Warren Ellis's Blog, page 60

In Which Charles Stross Beats Science Fiction With A Big Shitty Stick

I like it when Charlie gets on a good rant.  This time, SF Signal asked him a question which was basically throwing raw meat to a cranky alligator:

Are SF writers "slacking off" or is science fiction still the genre of "big ideas"? If so, what authors are supplying these ideas for the next generation of scientists and engineers?

And off he goes.  You should really read the whole thing, but here’s the core of it:

…those people who are doing the "big visionary ideas about the future" SF are mostly doing so in a vacuum of critical appreciation. Greg Egan’s wonderful clockwork constructions out of the raw stuff of quantum mechanics, visualising entirely different types of universe, fall on the deaf ears of critics who are looking for depth of characterisation, and don’t realize that in his SF the structure of the universe is the character. On Hannu Rajaniemi’s brilliant "The Quantum Thief" — I have yet to see a single review that even notices the fact that this is the first hard SF novel to examine the impact of quantum cryptography on human society. (That’s a huge idea, but none of the reviewers even noticed it!) And there, over in a corner, is Bruce Sterling, blazing a lonely pioneering trail into the future. Chairman Bruce played out cyberpunk before most of us ever heard of it, invented the New Space Opera in "Schismatrix" (which looked as if nobody appreciated it for a couple of decades), co-wrote the most interesting hard-SF steampunk novel of all, and got into global climate change in the early 90s. He’s currently about ten years ahead of the curve. If SF was about big innovative visions, he’d need to build an extension to house all his Hugo awards.

So what’s at the root of this problem? Why are the innovative and rigorously extrapolated visions of the future so thin on the ground and so comprehensively ignored?

…We people of the SF-reading ghetto have stumbled blinking into the future, and our dirty little secret is that we don’t much like it…

Bookmarks for 2012-05-23

Grimes is leading a generation of online musicians to the material world | Dummy » Features
@nathanjurgenson: Grimes: “I basically consider myself a cyborg" http://t.co/6QLhK3Ja a voice of the new aesthetic? via @tech4thestarz http://twitter.com/nathanjurgenson/st...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )

First RED 2 Poster Seen At Cannes

According to DCUmoviepage, anyway:

Bookmarks for 2012-05-21

On the hunt for high-altitude microorganisms
"XCOR Aerospace is a private California-based company that has developed the Lynx, a reusable launch vehicle that has suborbital flight capabilities. Low-speed test flights are expected to commence later this year, with incremental testing to take place over the following months."
(tags:space )
Cloak of invisibility: Engineers use plasmonics to create an invisible photodetector
"A team of engineers at Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania has for the first time used "plasmonic cloaking" to create a device that can see without being seen – an invisible machine that detects light."
(tags:tech cloaking )

CLOSEDOWN: Motion Sickness Of Time Travel

I do love Motion Sickness Of Time Travel.  Here, two excerpts from their new record, which (by the time you have read this) I have just bought on mp3 from Boomkat, who describe it in part as “a holographic collab between Tangerine Dream and Julianna Barwick in the year 2040.” Perfect.   G’night.

Motion Sickness of Time Travel by Motion Sickness of Time Travel

James Stokoe Draws GODZILLA

Stokoe is apparently drawing a GODZILLA comic for IDW – a different one to the one Simon Gane’s drawing. 

And if you think that’s just a little demented, look at this.

Via his blog.

Dave Johnson

Beautiful piece at WhatNot by one of comics’ most admired cover illustrators, Dave Johnson:

Fil Barlow

Mondays do seem to have become for comics art.  Fil Barlow’s cover for an upcoming issue of PROPHET, via Brandon:

Bookmarks for 2012-05-21

Taivaallisia Tulia (sicsic023) | SicSic Tapes
@hackneymarshman: Up for some Finnish improvised tape loop experiments inspired by '70s UFO sightings? 'Taivaallisia Tulia' by Asio Otus http://t.co/GuKHCF1j http://twitter.com/hackneymarshman/st...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )
Rory Hyde Projects / Blog » Blog Archive » Secret Moons and Black Worlds – Interview with Trevor Paglen
@RadicalMap: Trevor Paglen interview by @_timothymoore + @roryhyde on Secret Moons + Black Worlds http://t.co/gK9ikWCI | via @namhenderson http://twitter.com/RadicalMap/status/...
(tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )

Philip Bond

I just found this on the Flickr of the brilliant comics artist Philip Bond.  I love it.