Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 164

Setting Out From Bradbury Landing

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This is a view from orbit of the surface of Mars.  That dark line down the center?  That's the tracks left by the Curiosity rover as it traveled from Bradbury Landing to Shaler Outcrop.

You can see the full-sized picture and read a more detailed explanation here.  It's really worth your time to see the expanded, more detailed version.

My thanks to Gregory Frost for turning me on to this.

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We'll Make Great Apps!

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Ian Urbina wrote a terrific essay in the Sunday New York Times titled I  Flirt and Tweet. Follow Me at #Socialbot .  It's about how bots have invaded social media and are passing themselves off as people. It's full of juicy stuff that makes me nostalgic for the early Eighties when William Gibson's short fiction was full of very similar inventions:

Dating sites provide especially fertile ground for socialbots. Swindlers routinely seek to dupe lonely people into sending money to fictitious suitors or to lure viewers toward pay-for-service pornography pages. Christian Rudder, a co-founder and general manager of OkCupid, said that when his dating site recently bought and redesigned a smaller site, they witnessed not just a sharp decline in bots, but also a sudden 15 percent drop in use of the new site by real people. This decrease in traffic occurred, he maintains, because the flirtatious messages and automated “likes” that bots had been posting to members’ pages had imbued the former site with a false sense of intimacy and activity. “Love was in the air,” Mr. Rudder said. “Robot love.”

But I especially like the final paragraph:

But the bots are likely to venture into ours, said Tim Hwang, chief scientist at the Pacific Social Architecting Corporation, which creates bots and technologies that can shape social behavior. “Our vision is that in the near future automatons will eventually be able to rally crowds, open up bank accounts, write letters,” he said, “all through human surrogates.”

Did you catch that?  We're creating surrogates that will use us as surrogates.  There are people working today to create bots that will enlist us to do their labor for them!

There's a name for people who obey the whims of others without recompense, of course.  It's "slave."

So the push to create machines to enslave humanity has already begun!  Truly, the next hundred years are going to be the Science Fiction Century.

You can read the entire essay here.

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My LoneStarCon Schedule -- Annotated!

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Those who follow this blog on a semi-regular basis are probably aware that I tend to get around to reporting on public appearances the day before or three days after the event itself.  So I'm really ahead of the curve here, because I'm posting my Worldcon schedule (characterized by a friend as ("unofficial but reliable") below.

Lightly annotated for your amusement.

Friday
How to Sell to Ellen Datlow(Guest of Honor, Panel), Fri 20:00 - Fri 21:00

Panelists:Gardner DozoisEileen Gunn (M)Caroline SpectorMichael Swanwick
This one is astonishingly simple:  Write a really, really good story.  We should be able to wrap it up in five minutes.
Saturday
How to Write a Short Story (Industry, Panel), Sat 11:00 - Sat 12:00 Panelists:Kij JohnsonVylar Kaftan (M)James Patrick KellyCat RamboMichael Swanwick
This one, on the other hand, will take weeks to cover, even superficially.

Autographing   Sat 13:00 - Sat 14:00Michael Swanwick
I sit behind a table and shmooze while scribbling my name in books.
 Reading), Sat 15:00 - Sat 16:00Michael Swanwick 
Oh, God.  I've got to finish a story quick!
The Leisure Society: Phantom or Just around the Corner? (Real World, Panel), Sat 19:00 - Sat 20:00,  Panelists:Fred Lerner (M)Mark OshiroMichael SwanwickShanna Swendson
Wow!  This really takes me back.  It's the kind of substantive speculative panel that used to be standard at conventions. 

Sunday
The Twain Shall Meet: Samuel Clemens and SF/F (Literature, Panel), Sun 11:00 - Sun 12:00, 006B Panelists:Gardner DozoisEileen Gunn (M)John PurcellMichael SwanwickTakayuki TatsumiWalter Jon Williams
Ol' Sam was a really, really good SF writer.   

Plucking Flowers in the Stranger Realms (Literature, Panel), Sun 14:00 - Sun 15:00 Panelists:Nancy Kress (M)Joe LansdaleMichael SwanwickJacob Weisman
I have no idea what this is. Presumably I'll find out before the panel begins.

Kaffeeklatsch  Sun 16:00 - Sun 17:00, Riverview (Riverwalk)Michael Swanwick
Just hanging out and chewing the fat with fans.  The Riverwalk is a very nifty place indeed.  I almost said 'cool,' but given what the temperature is likely to be . . .

SIGMA in Action (Science, Panel), Sun 17:00 - Sun 18:00, 007A (160) (Convention Center)Panelists:Arlan Andrews (M)Charles E. GannonG. David NordleyMichael Swanwick
Did you know that Frederik Pohl used to do all kinds of speculative consulting for the U.S. government?  If he could, so can I.
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"In The Turning Of A Hand . . ."

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Almost a third of a century I wrote my first collaborative with Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann.  Almost a quarter of a century ago, "Touring" was reprinted in Strange Days, a very fine collection of Gardner's stories and I wrote an introduction to it.

The poet Du Fu once wrote, "These fifty years have passed/In the turning of a hand."  That's how it feels to me to realize how much time has passed. In a nostalgic mood I looked up the intro.  And I thought . . . why not share it?

So here it is:



It was a clear, starry night and Jack Dann came breezing into town at the wheel of a limousine twenty feet long, with a big cigar stuck in one corner of his expansive grin...  That’s the way I remember it, anyhow.  Maybe the details are a little off, but if so the blame lies not in me but in reality for failing to live up to those rare and wonderful times when Jack blew into Philadelphia and we all sat around in Gardner and Susan’s tiny Quince Street apartment, laughing and talking big and kicking ideas around.  Making literature.
There is no way to exaggerate what a glamorous guy Jack was when I first met him.  No kidding, and not that he’d believe it, but I’ve seen drop-dead gorgeous women follow him down the street with their eyes.  Gardner, on the other hand, was his bohemian opposite, a gargantuan figure with long blond hair, faded jeans, cowboy hat and a black t-shirt reading PROPHET OF DOOM.  They were each larger than life. 
I, meanwhile, was a skinny young freak (hippiedom was gone by the time I came along) with raggedy clothes and hair down below my shoulders, still unpublished and desperate to connect with the live-wire core stuff of literature, that fiercely-beating heart of language that makes prose sing.  Now, keep in mind that Gardner and Jack didn’t just write just any stories and novels but works that grappled with the key questions of existence, guilt, and identity.  It didn’t matter that Jack wasn’t yet getting the big-buck contracts his fiction would later receive, or that Gardner was forever a breath away from penury.  They were writing things that mattered, stories so intrinsic to their insights and experiences that nobody else could have written them.
Oh man, did I want to be like them!
Imagine how I felt, then, when Jack and Gardner informed me thatwe three were going to collaborate on “Touring” together.  The two of them had plotted out a story that required a lot of specialized rock and roll lore and, by chance, I’d recently researched Janis Joplin for what was to be my first published story, “The Feast of Saint Janis.”  With the low cunning of working writers, they decided they could save themselves a mountain of work by dealing me in.
I was only too happy to oblige.  I wrote down every word they told me and started in on the first draft.  Which any writer will tell you is the hardest and least satisfying part of writing.  It’s where all the ugliest prose exists, the stuff that’s got to be revised out of existence before the story is fit for human eyes.  Later drafts are where all the fun and most of the art lies.
So Jack and Gardner got their money’s worth out of the deal.  But what was in it for me?  The chance to learn from the best.  Midway through the process, I made a major structural change -- I forget now exactly what -- and boasted to Jack that I’d done something surprising with the story.  After a brief pause, Jack said, “I know what you did.  But you’re going to find that it doesn’t work that way.”
That’s how sharp these guys were.  Jack could see not only the way the story ought to go, but which false trails would present themselves to lead me astray.  He was right, of course.  I knew that instantly, just by his tone of voice.  But I monkeyed around with the story for a week or so, doing it the wrong way just so I could see why it wouldn’t work.
“Touring” was the beginning of my postgraduate education.  And (this, too, is part of the working writer’s education) I got paid for it, too.

Copyright 1990 by Michael Swanwick. This essay originally appeared in Slow Dancing Through Time. 
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Home From The Shore

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As always, I've been on the road again.  It's late Monday evening and I've just returned from Beach Haven, New Jersey -- Where Nothing Can Ever Happen and Usually Doesn't.  Which is why I went.

Actually, I being a little hard on the Shore.  I saw lots and lots of pelicans flying along the shoreline, and that's something that would have sent the local Audubon Society into paroxysms of glee mere years ago.  And dolphins, which were rare as rare mere decades ago.  Also the Staten Island Ferry.

No explanations for that last.

So I am home and happy and wish the same for y'all.

More substantive posts soon.


Above: the view from the back of where we were staying.  The front overlooked the ocean.

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The Pyrosome of Apology

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Holy cow!  I almost didn't make a Friday post.

I also missed posting on Wednesday, but by the rules I set up for myself when I started this blog, Wednesdays were always optional.  It just chanced that there was usually so much happening in my life that I pretty much always had something to say.

What happened, I'm afraid, is that I've been working steadily and productively on the next novel . . . and when that happens, all else goes by the boards.  Even the pleasant minor vice of blogging. 

So, in way of an apology, allow me to offer the above video of a 60-foot-long jet-propelled salp called a pyrosome. Very cool stuff.  Your mileage on the background music may vary.

You can read the explanation here.

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Late, Brief, and I Fear Depressing

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Indulge me, please.  This matters to me.

I have the usual things to post but I cannot bring myself to do so.  Late last night I arrived home from a pleasant weekend jaunt to find an email informing me that a college friend -- someone I'd only seen once in all the years between -- died and was cremated two weeks ago.

Dear God.

You wouldn't think this would hit me so hard.  But Tim was such a good man, made of such solid stuff, and had such a puckish sense of humor.  Always in the back of my mind was a sense that he was out there somewhere, and happy, and that the world was a better place for that.

Now Tim Tomlinson is gone and there's a hole in the world the exact shape and size he was.

Forty years have passed like the turning of a hand.  For the first time, I feel old.  I mourn this friend as I would have had he died back then.

I will not tell you stories, sum up his character, or try to tell you why you are the poorer for his passing.  Such tales are for those who knew him.  John Donne had it right:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed way by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thy own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

When first I read those words, I was moved by their majesty but too young to understand them well.  Now I know that death is part of the price of admission, that life is hard stuff, meant for heroes only, and that we are all made profound by our final destiny.

Turtle, as we all called him back when, will be missed.  All you who never knew him would mourn his passing, if only you could.
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Gregory Frost -- Geek of the Week!

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My good friend Gregory Frost has received the highest honor that Geekadelphia has to bestow -- that of Geek of the Week!

Greg is probably best renowned for his Celtic fantasies Tain and Remscella , and for the novels Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet, both set in what may be the most inventive fantasy milieu ever created . . . a world of shallow oceans and rare, scattered islands, connected by a web of bridges, each span of which contains its own society and culture.  So that, if you wish, you can walk from 1920s Manhattan to Imperial China and from there into the Raj.

I really love those books.  God grant that he writes more for us.

I'd write more about Greg's other books -- and his stories! you should all buy his collection Attack of the Jazz Giants immediately! -- but I've been running late this week and if I want to get this posted today, I'll simply have to do the man less than justice.

You can find the interview here.


And elsewhere . . . 

Janis Ian is Kickstarting the audio book of Catherine M. Wilson's When Women Were Warriors .  Or, rather, volume 1 of the series, The Warrior's Path .

Janis approached Wilson with the idea simply because she (Janis) loved the stuffings out of the book and has since it first came out.  Having a fan like that is always pleasant for a writer, and doubly so when the fan turns out to be a musical icon.  But having Janis Ian actively anxious to do your audiobook has got to have been a major moment for CMW.

I do a lot of traveling and listen to a lot of audiobooks and I've become painfully aware that not all audiobook readers are created equal. Janis is right at the top of the field.  Figuratively!  The audiobook she made of Society's Child , her autobiography, won an Emmy.

So if you're a fan of either artist . . . why not take a look and see if you're interested?

You can find the Kickstarter page explaining everything here.

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Tor Party! Tonight! And You're Invited!

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I'll be in Manhattan tonight for a publishing party celebrating Tor.com's fifth anniversary.  I presume you all know about Tor.com, which functions as a combination fiction e-zine and high-end e-fanzine.  Which is to say, several first-rate stories every month (when you pay top rates, you get first pick), along with lots of columns and articles about matters stfictional.  As they used to say, long before my day.

This is the sort of publishing event that professional writers attend on a semi-regular basis.  Except that this particular one is not exclusive.  If you want to attend, you may -- and, indeed, should.  Because if this is the sort of event that seems to be cool to you, you're the kind of person that Tor is throwing the party for.

Here's what they have to say for themselves:

For the milestone of turning 5 Earth-years old, we’ll be offering up complimentary drinks, Tor.com swag, free book giveaways, other special birthday goodies, but also, a show. At the start of the festivities we’ll be hosting Lev Grossman, Ellen Datlow, Genevieve Valentine, and Michael Swanwick in an exclusive SF trivia contest. Hosted by Ryan Britt, and featuring secret prizes and exciting stakes, this spectacle is not to be missed. Come place your bets on your contenderIt will all go down at Housing Works Bookstore and Café in New York City on Wednesday July 24th, 6:30 PM. All the Tor.com staff will be on hand to hang out, have a glass of complimentary wine/beer, and talk about the greatness of the last five years. Join us for this once-in-this-universe special birthday party! And if you  attend, be sure to say hi.

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Edison Remembered

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I was in New York for a family christening this weekend, so on the way home I stopped by Thomas Edison National Historic Park in West Orange, NJ.  A place which, inexplicably, I had never visited before.

Alas, the park is only open Wednesdays through Saturdays, but I prowled around the outside anyway.  Through the chain link fence I saw a slab of the historic concrete from the first concrete highway:




Even cooler, I saw the reproduction of the first film studio ever built, a building quickly nicknamed the "Black Maria" because it looked like a police lockup van and because it was so hot and crowded inside that the actors said they'd rather be in the real thing:



The building was set on wheels because, when filming, part of the roof was hinged open and the building was turned to let in sunlight. 

Besides the brick laboratory building, there remains of the complex only one other major building:  A crumbling concrete monster where batteries were manufactured, which most likely survives because the environmental cleanup costs would be exorbitant.

I cannot tell you how moved I was.  My father was an engineer for General Electric (which is what Edison's company became), and I grew up around and sometimes in these kinds of buildings.  This is the Lyonesse of my youth and (a good case could be made) the garden from which much of the science fiction genre grew.

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