hundreds of years

Thousands, actually.

> without spewing carbon into the atmosphere.

And its far from clear that that is a real problem.

> However, it isn't economically competitive

Bullshit. Its MUCH more competitive than its ever been,
essentially because its now so cheap to move stuff half
way around the world and no evidence that that will
stop any time soon given that we have already got
nuke powered ships if we do need to go that route.

And its VASTLY easier to move information around the
world now than it has ever been too and we mostly use
that to move stuff like movies and porn around for free.

> - and the world's nations are bound
> by treaties which ban protectionism,

That doesn't have to remain true forever
if there is a good reason to change that.

> so they're in absolute thrall to whatever
> is cheapest on the free market.

Nope, we still have quite a lot of restrictions
on that, even just with the EU alone.

> And terrorists could steal the stuff and make bombs!

Easier said than done.

> So it's better to just pretend the problem isn't there,
> since it's not like our coastlines will flood very soon.

And we have known how to deal with that for a century now.

> No, just massive famines in Southeast Asia,

There haven't been anything like that in modern
times except where the fools have actually been stupid
enough to let some fool like Kim Jong Il rule the roost.

> and who cares about that?

Those that stupid clearly have not had enough of a
clue to do what needs to be done to fix that problem.

> Even though I know there's a way
> out, I find it hard to avoid cynicism.

Sure, but there have always been plenty that cynical.

They have always been completely irrelevant to what happens.

[Drak Bibliophile]

I suspect "enhancements" won't change the basic nature of humans. The
"enhancements" will just give humans better tools for both the good and
the bad.

Now you may be including "genetic engineering" in "enhancements" and
"genetic engineering" *might* involve changes to the basic nature of humans.

However, I'm not sure that we'll ever understand the relationship
between our genetics and our basic nature well enough to be able to
change our basic nature via genetic engineering.

For that matter, I suspect that any attempt to change the basic nature
of humans though genetic engineering (or other means) will result in
changes to the worse not the better.



--
*
Paul Howard (Alias Drak Bibliophile)
*
Sometimes The Dragon Wins!
*
--------
*

[Drak Bibliophile]

Enhanced humans may come about but I doubt their basic nature will be
that different from "base line humans".

They'll just have better toys.

[Wayne Throop]

: Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
: Both Uranium-238 and Thorium-232, however, can be changed into usable

: nuclear fuel by being hit by neutrons. So we can maintain
: technological civilization for hundreds of years without spewing
: carbon into the atmosphere.

Yes, N-hundred years, for values of N>10. (And if we ever get D-D
fusion, *definitely* N>10e4.) Per MacKay, fast breeders, ADS, and other
such, coupled with uranium extraction from seawater, can give 6 billion
folks upwards of 470 (kwh/d)/person for 1600 years (the amount of time
it takes the oceans to turn over (but that wouldn't totally deplete
the oceans...)). If some optimists are right about unknown reserves of
thorium (since it's not as avidly pursued right now, but extrapolating
from what is known about geological distributions), 240 (kwh/d)/person
for 30,000 years.

And at the end of, say, 1600 years iirc, the high level waste
from now would be considerably less radioactive than the fuel was
as mined/extracted. In the shorter term, 1000-fold decrease in high
level activity in 40 years. And something like a quarter-liter of high
level waste per person per year. Considerably less if ADS or other more
efficient methods are used. So, it's actually a long-term environmetal
cleanup.

Euro-energy-usage is about 200 (kwh/d)/person. US is 250 (kwh/d)/person.

: However, it isn't economically competitive

It isn't? Hm. Why are there so many nuclear reactors currently existing
in France and Sweden, supplying 20 percent of their grid power? Or even
in the US, 8 percent. Are you thinking of the rise in price of the fuel,
if extracted from seawater, since right now that looks like it'd boost
the price of fuel by 10 times? Luckily, the cost of nuclear power
isn't primarily fuel costs like plants based on chemical reactions,
so that hardly changes the price at all. And even looking at the capital
and maintenance costs of creating and floating the extraction farms,
probably no more than double, and almost certainly not that bad if
ramped up incrementally over time.

Maybe you're talking about plant-decomissioning costs inflating
as they do when paraoia ratchets up?


"Deadly for twelve thousand years is carbon 14."
--- We Work the Black Seam
(reflecting pop-culture familiarity
with all issues nuclear)

[Rod Speed]

Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote

> Rod Speed wrote
>> Ted Nolan <tednolan> <t...@loft.tnolan.com> wrote

>>> Drak Bibliophile <drakbib...@comcast.net> wrote:

>>>> True, but is it a *fact* that trans-humans will exist?

>>> Well, I don't know obviously, and of course in the worst
>>> case, civilization collapses and we get Conan Of The Future,
>>> but it's hard to imagine unenhanced humans like us going
>>> about our business 200 years from now,

>> Don�t see why, we've done quite well in the last 200 years.

> But, robots are taking more and more jobs nowadays.

And machines and animals have been doing that
for MUCH longer and we have handled that fine.

> I foresee corporations that are entirely meat-free,

I don�t. Some claimed that would happen with
restaurants etc and it never did for various reasons,
essentially because the use of humans is affordable,
so we kept using them anyway.

We don�t even completely automate medical diagnosis,
we choose to retain very highly paid humans to do that.

> and then where are we?

Basically in the same place we ended up when we completely
automated virtually all phone calls and no long have rooms
full of women connecting the caller to the called.

The same place we are now when there is no human involvement
whatever in me paying for something I have bought on ebay etc.

Vastly better than the old system with humans involved.

[Bill Dugan]

On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:15:00 -0400, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David
DeLaney) wrote:

>Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>On 3/11/13 11:28 PM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>>> I think you're saying that the German-speaking audience
>>> has missed out on "Let's Kill Hitler", in which the
>>> guy from Austria has a fairly small role, with more
>>> important things going on. Or, Daleks soaring through
>>> the air screeching "Exterminieren" - when /they/ use a
>>> word, it means what... well, it usually means they're
>>> going to kill you. Brilliant scientists, not such
>>> great linguists. It's not like it bothers them.\
>>
>> And are YOU going to walk up to them and try to correct their use of
>>language?
>
>Shouldn't need to; they've almost GOT to be Internet-capable, right?
>
>Dave, longdalek is long

Why would Daleks use our internet protocols? They probably have their
own version, but there's little reason to think it would be compatible
with ours.

[Wayne Throop]

: "Rod Speed" <rod.sp...@gmail.com>
: That's fiction, stupid.

Gosh. What a brilliant insight. Any reason this fiction isn't plausible?
You know, what with transhumans existing only in fiction or essays
extrapolating current trends?

[Wayne Throop]

:: And soitny after reading Crystal Mumble series, Liaden is seen as a

:: post-transcend setting with godshatter (the dramzillas).

: t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>)
: The original dramlizas weren't trancended humans iirc.

That would be why I called them godshatter, and not transhuman. They had
weakly god-like abilities smushed into them (sorta-kinda like Pham Nguyen,
only a bit differently, so it's arguably not all that good an analogy,
but I'd argue not all that bad a one neither).

The transended ones Just Left. After destroying a big chunk of the
universe, ie, star systems winking out of existance etc, iirc.

: As to Vinge keeping regular humans around for storytelling -- yes.

: That's kind of my point: it's hard to tell stories about mark2+
: humans. People (ie: me :-) want to read about people. You can read
: about post-singularity/ transhumans as an intellectual exercise, but
: that's not by and large what pepole (ie: me!) read for..

Indeed. But remember, the subtopic started as

:::: it's hard to imagine unenhanced humans like us going about our

:::: business 200 years from now,

Yet, seems to me it's easy to find disbelief suspenders for why there are
still human populations around 200 years from now. I mean, what with them
being found and exploited so frequently and all.

On the other hand, there are of course those who just ignore the issue,
like say BlackJackGearyverse, or the Honorverse. Makes those very hard
to take seriously, but then, they don't get read for seriousness.
Well... by most folks anyways. There are some peculiar exceptions.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416509119/104-3351018-0549563
[...] one can well imagine that when future star warriors develop
their tactics, Weber's narratives will provide a template.
----
Oh, no, there goes Solcintra
Go Go Dramzilla!
History shows again and again
Transcendence brings out the folly in men
Dramzilla!
(yes I know it's really dramliza,
but dramzilla is so much cooler)

"Blacque Jacque Shellac is roughtest, toughtest,
muklukest Canuck in ze Klondike!"
--- Blacque Jacque Shellac
(what would he do in a Klondike bar?)

[Rod Speed]

Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote
> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote

>> That's fiction, stupid.

> Gosh. What a brilliant insight. Any reason this fiction isn't plausible?

Yep, nothing even remotely like that has ever been seen with real life.

[Jorgen Grahn]

On Tue, 2013-03-12, David Johnston wrote:
...

> I think though, that it may have something to do with having lost our
> innocence. We're much more aware now that the solar system is empty and
> the stars are not something we can reasonably travel to. The future
> looks more and more like a dead end.

Yeah. Although that's a good premise for an SF story, too!
Tiptree's /And so on, and so on/ is one example.

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .

[Wayne Throop]

: Drak Bibliophile <drakbib...@comcast.net>
: I suspect "enhancements" won't change the basic nature of humans. The

: "enhancements" will just give humans better tools for both the good
: and the bad.
: Now you may be including "genetic engineering" in "enhancements" and
: "genetic engineering" *might* involve changes to the basic nature of humans.
: However, I'm not sure that we'll ever understand the relationship
: between our genetics and our basic nature well enough to be able to
: change our basic nature via genetic engineering.

That lack of understanding seems wildly implausible to me, as more
and more cyber-enhanced humans and software agents tackle the problem.
As they inevitably will. And indeed, I wouldn't find it implausible
that cyber and or biochemical enhancements would make motives and actions
inscrutable, even if genetics weren't considered.

I mean, what difference would it make, and why would it matter, if
a given neurotransmitter balance, or whatever needed to change the
basics, was gotten by gengineering, or medical implants?

I mean, genes turn on and off in various complicated patterns to produce
the proteins that interact with the world... but it's the proteins
that do that interacting, so why not just supply them? (I mean, sure,
efficiency and engineering tradeoffs and some need to be supplied
intracellularly... but in principle, what's gengineering retroviri got
that von neumann microimplants ain't got? And then too,
what makes the Hottentots so hot?)

Most arguments (that don't fall apart imo) against transhumans appearing
at some point inside a couple centuries at the very most, actually boil
down to to some variation of "let's assume we're in the Slow Zone".

[Rod Speed]

Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote
> Drak Bibliophile <drakbib...@comcast.net> wrote

>> I suspect "enhancements" won't change the basic nature of humans.
>> The "enhancements" will just give humans better tools for both the
>> good and the bad.

>> Now you may be including "genetic engineering" in "enhancements"
>> and "genetic engineering" *might* involve changes to the basic nature
>> of humans. However, I'm not sure that we'll ever understand the
>> relationship between our genetics and our basic nature well enough
>> to be able to change our basic nature via genetic engineering.

We have done that quite effectively with domesticated plants and animals.

> That lack of understanding seems wildly implausible to me, as more and
> more cyber-enhanced humans and software agents tackle the problem.
> As they inevitably will. And indeed, I wouldn't find it implausible that
> cyber and or biochemical enhancements would make motives and
> actions inscrutable, even if genetics weren't considered.

Have fun listing any examples of that last with domesticated plants and
animals.

[Phil Turner]

Since I'm not sure where it's aired yet, I'll limit myself to mentioning
that "Asylum of the Daleks" touches on this.

[Wayne Throop]

:: Any reason this fiction isn't plausible?

: "Rod Speed" <rod.sp...@gmail.com>
: Yep, nothing even remotely like that has ever been seen with real life.

Oh man. That's just precious. You are FUNNY!
Not really insightful or informative, but funny.

[Wayne Throop]

: "Rod Speed" <rod.sp...@gmail.com>
: Have fun listing any examples of that last with domesticated plants
: and animals.

And it's funny EVERY time he does it. Hilarious.
I wonder if he even realises how goofy it sounds, to suppose
humans never do anything new under the sun.

And yes, you can temporarily change the basic nature of a cat with valium,
at least as much as can be done with domestication.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 3/12/13 3:34 PM, Wayne Throop wrote:

> I mean, genes turn on and off in various complicated patterns to produce
> the proteins that interact with the world... but it's the proteins
> that do that interacting, so why not just supply them? (I mean, sure,
> efficiency and engineering tradeoffs and some need to be supplied
> intracellularly... but in principle, what's gengineering retroviri got
> that von neumann microimplants ain't got? And then too,
> what makes the Hottentots so hot?)
>

Courage?



--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

[Quadibloc]

On Mar 12, 12:45 pm, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) wrote:

> Yet, seems to me it's easy to find disbelief suspenders for why there are
> still human populations around 200 years from now.  I mean, what with them
> being found and exploited so frequently and all.
>
> On the other hand, there are of course those who just ignore the issue,
> like say BlackJackGearyverse, or the Honorverse.  Makes those very hard
> to take seriously, but then, they don't get read for seriousness.
> Well... by most folks anyways.  There are some peculiar exceptions.

But even if one is taking the time to suspend disbelief, that _still_
interferes with taking the story seriously for some values of
seriously.

While this definitely isn't the _only_ reason people read SF, one big
chunk of the genre, at least back in the '60s, was stories that fit
into the category of "here is what the future really could be like" -
not just as a narrow possibility but as a relatively likely
extrapolation. As close as we can guess, here is the exciting future
world your grandchildren may live in!

With that big chunk missing, there's still stuff left, but not as much
as before.

John Savard

[Rod Speed]

Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote
just the puerile shit it always ends up with when
its got done like a fucking dinner, as it ALWAYS is.

[Rod Speed]

[Quadibloc]

On Mar 12, 11:40 am, Drak Bibliophile <drakbiblioph...@comcast.net>
wrote:

> I suspect "enhancements" won't change the basic nature of humans.  The
> "enhancements" will just give humans better tools for both the good and
> the bad.
>
> Now you may be including "genetic engineering" in "enhancements" and
> "genetic engineering" *might* involve changes to the basic nature of humans.
>
> However, I'm not sure that we'll ever understand the relationship
> between our genetics and our basic nature well enough to be able to
> change our basic nature via genetic engineering.
>
> For that matter, I suspect that any attempt to change the basic nature
> of humans though genetic engineering (or other means) will result in
> changes to the worse not the better.

I think I'm in agreement here.

I see genetic engineering to make us live longer and make us smarter
as very likely (unless uploading makes it irrelevant) but I don't
think we _want_ to get changed.

We might "modify human nature" in the case of wiping out genes that
cause impulsiveness or other behavior disorders that contribute to
crime - just as we would wipe out genetic disabilities. But that isn't
changing basic human nature.

In fact, I feel that we will be disappointed when scientific advances
that provide us with much, but without changing human nature, fail to
bring us happiness and tranquility.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Mar 12, 1:34 pm, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) wrote:

> Most arguments (that don't fall apart imo) against transhumans appearing
> at some point inside a couple centuries at the very most, actually boil
> down to to some variation of "let's assume we're in the Slow Zone".

I assume we will become transhuman, and human nature *still* won't be
changed.

John Savard

[Rod Speed]

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote

> Drak Bibliophile <drakbiblioph...@comcast.net> wrote

>> I suspect "enhancements" won't change the basic nature
>> of humans. The "enhancements" will just give humans
>> better tools for both the good and the bad.

>> Now you may be including "genetic engineering" in "enhancements" and
>> "genetic engineering" *might* involve changes to the basic nature of
>> humans.

>> However, I'm not sure that we'll ever understand the relationship
>> between our genetics and our basic nature well enough to be
>> able to change our basic nature via genetic engineering.

>> For that matter, I suspect that any attempt to change the basic
>> nature of humans though genetic engineering (or other means)
>> will result in changes to the worse not the better.

> I think I'm in agreement here.

I'm not, particularly with that last.

Its worked very well indeed with domesticated plants and animals.

> I see genetic engineering to make us live
> longer and make us smarter as very likely

Me too, if we choose to allow it with humans and even
if we don't, it will likely happen to some extent anyway.

> (unless uploading makes it irrelevant)

Can't see that happening myself.

> but I don't think we _want_ to get changed.

Some clearly do, particularly with that last with their kids.

> We might "modify human nature" in the case of wiping out genes
> that cause impulsiveness or other behavior disorders that contribute
> to crime - just as we would wipe out genetic disabilities.

And even for stuff that's just a damned nuisance like ADHD etc.

> But that isn't changing basic human nature.

That's very arguable indeed.

> In fact, I feel that we will be disappointed when scientific
> advances that provide us with much, but without changing
> human nature, fail to bring us happiness and tranquility.

You can make a case that that has always been
part of what religion has always been about.

[Rod Speed]

"Quadibloc" <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote in message
news:2bd36040-3b65-4c0f...@w2g2000pbw.googlegroups.com...

That's quite an assumption.

[Drak Bibliophile]

Wayne, the problem is that I've "read this story before".

There have been plenty of people who have said "this is the way the
future *will* be" and gave reasons just as logical as yours concerning
the "god-like" transhumans.

From where I'm setting, the "Future" has changed several times over the
years and I suspect that twenty years from now there will be another
"Future" that will replace the "Transhumans Future".

[Wayne Throop]

: Drak Bibliophile <drakbib...@comcast.net>
: There have been plenty of people who have said "this is the way the

: future *will* be" and gave reasons just as logical as yours concerning
: the "god-like" transhumans.
:
: From where I'm setting, the "Future" has changed several times over
: the years and I suspect that twenty years from now there will be
: another "Future" that will replace the "Transhumans Future".

Future tropes do indeed evolve, and come in and out of fashion.
And there's already evidence that the hard core singularistas are being
supplanted by many variants, some of which aren't all that transcendant.

But... intended-to-be-plausible tropes are a *bit* more
stubborn. Does anybody write native martians anymore,
or every-planet-got-intelligent-critters anymore as Heinlein did?
And intend to be plausible? Does anybody write humans pilot spaceships
and use massive computers that they feed tapes of numbers into and
keep printed or memorized tables to translate the output anymore?
(Other than Liaden, I suppose, but I doubt that's meant to be plausible.)

I think transhumans are much more likely to be like missing martians.
Even though no actual transhumans have shown up IRL, developments in
computation, computational psychology, neurobiology, and gengineering, are
finding the canals of the non-transhuman future dry already, even if we
haven't done the equivalent of probe landings or full orbital survays yet.
The trend won't be reversed any more than every-planet-with-intelligent-
critters is going to be reversed. Unless we *are* in the Slow Zone,
after all.

But all in all, I doubt humans-are-the-smartest-monkeys-on-the-block
(and have a single nature if many names...) SF is going to persist as
a plausible trope.

IMO.

Of course, Vinge has been predicting the Singularity is 20-ish years
away (actually something like 25 I think) since the early 90s, more or less.
So maybe it'll turn out to be like fusion or robots or flyin' cars.
Well... already said "maybe Slow Zone", I suppose.

[Wayne Throop]

:: Most arguments (that don't fall apart imo) against transhumans
:: appearing at some point inside a couple centuries at the very most,
:: actually boil down to to some variation of "let's assume we're in the
:: Slow Zone".

: Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
: I assume we will become transhuman, and human nature *still* won't be
: changed.

Eh, that's merely metahuman, not transhuman.

And at the very least, I'd expect that if intelligence were raised
enough, motives would undergo a variant of the "mysterious ways"
issue with capital-G-God-accept-no-substitutes, at least wrt to current
humans. See also "Sea of Glass" and the parable of The Answer therein.
One wouldn't really expect Barry Longyear to be a singularista (or at
least I wouldn't), but that's a good illustrative parable, imo.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <7c78b9c5-8a86-4e8b...@y2g2000pbg.googlegroups.com>,

I tend to think that immortals, for instance, would have a vastly
different nature even if immortality is the only change.

And once you talk uploading and cutting the link to the reproductive
drive and hormonal behavior in general, it's Katy bar the door..
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[David Johnston]

On 3/12/2013 4:59 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> In article <7c78b9c5-8a86-4e8b...@y2g2000pbg.googlegroups.com>,
> Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>> On Mar 12, 11:40 am, Drak Bibliophile <drakbiblioph...@comcast.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I suspect "enhancements" won't change the basic nature of humans. The
>>> "enhancements" will just give humans better tools for both the good and
>>> the bad.
>>>
>>> Now you may be including "genetic engineering" in "enhancements" and
>>> "genetic engineering" *might* involve changes to the basic nature of humans.
>>>
>>> However, I'm not sure that we'll ever understand the relationship
>>> between our genetics and our basic nature well enough to be able to
>>> change our basic nature via genetic engineering.
>>>
>>> For that matter, I suspect that any attempt to change the basic nature
>>> of humans though genetic engineering (or other means) will result in
>>> changes to the worse not the better.
>>
>> I think I'm in agreement here.
>>
>> I see genetic engineering to make us live longer and make us smarter
>> as very likely (unless uploading makes it irrelevant) but I don't
>> think we _want_ to get changed.
>>
>> We might "modify human nature" in the case of wiping out genes that
>> cause impulsiveness or other behavior disorders that contribute to
>> crime - just as we would wipe out genetic disabilities. But that isn't
>> changing basic human nature.

It is, actually, but that would be a crazy thing to do.

>>
>> In fact, I feel that we will be disappointed when scientific advances
>> that provide us with much, but without changing human nature, fail to
>> bring us happiness and tranquility.
>>
>> John Savard
>
> I tend to think that immortals, for instance, would have a vastly
> different nature even if immortality is the only change.

"Live longer" doesn't mean "immortal". Not even close.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <13631...@sheol.org>, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
>:: And soitny after reading Crystal Mumble series, Liaden is seen as a
>:: post-transcend setting with godshatter (the dramzillas).
>
>: t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>)
>: The original dramlizas weren't trancended humans iirc.
>
>That would be why I called them godshatter, and not transhuman. They had
>weakly god-like abilities smushed into them (sorta-kinda like Pham Nguyen,
>only a bit differently, so it's arguably not all that good an analogy,
>but I'd argue not all that bad a one neither).
>
>The transended ones Just Left. After destroying a big chunk of the
>universe, ie, star systems winking out of existance etc, iirc.

Hmm. I thought there was actual malevolent intent there, or at least
that it was something they willed whether they mapped onto our good/evil
scale or not..

>
>: As to Vinge keeping regular humans around for storytelling -- yes.
>: That's kind of my point: it's hard to tell stories about mark2+
>: humans. People (ie: me :-) want to read about people. You can read
>: about post-singularity/ transhumans as an intellectual exercise, but
>: that's not by and large what pepole (ie: me!) read for..
>
>Indeed. But remember, the subtopic started as
>
>:::: it's hard to imagine unenhanced humans like us going about our
>:::: business 200 years from now,
>
>Yet, seems to me it's easy to find disbelief suspenders for why there are
>still human populations around 200 years from now. I mean, what with them
>being found and exploited so frequently and all.
>
>On the other hand, there are of course those who just ignore the issue,
>like say BlackJackGearyverse, or the Honorverse. Makes those very hard
>to take seriously, but then, they don't get read for seriousness.
>Well... by most folks anyways. There are some peculiar exceptions.

Actually the Honorverse is nibbling around the edges with prolong,
the Sphinx enhancements and metabolism and Genetic Slavery. Consider
Honor's younger sibling.

>
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416509119/104-3351018-0549563
> [...] one can well imagine that when future star warriors develop
> their tactics, Weber's narratives will provide a template.
>----
> Oh, no, there goes Solcintra
> Go Go Dramzilla!
> History shows again and again
> Transcendence brings out the folly in men
> Dramzilla!
> (yes I know it's really dramliza,
> but dramzilla is so much cooler)
>
> "Blacque Jacque Shellac is roughtest, toughtest,
> muklukest Canuck in ze Klondike!"
> --- Blacque Jacque Shellac
> (what would he do in a Klondike bar?)

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <khoc1t$g1s$1...@dont-email.me>,

Definitionally sure. But practically, being in a healthy stable state for
the forseeable future baring acts of God is close enough to literal
"immortality" to cause a lot of basic assumptions to be rethought.

[David Johnston]

I wasn't even getting into the fatal accident issue. Life extension does
not mean unlimited life expectancy barring accidents. It just means the
moment when entropy wins and you finally wear out gets pushed farther
back.

[Robert Carnegie]

On Tuesday, 12 March 2013 21:45:59 UTC, Wayne Throop wrote:
> Even though no actual transhumans have shown up IRL,

Well, there's Oscar Pistorius. Superhuman cyber athlete.
In some trouble at the moment.

[Wayne Throop]

: t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>)

: I tend to think that immortals, for instance, would have a vastly

: different nature even if immortality is the only change.

Xref Charles Sheffield's "The Ganymede Club".
(By "immortality" tGC means "won't die of "old age", but could of trauma".)

[Wayne Throop]

[.. re: Liaden universe origins ..]

:: The transended ones Just Left. After destroying a big chunk of the

:: universe, ie, star systems winking out of existance etc, iirc.

: t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>)

: Hmm. I thought there was actual malevolent intent there, or at least

: that it was something they willed whether they mapped onto our
: good/evil scale or not..

That's compatible with my memory of it. Basically seemed to me
to be somewhere between regrettable collateral damage, and
careless/reckless endangerment.

:: On the other hand, there are of course those who just ignore the

:: issue, like say BlackJackGearyverse, or the Honorverse.

: Actually the Honorverse is nibbling around the edges with prolong, the

: Sphinx enhancements and metabolism and Genetic Slavery. Consider
: Honor's younger sibling.

True... but those technologies are implausibly late-breaking.
The Honorverse is set, what, 2000 or so years hence. Diaspora in
2100s CE, dates in Honor-involved plotlines in the 1900s PD. In that
2000 years, the tech is that sluggish? Specifically, computer tech,
and the 500-ish year hiatus of military tech, even those with obvious
applications that could be cobbled together but never were[1].

Hm. In looking that up, I am reminded that there was a huge war that
led to Beowulf's stance of suppresing radical human gengineering, and
its widespread adoption. But even so, I don't think it anywhere nearly
explains the tech mix 2000 years hence. So it's pretty close to
ignoring the *slow* *development* issue, if not smack dab on.

[1] Take FTL signaling with gravitational interactions, which in the
honorverse are FTL. You could monitor movements of ships using
gravitational propulsion system, with the "wedges up", etc, in
near-real-time over light-hours distance or more. Been routine for
hundreds and hundreds of years. And nobody thought to have a small
ship spell out letters? I mean, you know, just, "Gee, I wish I could
send a message... no wait, I *can*!" stuff. Thousands or millions
of people wanting to know what's happening on other planets, fast,
and nobody doing the obvious? I really have to turn down my "why
didn't they do the obvious...?" obsession to read honorverse books.
WAY down. Sort of like Niven's Known Space, only different.


"In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred
years of democracy and peace -- and what did that produce?
The cuckoo clock."
--- from the infamous "cuckoo clock speech"
in "The Third Man"

[Moriarty]

They were all elves?

-Moriarty

[Wayne Throop]

:: Xref Charles Sheffield's "The Ganymede Club". (By "immortality" tGC
:: means "won't die of "old age", but could of trauma"...)

: Moriarty <blu...@ivillage.com>
: They were all elves?

Worse. MBAs. Reclusive pointy-haired bosses. Sort of. IIRC.

[JRStern]

On 12 Mar 2013 19:46:29 GMT, Jorgen Grahn <grahn...@snipabacken.se>
wrote:

>On Tue, 2013-03-12, David Johnston wrote:
>...
>> I think though, that it may have something to do with having lost our
>> innocence. We're much more aware now that the solar system is empty and
>> the stars are not something we can reasonably travel to. The future
>> looks more and more like a dead end.
>
>Yeah. Although that's a good premise for an SF story, too!
>Tiptree's /And so on, and so on/ is one example.

Or:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%201:9&version=NKJV

That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.


J.


>
>/Jorgen

[David DeLaney]

On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:11:43 GMT, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
>Bill Dugan <wkd...@ix.netcom.com>
>: However, the trans-humans are likely incomprehensible to both author
>: and reader. That makes it almost impossible to write a readable story
>: about them.
>
>Hence the large number or ways folks have edged in on the problem sideways.
>One could even take Childhood's End thataway. The overlords and the one
>saved specimen. Or, Spin, with machine intelligences transcended, with
>incomprehensible motives and powers and abilities and such, and one
>human left with Godshatter who sort-of understands a tiny thumbnail.

And the Continuing Time is edging up on it from the non-Transcended end, though
to judge from the story fragments set later in that setting, it never does get
there, at least not before the Envoy is freed and the universe fuzzes out into
an ending.

Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[David DeLaney]

Ted Nolan <tednolan> <t...@loft.tnolan.com> wrote:

>Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>>Drak Bibliophile <drakbiblioph...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>> I suspect "enhancements" won't change the basic nature of humans.  The
>>> "enhancements" will just give humans better tools for both the good and
>>> the bad.
>>

>>I see genetic engineering to make us live longer and make us smarter
>>as very likely (unless uploading makes it irrelevant) but I don't
>>think we _want_ to get changed.

>>In fact, I feel that we will be disappointed when scientific advances
>>that provide us with much, but without changing human nature, fail to
>>bring us happiness and tranquility.
>

>I tend to think that immortals, for instance, would have a vastly
>different nature even if immortality is the only change.
>
>And once you talk uploading and cutting the link to the reproductive
>drive and hormonal behavior in general, it's Katy bar the door..

Also, note that something as simple as increasing average intelligence,
without pretty much any other change at all, takes you over a series of
phase transitions. (ObSF: _Star Bright_) Eventually, having better enough
mental tools changes interests and procedures and underlying reactions enough
that it might as WELL be a change in human nature. (Other ObSF: _Brain Wave_)

[David DeLaney]

On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:45:30 GMT, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
> History shows again and again
> Transcendence brings out the folly in men
> Dramzilla!

+1 would senseperience again. Cywowzers!

Dave, will macro for food

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <13631...@sheol.org>, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:

Yeah, I think I'd noticed it before, but it really jumped out at me
in the current book that you could easily do Morse with grav pulses..

Maybe I noticed it in particular because the whole book was meeting
minutes and small action vingettes..

[Joseph Nebus]

In <13631...@sheol.org> thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) writes:

>Future tropes do indeed evolve, and come in and out of fashion.
>And there's already evidence that the hard core singularistas are being
>supplanted by many variants, some of which aren't all that transcendant.

>But... intended-to-be-plausible tropes are a *bit* more
>stubborn. Does anybody write native martians anymore,
>or every-planet-got-intelligent-critters anymore as Heinlein did?
>And intend to be plausible? Does anybody write humans pilot spaceships
>and use massive computers that they feed tapes of numbers into and
>keep printed or memorized tables to translate the output anymore?
>(Other than Liaden, I suppose, but I doubt that's meant to be plausible.)

Hm. How long would it take before we start getting stories
where the Singulatarians are typically used as an ironic trope, the
way Real Martians or Flying Cars or Zeppelins [*] are these days?

[*] Zeppelins are the official signifier of the alternate
history, of course --- you can find alternate histories about what
happens in the decade after Augustus Caesar is murdered while
working out the First Settlement and they'll have Lepidus and Agrippa
duking it out in airships --- but what other gimmicks are official
signifiers of their subgenre?



--
http://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/ Joseph Nebus
Current Entry: On Peeking At Cedar Point http://wp.me/p1RYhY-qI
--------------------------------------------------------+---------------------

[Robert Bannister]

On 13/03/13 1:40 AM, Drak Bibliophile wrote:

> However, I'm not sure that we'll ever understand the relationship
> between our genetics and our basic nature well enough to be able to
> change our basic nature via genetic engineering.
>
> For that matter, I suspect that any attempt to change the basic nature
> of humans though genetic engineering (or other means) will result in
> changes to the worse not the better.

One kind of "enhancement" that has already taken place is the provision
for a huge percentage of the population with mobile phones. Have they
changed human nature? Some people claim that people are already losing
their sense of direction, their ability to find their way because of GPS
apps. Others claim we are losing our intelligence because it is so quick
and easy to look things up on Google or Wikipedia. Whether they are
right about the harmful effect is doubtful, but a change is possibly
taking place.

--
Robert Bannister

[Rod Speed]

Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote

> Drak Bibliophile wrote

>> However, I'm not sure that we'll ever understand the relationship
>> between our genetics and our basic nature well enough to be
>> able to change our basic nature via genetic engineering.

>> For that matter, I suspect that any attempt to change the basic
>> nature of humans though genetic engineering (or other means)
>> will result in changes to the worse not the better.

> One kind of "enhancement" that has already taken place
> is the provision for a huge percentage of the population

> with mobile phones. Have they human nature?

Any wildly adopted technology always does to some extent.

> Some people claim that people are already losing their sense
> of direction, their ability to find their way because of GPS apps.

I haven't and I use the GPS every week for the garage sales.

> Others claim we are losing our intelligence because it is so
> quick and easy to look things up on Google or Wikipedia.

The most I buy is that there isnt as much need to remember stuff.

> Whether they are right about the harmful effect is doubtful,

Very IMO.

> but a change is possibly taking place.

Yeah, there certainly is a big change in how people behave.

I was helping someone move house recently and those kids
would ring each other even when one was still in the old
house and one out the front in the car, to tell the one in
the house to bring something else which was needed.

And why not when the call is quite literally free.

[David DeLaney]

Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote:
> [*] Zeppelins are the official signifier of the alternate
>history, of course --- you can find alternate histories about what
>happens in the decade after Augustus Caesar is murdered while
>working out the First Settlement and they'll have Lepidus and Agrippa
>duking it out in airships --- but what other gimmicks are official
>signifiers of their subgenre?

Hm. Female protagonist has at least two boyfriends/husbands/relationships
going on, paranormal romance? SF detective, a homage to some classic detective
or other is included? Time travel ought to have one but it may not yet...

Dave, pulp -> spaceships crewed pretty much male-only?

[Leif Roar Moldskred]

Drak Bibliophile <drakbib...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> True, but is it a *fact* that trans-humans will exist?
>

Yes. It's also a *fact* that by the year 2000 we'll all have flying
cars and jetpacks.

--
Leif Roar Moldskred

[Robert Carnegie]

On Wednesday, 13 March 2013 07:08:48 UTC, David DeLaney wrote:
> Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote:
> > [*] Zeppelins are the official signifier of the alternate
> >history, of course --- you can find alternate histories about what
> >happens in the decade after Augustus Caesar is murdered while
> >working out the First Settlement and they'll have Lepidus and Agrippa
> >duking it out in airships --- but what other gimmicks are official
> >signifiers of their subgenre?
>
> Hm. Female protagonist has at least two boyfriends/husbands/relationships
> going on, paranormal romance? SF detective, a homage to some classic detective
> or other is included? Time travel ought to have one but it may not yet...
>
> Dave, pulp -> spaceships crewed pretty much male-only?

I think your #1 may be just romance, or quite a lot of romance anyway.
Jane Eyre has two serious suitors, Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet has two,
Bridget Jones has two, Agatha Heterodyne had a third but he died, and
I think the black guy at the university was sweet on her too but maybe
I'm reading too much into it... Two husbands is a /different/ story,
possibly by Robert Louis Stevenson.

I think the SF detective is either just getting on with the job, or
conspicuously /not/ the same as a twentieth-century police officer
or gumshoe or clever amateur. For instance, he or she or it may use
telepathy or precognition or computer records or superforensics or
nanotechnology. On the other hand, he or she or it may indeed be
cosplaying Sherlock Holmes or Dixon Hill or Dixon of Dock Green.

The time travel one is killing your grandfather, isn't it? I mean
in the past, when he wasn't your father's father yet.

How are ships' crews arranged by sex nowadays - military and civilian?
The old-fashioned water sort, I mean, mainly, although I think the
Space Shuttle may have fallen short of equality, too. Even though
women typically weigh less than men.

And, there's a comic radio play that the BBC sometimes repeats
in which two unenthusiastic soldiers from the two sides in the
Trojan War escape from the war zone by building a hot air balloon.
Tityle forgotten, I'm afraid.

[Don Kuenz]

Both google and Wikipedia seem more superficial to me with each passing
day. google sometimes returns absolutely nothing, not even the marketing
cruft, while Wikipedia links to empty stubs. Both tend to know-it-all
about pop culture, of course.

During a PTA meeting a women said that her child sent over seven
hundred text messages during the course of a single day. A TV news
reporter present speculated on texting causing the English language to
(de?)evolve into an abbreviated form.

My own texting tends toward pedanticism with the avoidance of acronyms
and the use of correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.
Language butchered by texting simply looks far too ugly to me.

--
Don Kuenz

[David DeLaney]

Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>On Wednesday, 13 March 2013 07:08:48 UTC, David DeLaney wrote:
>> Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote:
>> > [*] Zeppelins are the official signifier of the alternate
>> >history, of course --- you can find alternate histories about what
>> >happens in the decade after Augustus Caesar is murdered while
>> >working out the First Settlement and they'll have Lepidus and Agrippa
>> >duking it out in airships --- but what other gimmicks are official
>> >signifiers of their subgenre?
>>
>>Hm. Female protagonist has at least two boyfriends/husbands/relationships
>>going on, paranormal romance? SF detective, a homage to some classic detective
>>or other is included? Time travel ought to have one but it may not yet...
>>
>>Dave, pulp -> spaceships crewed pretty much male-only?
>
>I think your #1 may be just romance, or quite a lot of romance anyway.
>Jane Eyre has two serious suitors, Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet has two,
>Bridget Jones has two, Agatha Heterodyne had a third but he died, and
>I think the black guy at the university was sweet on her too but maybe
>I'm reading too much into it... Two husbands is a /different/ story,
>possibly by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Yasmine Galenorn, actually. (And three.) Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita has a lot
of boyfriends/lovers but hasn't married any of them.

>I think the SF detective is either just getting on with the job, or
>conspicuously /not/ the same as a twentieth-century police officer
>or gumshoe or clever amateur. For instance, he or she or it may use
>telepathy or precognition or computer records or superforensics or
>nanotechnology. On the other hand, he or she or it may indeed be
>cosplaying Sherlock Holmes or Dixon Hill or Dixon of Dock Green.

And noir shows up a lot, possibly influenced by Blade Runner as well. (And,
for some reason, zombie detectives, though only about three so far, not enough
to flavor the whole subgenre.)

>The time travel one is killing your grandfather, isn't it? I mean
>in the past, when he wasn't your father's father yet.

Well, killing your grandfather and then having to find out just what that DID.

>How are ships' crews arranged by sex nowadays - military and civilian?

"Broken down" is, I think, the canonical answer.

>And, there's a comic radio play that the BBC sometimes repeats
>in which two unenthusiastic soldiers from the two sides in the
>Trojan War escape from the war zone by building a hot air balloon.
>Tityle forgotten, I'm afraid.

Dave, I could tell you about literal war porn but then I'd have to __BLANK___
you

[Rod Speed]

"Don Kuenz" <gar...@crcomp.net> wrote in message
news:2013...@crcomp.net...

> Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>> On 13/03/13 1:40 AM, Drak Bibliophile wrote:
>>
>>> However, I'm not sure that we'll ever understand the relationship
>>> between our genetics and our basic nature well enough to be able to
>>> change our basic nature via genetic engineering.
>>>
>>> For that matter, I suspect that any attempt to change the basic nature
>>> of humans though genetic engineering (or other means) will result in
>>> changes to the worse not the better.
>>
>> One kind of "enhancement" that has already taken place is the provision
>> for a huge percentage of the population with mobile phones. Have they
>> changed human nature? Some people claim that people are already losing
>> their sense of direction, their ability to find their way because of GPS
>> apps. Others claim we are losing our intelligence because it is so quick
>> and easy to look things up on Google or Wikipedia. Whether they are
>> right about the harmful effect is doubtful, but a change is possibly
>> taking place.

> Both google and Wikipedia seem more superficial to me with each
> passing day. google sometimes returns absolutely nothing, not
> even the marketing cruft, while Wikipedia links to empty stubs.

Try it with a hot news item like when that fool
shot heaps on that island in scandinavia.

> Both tend to know-it-all about pop culture, of course.

About a hell of a lot more than just that.

That interesting fact about how much gold has ever been mined
came from there and was the obvious place to look for it.

> During a PTA meeting a women said that her child sent over
> seven hundred text messages during the course of a single day.

Presumably the fool just dumped some decent sized
article into the text message system or something.

> A TV news reporter present speculated on texting causing the
> English language to (de?)evolve into an abbreviated form.

You don�t see much of that with facebook,
just utterly obscene typos and spelling.

> My own texting tends toward pedanticism with the avoidance of
> acronyms and the use of correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.
> Language butchered by texting simply looks far too ugly to me.

There were dinosaurs that refused to used phones too when they
first came out.

[David Johnston]

On 3/13/2013 1:50 AM, David DeLaney wrote:
> Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote:
>> [*] Zeppelins are the official signifier of the alternate
>> history, of course --- you can find alternate histories about what
>> happens in the decade after Augustus Caesar is murdered while
>> working out the First Settlement and they'll have Lepidus and Agrippa
>> duking it out in airships --- but what other gimmicks are official
>> signifiers of their subgenre?
>
> Hm. Female protagonist has at least two boyfriends/husbands/relationships
> going on, paranormal romance?

Urban fantasy, actually. Paranormal romance almost always sticks to a
single werewolf/vampire/timelost warrior from the 6th century. Regency
Romance used to have "the heroine is always a virgin even when she's a
widow who was married for years" but that has faded now.

SF detective, a homage to some classic detective
> or other is included? Time travel ought to have one but it may not yet...
>
> Dave, pulp -> spaceships crewed pretty much male-only?
>

Pulp spaceships generally had a girl to be the girl.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:53:01 -0400, David DeLaney
<d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote in
<news:slrnkk197...@gatekeeper.vic.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:

>> On Wednesday, 13 March 2013 07:08:48 UTC, David DeLaney
>> wrote:

>>> Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote:

>>>> [*] Zeppelins are the official signifier of the
>>>> alternate history, of course

Not these days: these days they're more a steampunk marker
than anything else. And I definitely would not classify all
steampunk as alternate history.

>>>> --- you can find alternate histories about what happens
>>>> in the decade after Augustus Caesar is murdered while
>>>> working out the First Settlement and they'll have
>>>> Lepidus and Agrippa duking it out in airships --- but
>>>> what other gimmicks are official signifiers of their
>>>> subgenre?

>>> Hm. Female protagonist has at least two
>>> boyfriends/husbands/relationships going on, paranormal
>>> romance? SF detective, a homage to some classic
>>> detective or other is included? Time travel ought to
>>> have one but it may not yet...

>> I think your #1 may be just romance, or quite a lot of
>> romance anyway. Jane Eyre has two serious suitors, Jane
>> Austen's Elizabeth Bennet has two, Bridget Jones has
>> two, Agatha Heterodyne had a third but he died, and I
>> think the black guy at the university was sweet on her
>> too but maybe I'm reading too much into it... Two
>> husbands is a /different/ story, possibly by Robert
>> Louis Stevenson.

> Yasmine Galenorn, actually. (And three.)

And talk about a bunch of alpha males (even if only one of
them is her alpha husband)! That's quite a m�nage.

Galenorn and Nalini Singh both write a bit closer to the PR
end of the UF-PR spectrum than I prefer, but both of them
tell a pretty good story, and both of them know how to keep
a series moving while still bringing each book to a
satisfactory conclusion. (But Galenorn drove me nuts a
couple of times in her latest: at least twice she used
<buttressed> to mean <abutting>, and on one occasion she
used <tantamount> when she clearly meant <paramount>.)

Brian

[Brian M. Scott]

On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:59:05 -0600, David Johnston
<Da...@block.net> wrote in <news:khqem4$8m9$1...@dont-email.me>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

> On 3/13/2013 1:50 AM, David DeLaney wrote:

>> Joseph Nebus <nebusj-@-rpi-.edu> wrote:

>>> [*] Zeppelins are the official signifier of the
>>> alternate history, of course --- you can find alternate
>>> histories about what happens in the decade after
>>> Augustus Caesar is murdered while working out the First
>>> Settlement and they'll have Lepidus and Agrippa duking
>>> it out in airships --- but what other gimmicks are
>>> official signifiers of their subgenre?

>> Hm. Female protagonist has at least two
>> boyfriends/husbands/relationships going on, paranormal
>> romance?

> Urban fantasy, actually. Paranormal romance almost always
> sticks to a single werewolf/vampire/timelost warrior from
> the 6th century.

The two genres blend into each other, but what you're
describing is only a subgenre within PR, and I'm not at all
sure that it's even an especially large one right now.

[...]

Brian

[Brian M. Scott]

On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:04:59 -0500, Don Kuenz
<gar...@crcomp.net> wrote in <news:2013...@crcomp.net> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

> Both google and Wikipedia seem more superficial to me with
> each passing day. google sometimes returns absolutely
> nothing, not even the marketing cruft, while Wikipedia
> links to empty stubs. Both tend to know-it-all about pop
> culture, of course.

What on earth are you looking for? Both do quite well for
me on a wide variety of subjects, both academic and
otherwise.

[...]

Brian

[Howard Brazee]

On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:18:17 +0800, Robert Bannister
<rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

>One kind of "enhancement" that has already taken place is the provision
>for a huge percentage of the population with mobile phones. Have they
>changed human nature? Some people claim that people are already losing
>their sense of direction, their ability to find their way because of GPS
>apps. Others claim we are losing our intelligence because it is so quick
>and easy to look things up on Google or Wikipedia. Whether they are
>right about the harmful effect is doubtful, but a change is possibly
>taking place.

Of course, literacy had similar types of complaints.

--
Anybody who agrees with one side all of the time or disagrees with the
other side all of the time is equally guilty of letting others do
their thinking for them.

[Howard Brazee]

On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 06:45:46 -0700, Bill Dugan <wkd...@ix.netcom.com>
wrote:

>However, the trans-humans are likely incomprehensible to both author
>and reader. That makes it almost impossible to write a readable story
>about them.

Look at how many stories work because people don't have ubiquitous
information at their fingertips. People are lost, they don't know
their companions sufficiently, there aren't cameras following them
everywhere. Plots that use these features have worked for thousands
of years - but which may fail in the future.

[Howard Brazee]

On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:45:37 -0500, Drak Bibliophile
<drakbib...@comcast.net> wrote:

>Enhanced humans may come about but I doubt their basic nature will be
>that different from "base line humans".
>
>They'll just have better toys.

What are base line humans? History tells us of times when cruelty
was much more prevalent, and watching public torturing was popular. Is
that the base line?

Human nature is considerably variable right now. Some people do
school yard killing for the fun of it. I can easily see those culled
or cured. Changing a population a bit at a time is a reasonable
conjecture.

Intelligence never did mean wisdom. And it doesn't change values -
Isaac Asimov wrote about his disappointment in attending a MENSA
meeting to discover the same wide variety of political views that the
regular population had.

But to assume that the state will not be able to change values is a
big assumption.

[Don Kuenz]

Unavailable for a short time only [1], "propagates along the half-cone"
comes from an interesting Fred Hoyle paper about time. The paper
explores some of the ideas that also appear in Dick's _Golden Man_.

Allow me to revise my earlier statement. Some of the time a search of
that phrase simply returns nothing, sometimes it returns one Amazon ad,
and sometimes it returns 2,160,000 wrong suggestions. Depending at least
partially upon my browser and underlying OS it seems.

This lack of academic knowledge pops up from time to time. There's also
a lack of knowledge about the more esoteric Windows blue screens, BSD
panics, and the like.

Years ago a study found that only about a fifth of on-line knowledge
actually makes it into google. The remainder's accessible only as
"deep storage" (ie on-line data bases.) The point being, that if one
thinks they're doing a thorough job of searching human knowledge by
simply googling a phrase, one might want to re-think their approach.
Knowledge acquisition comes a bit harder than that.

Let's face it, it's hard (impossible?) for a computer to capture the
daily thoughts of billions of people then record said thoughts for
posterity. Someone (Asimov, Piper, Heinlein?) wrote a story about the
impossibility of using a computer to take into account the whole of
humanity.

Note 1. Talking about it only makes it worse. Just as soon as this very
post gets archived, humanity will receive yet another false positive hit
that actually leads nowhere. Perhaps a smarter person than me can apply
some math to this paradox of "false positive injection" to see where it
ultimately leads.

--
Don Kuenz

[Rod Speed]

Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> wrote

> Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote

>> Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> wrote

>>> Both google and Wikipedia seem more superficial to
>>> me with each passing day. google sometimes returns
>>> absolutely nothing, not even the marketing cruft, while
>>> Wikipedia links to empty stubs. Both tend to know-it-all
>>> about pop culture, of course.

>> What on earth are you looking for? Both do quite well for me
>> on a wide variety of subjects, both academic and otherwise.

> Unavailable for a short time only [1], "propagates along the half-cone"
> comes from an interesting Fred Hoyle paper about time. The paper
> explores some of the ideas that also appear in Dick's _Golden Man_.

> Allow me to revise my earlier statement. Some of the time a search of
> that phrase simply returns nothing, sometimes it returns one Amazon
> ad, and sometimes it returns 2,160,000 wrong suggestions. Depending
> at least partially upon my browser and underlying OS it seems.

That just your inadequate google-fu, you should use <propagates "half-cone">

> This lack of academic knowledge pops up from time to time.

Yes, one of the real downsides with google is that it doesn�t include
the full text of all the papers in all the peer reviewed academic journals.

> There's also a lack of knowledge about the more esoteric
> Windows blue screens, BSD panics, and the like.

The problem with that stuff is the wealth of pig ignorant shit
that ends up with a google search that doesn�t have some
nice tidy thing to search on like a specific error message etc.

Even when there is a nice specific error message, there is an awful
lot of shit that can't possibly be the problem to wade thru.

> Years ago a study found that only about a fifth of on-line
> knowledge actually makes it into google. The remainder's
> accessible only as "deep storage" (ie on-line data bases.)

I bet a hell of a lot of it is just in peer reviewed academic journals
and a great raft of proprietary and trade secret information etc.

> The point being, that if one thinks they're doing a thorough
> job of searching human knowledge by simply googling a
> phrase, one might want to re-think their approach.
> Knowledge acquisition comes a bit harder than that.

Sure. But it works very well indeed for a hell of
a lot of technical knowledge and history etc.

> Let's face it, it's hard (impossible?) for a computer
> to capture the daily thoughts of billions of people
> then record said thoughts for posterity.

Sure, but that�s getting a lot better now with blogs etc.

> Someone (Asimov, Piper, Heinlein?) wrote a story
> about the impossibility of using a computer to
> take into account the whole of humanity.

It would be a hell of a lot more surprising if it wasn�t.

> Note 1. Talking about it only makes it worse. Just as soon
> as this very post gets archived, humanity will receive yet
> another false positive hit that actually leads nowhere.

Or it leads to the right way to search for what you want.

[Robert Carnegie]

On Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:22:45 UTC, Don Kuenz wrote:
> Years ago a study found that only about a fifth of on-line knowledge
> actually makes it into google. The remainder's accessible only as
> "deep storage" (ie on-line data bases.) The point being, that if
> one thinks they're doing a thorough job of searching human knowledge
> by simply googling a phrase, one might want to re-think their
> approach. Knowledge acquisition comes a bit harder than that.

And until you've read it /carefully/, it isn't knowledge.

Google obviously only collects information that other people have
put into web sites, plus there's Google Books and Maps and Street View.
If I type in an address (street and town) where a Google car has been,
then I can see a photograph taken there - with a minority of exceptions.

There's a well-established if not absolutely formal system for web site
owners to tell services such as Google or others /not/ to look at some
or all of their pages.

Basically, if there isn't someone deliberately giving away the information
for free, it's likely to be not in Google.

Having said that, I've found Google results in academic papers and
newspapers online which I then can't view at the linked address without
paying for entry. Presumably Google is being allowed to read some of
these archives for free. And what a web server is returning for a
particular address depends on who is asking for it.

[Mark Zenier]

In article <yZWdnRr-Z-2cut3M...@giganews.com>,

Leif Roar Moldskred <le...@dimnakorr.com> wrote:
>Drak Bibliophile <drakbib...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> True, but is it a *fact* that trans-humans will exist?
>>
>
>Yes. It's also a *fact* that by the year 2000 we'll all have flying
>cars and jetpacks.

Yea, transhuman believers need to learn the difference between
exponential growth and the Logistic Growth Curve.

Mark Zenier mze...@eskimo.com
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

[Mark Zenier]

In article <0c3b0ee9-a4d5-4aaa...@googlegroups.com>,
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, 12 March 2013 06:17:48 UTC, Rod Speed wrote:
>> "Ted Nolan <tednolan>" <t...@loft.tnolan.com> wrote

>> in message news:aq7lnd...@mid.individual.net...
>> > In article <tY6dnSL-V_tvF6PM...@giganews.com>,

>> > Drak Bibliophile <drakbib...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> >>True, but is it a *fact* that trans-humans will exist?
>> >

>> > Well, I don't know obviously, and of course in the worst case,
>> > civilization collapses and we get Conan Of The Future, but it's
>> > hard to imagine unenhanced humans like us going about our
>> > business 200 years from now,
>>
>> Don’t see why, we've done quite well in the last 200 years.
>
>But, robots are taking more and more jobs nowadays. I foresee
>corporations that are entirely meat-free, and then where are we?


_Men Like Rats_, Rob Chilson

[Mark Zenier]

In article <2e9a1729-af5c-4be3...@googlegroups.com>,
Steffen Lemkamp <steffen...@googlemail.com> wrote:

>Why is that, is it because young males stopped reading?

And the younger creative class has switched to pixels.

And mass market distribution deliberately ignores hard SF, limiting
it to bookstores, Amazon, and e-books, which drops the market size
by a factor of 5 to 10.

And the USA has become very nostalgic...

[lal_truckee]

On 3/13/13 12:31 PM, Mark Zenier wrote:
> In article <0c3b0ee9-a4d5-4aaa...@googlegroups.com>,
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:

...

>> I foresee corporations that are entirely meat-free, and then where are we?
>
>
> _Men Like Rats_, Rob Chilson

_The Midas Plague_, Frederik Pohl

[David Johnston]

On 3/13/2013 7:55 PM, Howard Brazee wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:45:37 -0500, Drak Bibliophile
> <drakbib...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> Enhanced humans may come about but I doubt their basic nature will be
>> that different from "base line humans".
>>
>> They'll just have better toys.
>
> What are base line humans? History tells us of times when cruelty
> was much more prevalent, and watching public torturing was popular.

I see you haven't been to high school recently.