Arthur D. Hlavaty

A Thing of the past

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 15:09:22 GMT

I am more and more concurring with Barry Malzberg’s idea that science fiction was a 20th-century phenomenon. Back then the first approximation of the fantasy/science fiction difference was that fantasy was about exciting but impossible things like dragons and magick swords but science fiction was about our real future: space flight, robot maids, and artificial intelligence. Now we know better.

OK, so I’m cherry picking. Fifty years ago I was on the side of the Buck Rodgers dreamers who wanted to dodge the drafts, not necessarily the military one but the tedious business of generating from scratch a first draft, second draft,…perhaps ad infinitum. We dreamed that the gods or the scientists would give us a Magickal Screen, a device that would create a First Draft in the Sky that we could revise, correct, rearrange and then have reproduced materially without further effort on our part….As you may have guessed, I am writing these words on such a contrivance.

It’s the missing parts of the dreams that hurt. One needs little more organic intelligence than Elon Musk* to see that we are trapped at the bottom of a gravity well, with no hope of getting any further that invading one or two neighboring wells.

More than twenty years ago someone said, “Artificial intelligence is twenty years away…and always will be.” That prophecy has been fulfilled. What humanity gets better and better at is creating ways for superhumanly fast computing to look like the product of actual human thought. As Charles Stross noted from looking up “Charles Stross,” the more enhanced the interrogation becomes, the greater the distance from mere consensus reality. As he put it, “They deliver a lump of text in the shape of an answer.”

*Intelligence, not feral, zero-sum business skills

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The Doctor

Mon, 18 Jan 2016 11:21:14 GMT

When I was a child, I had my mind warped by Buck Rogers Stuff that told me we’d land a man on the moon, have small cheap machines that could do arithmetic better and faster than we could, and, perhaps least plausibly, have a president of the United States who was known to have African ancestors. On Martin Luther King Day, Mike Glyer looks at civil rights as a natural part of sf.

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SIDRAT

Sat, 31 Oct 2015 10:24:42 GMT

What to call the teleporter?

Thanx to Charlie's Diary

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SFWA gets another one right.

Wed, 04 Dec 2013 16:18:17 GMT

Samuel R. Delany is the latest SF Grand Master.

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The Truth About Science Fiction Writers

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 10:28:26 GMT

as revealed by Michael Swanwick: They don't hate it when others succeed.

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Alternate

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:05:11 GMT

In a better universe, Alice Sheldon wrote cautionary sf set in a world where they still had cancer, and had to use fossil fuels, because they discouraged women from becoming scientists.

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Like living in science fiction about science fiction

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:09:29 GMT

Gollancz, the SF and Fantasy imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, announces the launch of the world's largest digital SFF library, the SF Gateway, which will make thousands of out-of-print titles by classic genre authors available as eBooks.

Thanx to Andrew Porter on various fannish mailing lists.

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Whodunit revived

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 14:12:02 GMT

Science fiction is a Fabulous Invalid, and one of the times it died was 1960. Earl Kemp conducted an inquest, called "Who Killed Science Fiction?" It's been reprinted, and Bud Webster reviews it.

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Vision

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 11:49:23 GMT

Charlie Stross suggests that we think about Utopia.

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As others see us*

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 23:16:48 GMT

The Hugo Awards, with contemporary literature's most uncompromisingly phallic award statue, have been announced.

--Bookslut

*Stolen from Ansible

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Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:18:43 GMT

My review of a new bio of one of my favorite writers, Eric Frank Russell:

( Read more... )

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Happy 100th birthday!

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:27:29 GMT

John W. Campbell.

Perhaps the most astounding thing about him was the cat herding he did in editing Heinlein, Asimov, Hubbard, Sturgeon, van Vogt, et al. all at once.

Thanx to Michael J. Walsh on Facebook

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Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:52:21 GMT

Frederik Pohl remembers Doc Smith

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Astounding

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:21:05 GMT

Frederik Pohl remembers John W. Campbell.

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This could be fun

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:37:31 GMT

Mickey Zucker Reichert to write new Susan Calvin books.

Thanx to james_nicoll

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Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:57:06 GMT

50s sf: an adapted human with foot-long claws holding a small device that has a room full of computing power.

Thanx to Majikthise.

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Sat, 23 May 2009 12:16:33 GMT

Shakesville speaks up for being unreasonable. I'm with them. As George Bernard Shaw said, reasonable people accept the world as it is, so progress is the work of unreasonable people.

I got my unreasonableness from science fiction. I imagine the time when people look back with horror and condescension at a primitive world where people had to be different sexes to marry and we couldn't just throw all our garbage in the Recycler. When I started reading the stuff, it was people having to be the same "race" to marry and not having cheap pocket-sized machines to do arithmetic better than we could.

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Mon, 11 May 2009 12:48:45 GMT

I had forgotten how much I missed optimistic Science Fiction.

Thanx to andrewducker.

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