Synchrotron Gets Sci-Fi Writer In Residence

kandela writes "CBC News is reporting that Nebula and Hugo award winning author Robert J. Sawyer is to become the first-ever writer in residence at the Canadian Light Source synchrotron facility (see also their media release). Sawyer will spend two months at the facility, where he is hoping to be inspired by the everyday grind of scientists, 'I spent a lot of time visiting science labs over the years, but it's always the VIP tour,' he said in an interview Wednesday. 'You are in and you are out in a couple of hours, and everyone has shown you all the things they want you to see but none of the day-to-day grind of the work as well. I want to get the flavour of that.' As a scientist who has worked at synchrotron facilities (and occasional sci-fi writer myself (page 4)), I'm excited to see what a professional can do with that environment for inspiration."

Comments

Re:Brilliant scifi writer?

[Rakishi]

That concept is older than old. Heck, computers randomly gaining sentience was done by Heinlein in 1966 and I doubt he was the first. Going from a single computer gaining sentience to a network of computers does not make it brilliant. Hell, the Sprawl trilogy pretty much created cyberpunk and I think it covered this whole area as well.

The real mark of brilliance in such areas is how you actually treat the subject and what interesting sub-questions you bring to light. There are a hundred different ways to cover some basic ideas and every single one of them can be utterly unique.

I beg to differ.

[plasmacutter]

That concept is older than old. Heck, computers randomly gaining sentience was done by Heinlein in 1966 and I doubt he was the first. Going from a single computer gaining sentience to a network of computers does not make it brilliant.

I beg to differ. The difference between Shirow's version and everyone else is the entity was not created by humans. A data trojan inadvertantly interacted with random data on the web in the same way a molecule interacted with others to form DNA.
This is very different from "AI's gone wild" a-la heinlein or t-1000.

The real mark of brilliance in such areas is how you actually treat the subject and what interesting sub-questions you bring to light. There are a hundred different ways to cover some basic ideas and every single one of them can be utterly unique.

and Shirow covers this entire area better as well if you examine the bulk of his work.