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Empire of Dreams and Miracles
I'm a regular reader of the sci-fi magazines, and I have to say, the stories in this collection are so much better than 95% of what gets published in those magazines. Maybe it's because the big-circulation magazines are so desperate for readership that they prefer to publish only stories from well-known authors, and many of them seem to use the short-story format only as a place to dump ideas that just don't quite make it into novels. The unknown authors in this anthology, on the other hand, seem to come up with fresh ideas and take pains to craft good short stories around them. This is probably what OSC is referring to when he writes in the foreword to the collection that in order "to find deep novelty, readers of science fiction must find new writers as well as new tales from old friends."
Okay, enough of that. What are the stories like? There's a lot here that Slashdot readers would find provocative and interesting. My favorite in the collection is "Twenty-Two Buttons" (my first reaction when I saw this title was: On a mouse or keyboard? Alas, that's not the sort of buttons we are talking about). The story takes place in a future where pollution, crime, and lawlessness have turned the Outside into a myth, and people spend all of their time inside their houses. They manage to go to work and school, find friends and lovers, and have contact with people outside the family only through the Net (ok, ok, so some of us already are living that way, but still), which is heavily censored and monitored by the government -- in fact, the story implies that the dangerousness of the Outside is exaggerated in order to justify the government's control over the Net (draw your own paranoid analogies with the present). This has some fascinating consequences. For example, children make play dates over the Net and rely on VR projections to learn to socialize. Families meet each other through a kind of Net dating service for whole families, and though two families may be from opposite ends of the continent, they manage to sit down "together" to have dinner, the VR screen going down the middle of the table. (I actually kind of wish that were true. Why should I be stuck with the people who happen to have moved in next to me?) Since physically moving yourself and your possessions from one place to another is so expensive, once you are married you are pretty much truly stuck. The main character in the story had an affair over the Net because he connected with the woman he could only touch through the mediation of technology so much better than his wife, but when the affair was discovered he was too afraid of the Outside to join the other woman. In the end the other woman did in fact leave the protected life on the Net and go Outside, and she tantalizingly sent him the buttons from her blouse, inviting him to "come out and play." (The actual story is so much better than my crappy summary, sorry.) This is the story in the collection with the most un-sci-fi-ish prose style, but it actually works really well.
"Carthaginian Rose" is based on an idea from Ray Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines. Basically, the idea is that we'll soon (as in within 30 years) be able to scan people's brains into computers powerful enough to simulate neural activities -- and instant immortality! The scanning technology initially will be kind of crude, and so we might need to do it destructively on some people to try it out (Kurzweil speculated that a person facing imminent death may volunteer to be the first test subject). The story takes this idea and speculates on what kind of person that first volunteer would be and how someone might be driven to happily, willingly, and even work hard at being destructively scanned.
The title story, "Empire of Dreams and Miracles," is probably the craziest story of the bunch. It involves a future so far off that people literally kill for sport (the victims are then brought back to life). The entertainment industry is centered around competition among the killer-artists to bring the most pleasure and novelty to each kill, and the psychology of a culture with no real death but a lot of colorful imitations of it is described with a great deal of detail and imagination. The images are eye-popping and they come at you one after another, giving you almost no time to absorb each one (so you end up feeling a little like the sensation-saturated inhabitants of this future). The fascination with violence, death, and the sexual energies in both can be seen as a satire of our own world or just really good mood setting.
"Who Lived in a Shoe" is about alien house hunting. For any slashdot readers who have looked for a dwelling the story will resonate. It's a funny, light piece that is less sci-fi than fantasy. Some of the houses that the main characters visit on their search may well appeal to the crowd here. This story shows the wide range and styles in this collection.
There are eight other stories in the collection, ranging from Twilight Zone-like horror to cosmology-as-religion. There are space stations and artificial intelligences, social commentary as well as pure fantasy. All of the stories are well-written short stories, not aborted attempts at novels or sketches that go nowhere. OSC wrote an introduction to each story and it's interesting to get his take on each.
To be sure, sometimes the writing in these stories is not as polished as one could wish, but you see that kind of roughness even in the mass-circulation magazines. After all, we are talking about sci-fi here, not the Atlantic Monthly. All in all, given the diverse range of ideas, characters, and styles in this collection and the fact that these are all fresh, new talents in the field, this is my second favorite short fiction anthology for the year (it was my first favorite anthology until Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life -- you just can't argue with all those Nebulas).
You can purchase Empire of Dreams and Miracles from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
And with the click of the mouse, your book is hurled from obscurity to the desktops of thousands of sci-fi geeks. Hooray!
Aside from Gene Wolfe, and Orson Scott Card, the Mormonist, where are the religious science fiction writers? Don't say they can't exist, there are religious programmers, like Larry Wall.
In the first story mentioned, "Twenty Two Buttons", a Catholic would laugh. Sorry, you can't get a consecrated host over the Net, a priest has to perform the miracle of Transubstiation, and you must get the host in person, after saying the secret Catholic password. So, Catholics would still need face to face meeting, sorry d00d.
The other story "Carthaginian Rose" completely ignores the existence of an immortal soul. You can't transfer a soul into a machine (Tracy Kidder's tome notwithstanding). Sorry, patently absurd.
I wish science fiction writers would think a little bit more about the world in which they inhabit, not everyone one is an introverted self hating geeek.
A. Rightmann
Certainly the stories described sound interesting. Although the themes for several sound more like amplifications than new ideas. I'm sure most of us can see links to "The Matrix" and "The Truman Show" in "Twenty-two Buttons".
As for the prime magazine comment, I think it's hard to break into the field because there is such a flood of junk that the editors do tend to give preference to those authors they have some reason to think can write a decent story.
I ran a semi-professional magazine (Radius) for a while, and while the funding was difficult, what really drove me out of the business was having to read through the slush pile. I'd get about 200 stories a month, and often would find only one or two that I could get all the way through. I can only imagine the headaches that the editors of "Asimov's" or "Analog" must get.
FWIW...
So getting some movie and TV people involved in a SF anthology qualifies as a "pedigree"? Can somebody explain the logic there? Why not get a horse trainer involved, or a skilled carpenter? They're equally relevant.
At least Card's for real. He hasn't written a line worth reading in years, but that doesn't mean his critical faculties have necessarily withered.
But listen here, listen: When people on Slashdot mistake TV drivel for SF, people who can read and write roll their eyes just like everybody else on Slashdot does when some jackass on CNN refers to a virus as a "computer bug".
Besides, even if Star Trek/Star Wars people were somehow names worth giving a damn about, so what? Their presence tells us nothing about the text. When you hire somebody to do cover art, you write a conctact and you send him a check when you see the deliverables. These guys do art for a living. If your money's green, they'll work for anybody.
The only people relevant to the quality of the thing are the people who wrote the stories and the editor who chose them. The rest is just marketing bullshit. Which Slashdot prides takes pride in ignoring. Ha ha ha.
I could do that, but like most I would rather skip the article and spend time jumping to conclusions and making unfounded accusations. Perhaps there should be a -1, RTFM score or something of the like.
I'm a regular reader of the sci-fi magazines, and I have to say, the stories in this collection are so much better than 95% of what gets published in those magazines.
My! You certainly have raised the bar for fiction! Good as the best 5% of science fiction magazine stories, you say!
Geez, that's just embarrassing.
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This is clearly true. But in a lot of ways, I wish I could have known the real Hitler better. So much dementia and hatred, I'm sure he would have been a blast to go cruisin for hookers with... until he put 37 bullets into my spine for getting him the wrong flavor snapple or something. Crazy fuckin' Hitler.
I alternate between posting +5 and -1 Comments. Karma: +53 -47 = 6
Adrew Greeley (a Catholic priest) has writen some science fiction. One that I've read is: Final Planet .
I suspect that your not so much interested in religious science fiction writers as much as science fiction writers religious in the same way you are
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Do you really think anyone falls for this stuff anymore?
You're so much better than the rest of us. You pretend to be a retard so you can laugh and laugh when people believe you really are a retard.
I pity you, troll.
This will alleviate your need to be a pompous, arrogant, elitist know-it-all Lunix zealot
I would like to see proof of this, as I find it difficult to believe.
I alternate between posting +5 and -1 Comments. Karma: +53 -47 = 6
I stopped reading stuff associated with OSC because of his obvious creationist agenda, and his less than subtle hints about what is right and what is wrong in his view of things.
He is an amazing storyteller but:
I don't like it when SF is used as a platform for pro-life/creationist crap.
By choosing SF as a 'genre' I assume that I can stay clear from writers with agendas like that, and I think that this can be qualified as 'false flag' deployment.
Of course writers are free to do so but then I'd rather send my cash somewhere else to support writers that have their feet a little more on the ground.
Next thing we know there will be SF without evolution and SF with 7 day creation bits in it.
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Note that religions do change to adjust with the times. It used to be that all Catholic masses were spoken in Latin; this is obviously no longer the case. Considering the state of the society described in the review, its not all that hard to imagine that the church might change its beliefs in order to better ensure the safety of its members.
In regards to the question of the immortal soul, why exactly can't a soul be transferred to a machine? Strictly speaking, the human body is a machine; its simply biological rather than mechanical.
Read Walter Miller, Jr. Canticle for St. Leibowitz should satisfy your religion. and good writing. he wrote a sequel a few (40 or so) years later, and it is good as well.
--------- Never ask a geek why, unles you REALLY want to know.
The publisher lists 100 science fiction books you have to read. Very good list. There's a few more by Greg Bear that I would love to add to that list, but then it wouldn't be as diverse as it is.
Gosh, I'm so friggin' sick of seeing .Net advertisements on /. Undermines the credibility of the entire site.
I know it's hard to be biased against advertisers with deep pockets in these times, but please please quit this crap.
Howard Fast has written science fiction from a Buddhist perspective.
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A- His teeth
I don't know if I should mod you up as funny, or down as flame-bait.
not everyone one is an introverted self hating geeek
You are right. Some of us are not catholic.
No, they're a bunch of self-loathing sinners.
They were one-hit wonders. Their great work was called "The Holy Bible".
Maybe between Virgin Birth, Immaculate Conception, Ressurection, Eternal Life, "the body of christ", in addition to the magical transformation of "one who has disagreed" to "the most supreme evil being in the universe" ala Lucifer, they've said all they wanted to say. You've still got all the sex, rape, genocide, and talking to other-wordly beings, too.
--mandi
They both went down in flames! LOL mod me up +5 funny.
Cmdr Taco I love your hairy big toe.
Brits have filthy teeth YUCK YUCK
I love touching Terry Hillson's sexy pantyhosed legs YUM YUM
He was a liberal idiot
Well not everyone has your views of what's absurd. These stories are fiction and what one writer could see as the future another my not see that at all. Time change, the future could end up in a number of infinite possibilites. That is the fun of sci-fi. There are plenty of visions I disagree with as well, but they can very well be good stories. Open up a little.
BTW, not trying to nitpick, I make spelling and grammar mistakes all the time but where you said "...patently absurd." Did you mean "blatantly" absurd or so absurd that it could be patented?
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
it might be the SCIENCE bit in science fiction that keeps the religious hordes away :)
Seriously though, there are tons of scientists that are also religious, I know that and I have no problem with that (though I'm glad I don't have to reconcile an internal belief system like religion with an in depth knowledge of cold hard science).
Fact is that the SF audience usually prefers to read stories that make one (or maybe two or so) assumptions about the way the future could develop and that religion is mostly trying to find its roots in the past rather than the present. There is some SF set in the past but not much and it usually stays miles away from any interference with religious characters or times.
(again, there are some exceptions here).
This alone precludes many would be religious people from writing SF because they would not be able or willing to solidly separate belief from assumption. If you can believe in an all powerful deity that creates whole universes in a couple of days and you and all your predecessors as an afterthought you probably don't need much more in the fiction department anyway.
A miracle is a very easy way out of any kind of situation, and the various religions have all kinds of history that testifies to their using just that in order to get themselves out of hairy stuff. (and persecution if that failed).
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He's written more fantasy than science fiction, but Tracy Hickman (co-creator of the Dragonlance series) is a member of the LDS (Mormon) church. The Darksword series he co-wrote with Margaret Weis has a few religious elements to it (and a slightly SF twist), but I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for....
What is the most intelligent thing Wellstone ever said?? "Oh shit we are going down Arghhhhhhhhhh"
yeah... right next to the "toys are possessed by magic and go on a rampage in Los Angeles" section...
Those who read the Marvel comics in the 80's will be interested to know that one of the principals here is Jim Shooter, the Editor-in-Chief in those times.
Shooter is a very skilled editor, and a very good writer in his own right, altough his authoritary style made a lot of enemies at the time.
One can find more info and a biography here.
The standard "9". Just like every other book reviewed.
Not a bad book, but not great.
Not to nitpick - but check the Mirriam Webster definition of patently and you will find that it is perfectly correctly used in this manner to mean 'obvious' or 'evident'. I've always used patently and blatently completely interchangably - because it is possible to do so, not because they sound alike..
:)
Back to the dictionary for you
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Saf news Liberal Senator Wellstone dead at 56
Um, what, exactly, does an immortal soul do? Name something that it provides, or function it performs, or some means that it makes its presence felt.
Damage to the brain damages self and consciousness in fundamental ways. People who suffer some kinds of strokes lose half their world, literally. They lose, for example, the concept of 'left'. They only eat half of what's on their plates. Ask them to imagine walking down their street, they only describe the houses on the right. Ask them to mentally "turn around", and they forget the houses they just described and start talking about the ones on the other side of the street.
Look up Broca's and Wernicke's Aphasia. People with Broca's aphasia can understand language, but can't speak. Damage another part of the brain, and you get Wernicke's aphasia, where they can speak, but can't understand. They speak in "word salad". They don't even realize they aren't making sense. Put two of them together and they'll have a whole conversation of nonsense.
The more you read up on neurological problems, the weirder it gets. (Almost any book by Oliver Sacks is good for this.) I don't know of an intellectual faculty that can't be damaged, if not eliminated, by damage to the brain.
If there is a soul, what can it do? Moreover, how can whatever's left after my brain is gone be called "me" in any real sense? Why should I care what happens to the soul when I die? All my memories, emotions, and consciousness seem tied up in my brain.
"To believe that consciousness can survive the wreck of the brain is like believing that 70 mph can survive the wreck of the car." - Frank Zindler
(This leads to a whole different problem with 'transmigrating' to a machine - that might be a perfect copy of me, but I would still be dead. But that's separate from any 'immortal soul' speculation.)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Well, since I don't think the immortal soul exists, that's just fine by me. Of course, I bet you'd be one of the people who'd be all about turning uploaded people off and wiping their programs because they're not really people since they don't have an immortal soul. They be the newest group of people to suffer horribly under the gentle ministrations of those who don't consider them 'human'.
Sounds like the basis of a good SF story about religious nuts who get their jollies torturing virtual people. Would stand up to be the first in line to stand up to push the buttons to cause these people 'virtual' pain so you could watch them scream? After all, they have no souls, and can't really be in pain. It's just entertainment.
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It's here: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/lang.html.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I am paying $10 per joke
When, oh, when will he bring back the Alvin Maker series? Alvin series is my favorite after the Ender's Games...
Isaac Asimov was well-known to be Jewish, and made no attempts to hide it. In fact, he once wrote and got published a book of Jewish science fiction, largely to prove it could be done. I don't remember the title of the collection any more, but one of the stories in it was, "The Mazel Tav Revolution". (I'm not sure of the spelling on "Tav", it might have been "Tof".)
Of course now Dr. A put his religion to the Ultimate Test some years ago.
Much of Frank Herbert Sr's work was religiously steeped, as was Phillip Jose Farmer's. I've never actually read any of it, but I get the impression that in contrast, L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction is strictly secular. (Let's not go further on this one, please.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Well thanks, I didn't bother to check to dictionary. You learn something new everyday!
./ers enjoy. I just saw patent in the word. I'll assume the :) at the end marked your post as good intentions. ;)
I was not trying to nitpick and the smart ass tone most
It always difficult get the right tone across text based communication.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
Jeez, there's always one... Transsubstantion is a miracle only if you regard it as such. Show me a wafer turned to human meat and we'll continue this little specific discussion. For your other points:
a) The catholic church may change its rites
b) Future generations may have a different concept of the soul - preferably xml compatible.
Science Fiction isn't about maintainig orthodoxy. Get on with it.
The only skin on a computer should be porn.
I actually wasn't all that impressed by it simply because it could have been so much better. With Card as an editor I would have expected some better writing. The stories had great potential though. For the most part they just fell short of the mark for me. That said, it's definitely not one of those books you'll regret reading, but not going to be one of the best you ever read either. I think the reviewer is being a bit optomistic about the quality.
I'm more interested to see if Shadow Puppets is going to be any better than the last junk he's pushed out based on Ender's Game universe.
Cheaper at Amazon: $10.47 [associate]
> The other story "Carthaginian Rose" completely ignores the existence of an immortal soul. You can't transfer a soul into a machine (Tracy Kidder's tome notwithstanding). Sorry, patently absurd.
I don't see much evidence that you can put a soul into a body, either. Did you have some evidence that one is possible and the other isn't?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I haven't been able to find any reference for this, and sadly, unless Terry Bisson knows, it might be quite lost. The book was apparently completed by Bisson after Miller died, and there is on reading it, a slightly gummy feeling of amalgamation; I can't quite tell whether it was rewoven altogether from the author's notes, or merely brushed up and missing chapters/sections added.
More significantly, I wish I could tell whether the book, in general, was written shortly after, or perhaps 15 or 20 years after Canticle and left in some musty cabinet not to be discovered until after his passing; it would be illuminating to see which of the changes in writing style and theme resulted from Miller's changes in perspective over time, and what, was in fact Bisson.
It's even possible (from my reading) that the entire book was simply one chapter of Canticle that got left out of the original, or which the author might have written some time afterward, and not a stand-alone book, which Bisson felt he had to expand out to make it publishable.
The story itself is a minor historical footnote in the history of the Church after the flame deluge; as were nearly all of the stories from the original, and to me, its as breathtaking as any one of the earlier parts, but still doesn't feel like a Novel in its own right.
All of the previous is speculation; most of the reviews that I've seen assume it was a separate book written by Miller in the 1990s, and handed specifically to Bisson on his deathbed. I haven't found any of Bisson's words on the matter, if anyone here does know, I'd really love to hear.
First, nothing begins if not opening
See, this is your problem...you see science as cold and hard. Science is, of course, warm and cuddly!
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
> Seriously though, there are tons of scientists that are also religious
That goes uncontested, though it would be interesting to know whether there are any productive scientists who are religious fanatics.
> Fact is that the SF audience usually prefers to read stories that make one (or maybe two or so) assumptions about the way the future could develop and that religion is mostly trying to find its roots in the past rather than the present. There is some SF set in the past but not much and it usually stays miles away from any interference with religious characters or times. (again, there are some exceptions here).
Religion appears frequently in Jack Vance's SF. Almost aways as the butt of satire, though.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
First you've got to explain why there is an idea of a soul at all. Transferring the mind into the machine is an idea of materialistic philosophy, and a soul has no existence within that framework. Mind is a product of the material, not the supernatural.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
The other story "Carthaginian Rose" completely ignores the existence of an immortal soul. You can't transfer a soul into a machine (Tracy Kidder's tome notwithstanding). Sorry, patently absurd.
Hmmm... not, however, quite so absurd as the idea of an intangible, immortal soul.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
This book is pretty much pure sci-fi. A good jumpstart into the series, but has little to no religious content. It's also about to be a movie!
With the collaboration with Gentry Lee, this book introduces many religious themes. But not much.
Last of the collaborated works.
Rumour has it that A.C.C doesn't feel comfortable with the religious angles that Gentry Lee wanted to take, so make this the last of the collaborative books. And hands over the Rama reigns for Gentry Lee to continue in his own style.
Gentry Lee is now free to express his version of Sci-Fi meets Religion in the Rama universe.
This is the last book in the Rama series and also one of the more controversal ones as far as comments go on Amazon.
Minor correction: it's called A Canticle for Leibowitz, not St. Leibowitz
This really goes back to the Soul a.k.a. Ghost in the Ghost in the Shell anime movie, and new TV series.
For those you havn't seen it. The series takes place in the future. People are able to get cyborg parts, and even transfer their Ghost (soul) into a mechanical body. The movie is very well done and has great animation, and if you find the story vagley interesting you should pickup the manga (illustrated novel). It goes into a lot more detail and has many things that were cut from the movie.
The issue I see with transfering your soul to a machine is that if it's just data could it not be replicated and then you have a double? Are both serperate souls or two parts of one? If it is two part of a single soul are you responsible for what your other part does? Hmm.. an interesting defence for O.J.... "It wasn't me, it was a copy of me because I'm a cyborg.
In Terry Bisson's own words:
First, nothing begins if not opening
What was the most intelligent thing that you ever said: "Holy Fuck! That's got to be one of the biggest turds ever!"
Mormon on LDS where can I sign up? Hmmm.. being Dyslexic makes the world a much more interesting place.
In Catholic theology, priests do not perform the miracle of transubstantiation (please note the correct spelling). Only God can perform miracles. The Church -- the people of the Catholic faith -- IS the incarnation of Christ and God. The priest is nothing more than a person who officiates the sacrament.
Just as priests can officiate private masses (as monastic priests will often do), there is nothing really preventing "tele-sacraments". Many masses are already broadcast to different buildings or rooms when the physical facilities are not enough to accomodate everyone of the Church community in the same physical presence. People have received the eucharist in their homes for more than a millenium when they were too ill or infirm to make it to the public Mass.
As a Catholic theologian, I can easily see Catholic practice shaping itself to fit in a world as described in "Twenty Two Buttons." I certainly wouldn't invite such a world, or such changes to the practice of sacraments in the Church, but it is not laughable.
As for the issue of transferring an immortal soul to a machine, I'm not clear on what theological grounds you are making such an assertion.
The body is the vessel of the sacred soul, and both body and soul are resurrected in the rapture. I won't question that human bodies are sacred.
Nonetheless, there are theological accomodations already for people who have incomplete bodies -- either from birth or from accident. A person with an artificial heart or without legs won't be left behind during the resurrection simple because their physical body is incomplete. In the resurrection we will all have bodies in the image and likeness of God, as Adam and Eve were in Eden. Who is to say that there can't be a transfer of one's consciousness and soul to a machine in a medical emergency? How is this different from someone who has had a heart transplant, or who gets artificial limbs?
Impossible?
The Catholic Church is all about the celebration of the impossible.
God became a regular man. Ridiculous.
God died. Absurd.
The dead God came back from the dead. Impossible.
This incarnation, death, and resurrection is played out again in a substantial way every day through the sacraments. Laughable.
These are the tenets of Catholicism.
You give Catholics too much credit when you suggest that they wrote the Bible. The Catholics merely embraced the book of another religion and then ripped it to shreds to create their own, originally fucked up religion.
For all their history of persecuting heathens and pagans, it should be noted that Catholicism is a prime example of paganism. They have their divine trinity, and then a shit load of minor deities known as saints. Though the worship of such false deities is verboten, Catholics skirt the issue by saying that the saints are merely mediating their prayers to their high god.
Rama the game http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =1395571219
Sorry could find a direct link in a store.
No, it was the crying of his family.
Sone good questions, and they are not easily answered. I for one believe that the soul does exist, in the same way that a program loaded into memory exists. The brain seems to be an organic container for our soul (mind, will, and emotions) handling it'a interface with the body, interrupts, idle cycles, etc.
People very often confuse the King James Bible term "soul" for the concept of "spirit". Spirit is really the part that people mean when they talk about a non-quantifiable part of a human being. The part that they believe is associated with a person but not accounted for in the brain. I, for one, believe it exists, but that is a matter of faith not science.
Amazon has it cheaper then bn.com, $10.47
Here are some other books by Orson Scott Card:
Shadow Puppets
Ender's Game
Sarah
Note: Affiliate links
Hey man, rather than telling us about the Hollywood hirelings who art-directed it, why not tell us who *wrote* the stories in the damn thing?
(I've been reading Slashdot too long. When I saw the title "Eula Makes Up Her Mind" my first thought was that the story was about a Microsoft click-through license that had somehow attained sentience. shiver.)
Table of contents:
Foreword: The Unknown Possibilities of Existence By Lawrence M. Krauss
Introduction By Orson Scott Card
"They Go Bump" - David Barr Kirtley
"Twenty-Two Buttons" - Rebecca Carmi
"The Hanged Man, the Lovers and the Fool" - Justin Stanchfield
"Empire of Dreams and Miracles" - James Maxey
"The Messiah" - Carl Frederick
"Eula Makes Up Her Mind" - Daniel Conover
"Carthaginian Rose" - Ken Liu
"Rippers" - Chris Leonard
"The Compromise" - Rick Sabian
"Who Lived in a Shoe" - Andrew Rey
"The Prize" - David Barr Kirtley
"Great Theme Prisons of the World" - Carl Frederick
The Phobos Fiction Contest
About the Authors
About the Judges
"The secret Catholic password" - that is a joke, surely? I'm not Catholic (I'm CofE), my parents are 'mixed' (i.e. one Church of England (Protestant) and one Catholic), I had a Catholic education and I come from a part of the world where which flavour of religion you belong to is not important (Lancashire, England for those that are interested - most Catholic part of England and stock-full of Muslims, as well as run-of-the-mill CofE like me) but I've never heard of any secret password. I can't believe that my own Father and all the friends that I've had for the past 21 years (since I started High School) have kept this "secret password" from me. All those times at school and they never mentioned it! In fact, I suspect that you posted this in order to provoke the more fundamental (stupid?) sort of Protestant into sending some "Pope is AntiChrist" type of reply. What are you going to come up with next - Christian babies being sacrificed? That sort of sectarian nonsense kills people.
Actually I think most of you missed the serious point raised - intentionally or not - by the original author.
The comment raised the subject of religion insofar as it is a pervasive meme in human consciousness. So all sci-fi scenarios can only be made realistic by projecting them onto a world where the majority of the populace holds views which are irrational/faith based (take your pick). This has absolutely been a problem with a lot of sci-fi. The Foundation series has great ideas in it, but I don't really recognise much humanity in the humans in it.
There are a few series/books which take the religious metaphor on, amongst them The Dune Series, Uplift (to an extent), and Peter Hamiltons books.
There are other problems with a lot of sci-fi, a lot of the dialogue tends to ignore the emotional side of humanity, and so the books - apart from the ideas - are really quite stilted. So these days I find myself skimming through sci-fi really fast just to pick up the ideas. Then I go and read something that's actually well written.
it would be interesting to know whether there are any productive scientists who are religious fanatics.
I'm not really sure what your definition of fanatic is, but every few years, a poll is done to measure religious attitudes among scientists. The Washington Post had a story on it quite a while back...here are some highlights that should let you make up your own mind...
These contemporary researchers found that about four in 10 randomly selected scientists two years ago professed belief "in a personal God," almost exactly the same proportion as in 1916, Bishop reported.
One key result from the current study to a question that wasn't asked in 1916: More than half - 55 percent - endorsed the Darwinian view that "humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. God had no part in this process."
Bishop notes, however, that "a surprisingly large percentage (40 percent) subscribed to the 'theistic evolutionist' idea that 'humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including humankind's creation.'" Only 5 percent endorsed a creationist view that God created humans "pretty much in their present form at one time within the past 10,000 years."
(Emphasis added by me)
Original Washington Post Article
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Roger Zelazny did several books from various religious perspectives also, for example "Lord of Light," all from a decidedly SF perspective of course.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
The other story "Carthaginian Rose" completely ignores the existence of an immortal soul. You can't transfer a soul into a machine (Tracy Kidder's tome notwithstanding). Sorry, patently absurd.
If I had mod points today, I would have marked the post troll. To me the above is akin to saying "flying pigs can't possibly break the sound barrier. That's absurd."
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
never should have received degrees in the first place. The idea that truth can be received from some magic book passed down from a bunch of characters in robes a couple of thousand years ago flies in the face of the whole concept of determining truth through experimentation and observation. I wonder how many of this 5% of "scientists" really do hard science and how many are just technicians and/or practitioners of soft "sciences" like psychology. As for evolution being directed from outside, this was pretty much the idea of Henri Bergson expressed in his book, "Creative Evolution."
"Only 5 percent endorsed a creationist view that God created humans 'pretty much in their present form at one time within the past 10,000 years.'"
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Read the Ramma series from Clarke - it features a group of folks that eventually find out what the universe is all about - the conclusion satisfies the catholic character as much as the atheist characters. Well written; great read.
As for me, I think religion is pretty silly, being an atheist, especially religions rooted in the bible. Good science fiction is inspired by science, which I see as the "anti-religion".
Just my opinion - read Ramma, you won't be disapointed. My favorite series by Clarke, even if Kubrick didn't make a flick about the series...
Um, what, exactly, does an immortal soul do? Name something that it provides, or function it performs, or some means that it makes its presence felt.
"What is Jazz? Man, if you have to ask you'll never understand."
- Louis Armstrong
Some of us aren't Christians, for that matter.
Maybe the church was Reformatted Geek Orthodox?Times change. (Perhaps a consecrated cookie?)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I don't because those ads help support Slashdot. (I do kill DoubleClick ads, but that's over privacy issues.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Ted Chiang deals with a lot of religious and spiritual issues, though not in a typical fashion.
You are right. Some of us are not catholic.
As an introverted, self-hating geek, I resent the implication that I'm Catholic.
They be the newest group of people to suffer horribly under the gentle ministrations of those who don't consider them 'human'.
An AI shouldn't "suffer" at all when it's shut down or deleted. It might not be moral or humane to do so, but the AI doesn't suffer, it simply stops existing.
Sounds like the basis of a good SF story about religious nuts who get their jollies torturing virtual people. Would stand up to be the first in line to stand up to push the buttons to cause these people 'virtual' pain so you could watch them scream? After all, they have no souls, and can't really be in pain. It's just entertainment.
You're talking about sadists, not religious people.
Religous folks only enjoy pain when it's a sign of someone growing. A sinner showing pain at their sins is an improvement upon the sinner who does not, as they're one step closer on the road to not-sinning.
The folk who actually enjoy torture, in my experience, have been very, very non-religious. After all, if it's not a sin and they can't be harmed for it, why not?
Mr. Chiang is apparently very busy - not only has he done this cover and design direction for the Star Wars prequels, apparently he also did the design work for the starships in the new MMORPG Earth and Beyond. I can't judge the impressiveness of his resume; but I can say that's quite a bit of recent work.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Shouldn't there be an [affiliate] tag on those links? Your link drops the anotaweb bit giving you this. See this thread. We don't have a problem with you making a few bucks, but it would be nice if you mentioned the fact.
If you enjoy eating pigshit, chow down and be happy. But guess what? If you try to tell me it's foie gras, I'm not going to believe you. If you tell me that you can't tell the difference between foie gras and pigshit, I will believe that, but I am still not going to eat pigshit, and I am still not going to pretend that pigshit is anything but the shit of a pig.
I know you can probably drum up a dozen other idiots to agree with you, but they're idiots too. The fact that you think you're right doesn't prove that you are right. Consider the pigshit vs. foie gras analogy above. Consider it long and hard. The difference between those two substances is very real. The fact that some fool can't tell them apart is not persuasive to those who can, and it never will be. Squealing at me won't change that.
To put it country simple, your perceptions are dull. Therefore, your "opinion" is worthless and your "standards" are nonsensical.
I remember reading a story in an old anthology. I don't remember exactly how old, but I think it would be the early 1960s at the very latest. It was about a society in which teleportation had become the norm; their teleporters were called Doors (capital D). The protagonist is a schoolboy; one day his family's Door stops working. They call for service but it's going to be a few days, so he has to go outside (through the small-d door, which confuses him) and get to school that way. He gets a cold, which terrifies his mother, but he starts to enjoy the outdoors - which earns him strong disapproval from his family. I don't remember exactly how it ends.
Does anyone remember this story? Anyone know what it was called, or who wrote it?
-Graham
hi! ok, I'm a delany #1 fan, but dhalgren is a truly awesome reading experience. it's a good bit different than nova and triton (which I think are very different, between themselves!) but that's just me.
"Twenty-two buttons" reminds me of 1983's ORA:CLE. Everybody stays at home because there are aliens (pterodactyl-like, "dacs") around that hunt humans for sport. Besides the Earth is covered with trees to fight CO2. There are mass-transmisors in every home but for wares and non-living things only.
The main role is an expert in Chinese history who earns a living doing teleconsulting. There is a worldwide net with micropayments. There are very often tele-elections and referendums on lots of issues.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
FIRST post? I dont think so. Yet another FAILURE to add to your pathetic abysmal life. How does it feel to know you've FAILED again?
Masamune Shirow manages to combine hardboiled SWAT action with solid discussions of human spirituality, in a tale of postapocalyptic utopia that is anything but typical of the genre. Pick up Appleseed wherever fine comics are sold!
If you can see the religion in Card's works, you should have no problem finding it in the Culture novels of Iain M. Banks. Fair warning, though: Banks comes at it from the opposite direction.HTH. HAND!
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Card's recent work is crap. Fact. He used to be good, but he's lost it. Sometimes, writers lose it. So sorry.
I'm glad you took the trouble to let me know that you are incapable of understanding anything I said. As I explained at great length, you are telling me -- figuratively speaking -- that pigshit and foie gras taste the same, and that there are other fools out there who can't tell the difference either. Okay, sure. Whatever. I am willing to accept your claim that you are a moron. You don't have to tell me about it again. Consider it stipulated, okay?
I am not trying to persuade you that Card's recent work is crap, because the distinction between good and bad writing is beyond your comprehension. I don't waste a lot of time explaining art to blind people, either. They think the surface of a Rembrandt feels just like the surface of a garish mess from the local shopping mall, and they're right: To the limited extent that they can perceive either painting, the paintings are identical. However, a blind person is totally unable to perceive anything significant about a painting.
Got it?
Now, most blind people are bright enough to realize that they're not qualified to judge what they can't even perceive. You, sadly, are not very bright at all. Now, imagine a blind person who insists that light does not exist: He can't perceive it, so there's no such thing. He grandly insists that, since he's as able as I am to run his fingers over the surface of a painting, he's a great art critic! He declares that the Rembrandt and the shopping-mall kitsch are of equal quality. My eyesight is fine, and I disagree with his judgement. He thinks he's right and I think I'm right. Is his opinion about his rightness equivalent to my opinion about my rightness? NO, DUMBASS. HE'S FUCKING BLIND. As are you, when it comes to writing. You're too dumb to get it.
So shut the fuck up.
Probably the only user here (besides me, of course) who's ever a) looked inside a SF rag, and b) was bright enought to notice how desperately horrendous virtually all of that stuff is. I suspect it was always this bad, even in the "Golden Age" (yes, kids, I know you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about; that's because you're ignorant shitheads. Fuck off, you Trekkie gas pumpers).
I don't know where the hell they get that stuff for the Year's Best anthologies, because a good quarter of it is actually readable, more often than not. Looking at the magazines, you'd never believe there were as many as six or eight readable, competent (forget great, just competent) SF stories written in any given year.
It almost gives me hope.
Next thing we know there will be SF without evolution and SF with 7 day creation bits in it.
You should read Inferno by Niven and Pournelle. The premise (hard SF generally starts with an assumption about how the physical world works, and then proceeds to explore its implications) is that God is quite real, and Hell, as described by Dante, is quite real as well. The novel proceeds to explore the implications thereof. This is called "hard science fiction".
I have no doubt that there is good hard SF out there starting with just the assumptions you mention, and doing something genuinely interesting and worthwhile with them. Hey, what about Heinlein's Job? If I recall correctly, it makes just those very assumptions (among others), and it's not a bad book at all. Of course, Heinlein didn't believe a word of that stuff: He just chose it as an arbitrary assumption about reality which looked like he could wring a good story out of it.
As an atheist of long standing and firm conviction, I'd love to see a good writer do some serious hard SF starting with the assumption that Genesis is a dead-accurate historical document. It's an interesting assumption. It's a fun idea. Somebody with some verve and imagination could do a lot with it. Of course, as is always the case with SF, the reader is required to have some imagination of his own. Sorry about that. Have you tried romance novels?
You've probably watched a lot of Star Trek and gotten the idea that SF is horse-opera with lasers, a time-killer for idiots. Well, that's not true of any SF worth reading. Star Trek is crap; it's the Donnie and Marie show with rubber masks. The good stuff is about ideas as well as about character, neither of which have ever gotten in the door over at Star Trek Franchise HQ. Their business is to sell soap and Pepsi. You're demanding an unchallenging regurgitation of things you're already familiar with and comfortable with. You want the same old answers on a tape loop, not a box of new questions. Well, that's boring. Deadly, deadly boring.
If you drop the paranoia and accept the fact that there's much entertainment in any good mind playing interesting and unexpected games with any reasonably self-consistent idea, you may someday start to develop an understanding of what SF is about.
But I hope you'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
He also interviews some Canadians. See, Canada has lots of guns, easily available, and very little gun violence. And people don't lock their doors in Canada. A typical interview with a typical Canadian woman (from memory):
"Do you lock your doors at night?"
"No."
"Has anything bad happened?"
"Not really. People have come into my house and vandalized it while I was asleep."
"And you still don't lock your doors?"
"No."
"Is there anything you're afraid of?"
[laughs] "Not really, no."
Quite a contrast from American mindset! Yes, America may be heading for the world of 22 Buttons, but it's quite unnecessary. We let our media scare us. He quoted a very interesting statistic. In some recent time period, gun murders were down 30%, reporting up 600%--or something like that; I clearly remember the 600.
Chris
Ask me about Nanotechnology, Dyslexia Correction. Tell me about A.I., robotics, infrastructure.
When else?
Why do you think he started writing Ender sequels again? He stopped caring about that universe and those characters after Speaker for the Dead.
Times change, people change. The Vatican can hold council and change Church laws if things are getting out of hand.
In any case, look for "Least of my Brethren" by Michael Stackpole, it's Catholic Science Fiction.
Not that I'm Catholic or Christian or even religious at all, I just remember that you made this post and it was an interesting story after all.
[o]_O
Krauss is one of the few good scientists willing to take the time to go around speaking against creationism and "Intelligent Design." He's debated, written op-eds for the NYT on the subject, and more. There are quite a few links to editorials he's written on the subject over at his website.
Krauss is darn funny about it too.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
I'm still undecidied if the parent is a liar or a real fanatic, Ferniscowles.
That "secret Catholic password" might be the tip over into the "false catholic" catagory--or he might just be referring to a part of the ceremony that's not on the handouts.
"they have no souls, and can't really be in pain. It's just entertainment."
Who says that pain comes from the soul? I'm not voicing an opinion one way or another on whether there is one, but without a soul the human body has the same nerve endings, the same connections to the brain, the same potential for pain. How does soul feel pain? It can't feel physical pain--it is not tangible. It can't feel mental pain--it does not have a mind apart from that of the human or other being to whom it belongs. It can't feel emotional pain--again, it has none of its own. It is not a separate entity, thus the soul does not feel pain of its own.
If it was possible to load the human consciousness into a mechanical system it would retain all the characteristics of that consciousness save that of a "soul", which may or may not exist. Therefore, it retains the potential for emotional, mental and (though obviously not in the same way as the human body since it is in a mechanical construct) physical pain.