Ken MacLeod's Blog, page 35

Recent activities

Evolutionary biologist and science writer Julian Derry has a speculative evolutionary poem, The Meme Gene, at the Human Genre Project. Kelley Swain has written a very appreciative account of her visit to the Genomics Forum. The Forum has just advertised opportunities for similar visits and residencies, open to 'anyone concerned with the social dimensions of genetics, genomics and the new life sciences, whether natural or medical scientists, medical practitioners, social scientists, artists, w...

Mammoths! Zeppelins! Hitler!

Last week I received my contributor copies of The Alternate Book of Mammoth Histories The History Book of Alternate Mammoths The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories , edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates. The covers of all anthologies of alternate history must, by law, include a picture of a Zeppelin or Hitler (just as all American libertarian books must, under some obscure interstate commerce regulation, show a picture of that big government statue in New York harbour) and this one scores on b...

Socialism or your money back or your money back

The current issue of Socialist Standard has an interesting review page, including a slagging off of Red Planets (a book I haven't read but which has a chapter about my Fall Revolution books), and a (perhaps better deserved) slagging off of Žižek's latest caper.

Right at the bottom of the page is an ad for a book I can unhesitatingly recommend, Socialism or Your Money Back, a collection of articles from the Standard's first century (1904 - 2004). 'A running commentary on one hundred years of hi...

Three new poems

Three new poems on the Human Genre Project: The Real Life Application by Daniele Talend, For Jaimee by Jay Coral, and Stories by Tracey Rosenberg.

Science and Poetry

The Social Sessions 03: Base Pairs and Couplets on Wednesday 13 January was a big success, with over fifty people in attendance - a capacity crowd for the venue, the mezzanine of the Scottish Poetry Library.

After half an hour for people to get their drinks and start talking, the Library's director, Robyn Marsack, welcomed us and introduced the event. I then introduced the members of the panel and outlined what the event was about: science as an inspiration for poetry. I mentioned Hugh MacDiar...

Haiti

For ways to help, look at 'Emergency Links' in the sidebar. Meanwhile, I'm impressed with the dignity of this response to superstitious nonsense. (Via.)



The true story behind the nonsense is outlined here.

Bogus Science: or, some People Really Believe These Things by John Grant

I first came across the name and ideas of Charles Fort in the SF stories and novels of Eric Frank Russell - most likely in Sinister Barrier. A little later in my teens I read Damon Knight's biography Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained, and was inspired to write the following teenage poem:

Fortitude

Skulls fossilised in coal, Sargasso seas,
frog-showers, flying lights, and coloured rain,
writing engraved on meteorites - all these
and more he could record, but not explain.
Aristotle called theo...

Matt Coward's Acts of Destruction: neither Airstrip One nor Nowhere, but the Commonwealth!

Mat Coward sent me a review copy of this book, so I owe him a review. I don't owe him a good review, of course, but a good review is what he's going to get because I genuinely enjoyed the book.

It's very hard to think of a novel set in a future socialist Britain that isn't a dystopia or a utopia - Airstrip One or Nowhere. The Commonwealth of Britain in Acts of Destruction isn't described anywhere as socialist - in fact the word and its cognates don't occur anywhere in the text - but socialist ...

Jennifer Swift

I was shocked to learn yesterday from catching up with Ansible that Jennifer Swift had died three months ago. She was a lovely woman whom I'd met at cons over the years, and always had lively and friendly conversations with. Jennifer was a science fiction fan, author, and critic (warmly remembered here and here) a bioethicist, a journalist, and an Anglican. For my occasional crass vehemences she had - literally - the patience of a saint. It's a small consolation that my last interaction with ...

Happy New Year!

Here's to 2010, with a quote I posted five years ago and which still seems good today:

'We are cast upon the future without reluctance and even without regret, as finding there the substance of desire.'

- Barrows Dunham, Man Against Myth .