I also wonder how long it takes for an innovation to be regarded as "important?" Something like high temperature superconductors gets noticed right away. Some other equally important technology might not be recognized for a long time. What's the average "lag time" for this list?
I'm also reminded of how people have argued we were going to run out of this, or run out of that, and haven't because other technologies move in in a timely way. It's an important technology if it keeps us from running out of some key element, but if it's just replacing an older technology, it surely gets missed. I'd be interested in seeing a partial list of these innovations to better gauge what's getting included.
And maybe we're not counting some easy stuff (Kurzweil's point about the list being arbitrary is a good one). I mean, a science historian probably doesn't count cup holders in cars or soda can pop-tabs as important innovations, because they're simple and obvious in hindsight, but quality of life is better today because of a lot more things than cell phones.
Drop me a private email (mbrother@uwyo.edu) and I'll give you, or point you at, as much good advice and information as I can. It's hard to break in, but I believe that if you write a good book it will sell. There are pitfalls to avoid, and things that can make the process easier.
Yes, I agree with what you say. It makes sense. I was mainly making the counter-Ellison point, that many science fiction writers are not rabidly anti-file sharing the way he is, because there are good arguments for doing it.
The paperback has been out for over six months, the hardback for closer to two years. The vast majority of books sell the majority of their copies within the first few months of release. That's how the business works.
And a new author who doesn't worry about publicity and advertising is hurting their own career. You'd like to think that a great book will sell on its own merits, but people have to know a book is great in the first place. Star Dragon got great reviews, and was a finalist for the John W. Campbell award for best science fiction novel of the year. It's a good book for its readership...if they know it exists.
I expect the biggest benefits will come when my second novel is released.
You're right, new authors should worry about their craft. Published writers should worry about everything in their power to control, from craft improvements to publicity. It's not like you can't do more than one thing.
Connie Willis -- Mulitple Hugo award winning sf author. Best known novel is probably DOOMSDAY BOOK.
Harlan Ellison -- Multiple Hugo award winning sf author. Best known for short stories like "I have no mouth and I must scream." Also did some TV (e.g., Star Trek, Outer Limits) and movie work.
Bruce Sterling -- one of the founders of the cyberpunk movement and still a big tech guru publishing regularly in Wired. He's won some of those Hugos, too, I believe. Try the ground-breaking cyberpunk anthology he edited in the 1980s called MIRRORSHADES.
Len Wein -- probably the lesser of these four. Best known for THE PROBABILITY BROACH, which is probably the pinnacle of Libertarian SF featuring an alternative US where there was no constitution.
Ellison also discovered a lot of other writers, too, including Dan Simmons. While most people see his growly, larger-than-himself public persona, he can be an incredibly generous man. He called up one friend of mine who'd reviewed a story of his because Ellison wasn't sure he'd appreciated some of the subtlies of the story -- and then they talked for an hour. A guy I knew in college had written a complaining letter to him about why he was years late on a Star Trek project, and Ellison called him up to bitch back and explain, and then they talked like buddies for an hour. Interesting, talented guy.
At this time in tech history, I think it's to a writer's advantage to give away their work online, and that it actually helps sales of paperbacks and hardbacks. I put my money where my mouth is and my first novel, Star Dragon (Tor 2003), is available for free download from my site under a Creative Commons license. That's a decision that I made and my editor has supported. I hope it helps me generate sales at the milli-Ellison level or better.
But it's against the law to copy stories without permission. Harlan is old school, and as obnoxious as all hell when he wants to be, and that's his right here. Sure, publishers need to change their business model, but they haven't just yet. Respect the artist. If you think he sucks so much, why do you want to read his work anyway?
I wanted to use a story by Geoffrey Landis in my astronomy class last semester. I emailed him up, asked him if I could make 120 copies for my students, and he said absolutely. Even asked if I wanted the story in electronic form. If he'd said no, I wouldn't have done it.
Ah yikes, I really did goof here! Thank you for the correction. I was misled by the ringworld references -- in Ringworld, the ring is around the sun. That, of course, would be impractical and wicked expensive.
I'd be mollified about the change to the night sky if they'd put some telescopes on the ring, I guess.
I already considered this. The ring, in order to block the sun, will be interior to Earth's orbit. It'll be an issue for the DAYTIME sky, not so much the night sky at all.
If you use the standard coordinate system which describes expanding space, then the current receding velocity of a galaxy is proportional to its current distance, with the proportionality constant being the Hubble constant H_0. Plug in a large enough distance, and you'll get a receding velocity larger than the speed of light. There are plenty of galaxies at that distance (about 5000 Mpc).
No, you must use the proper relativistic expression if you want to interpret the redshift as a velocity. The relativistic Doppler formula is:
Starship Troopers is quite pro-military in the sense that you must serve in order to be able to vote. It's setting up military service as the price tag one must pay to be a full citizen, making non-soldiers second-class. Also, in Starship Troopers everything basically works, the armor is kick ass, etc., while in The Forever War, supplies run short, the equipment breaks or has flaws, etc., as was Haldeman's experience in Vietnam.
Actually, there's a relativistic version for Doppler shifts, so despite quasars being observed with z = 6.4 (where 1 + z = (wavelength observed/wavelength emitted)), their recessional velocity inferred would still be less that lightspeed.
Yes, wormholes are theoretically possible in physics. I think it's important to realize that if they exist, then time travel is also possible. Physicists who work in this area look for self-consistent solutions, which in some sense negates the existence of free will.
On the other hand, you should realize that getting your science news through any filters at all twists it, and its interpretation, into sometimes unrecognizable drek. I've seen stories about discoveries in my very own field that I couldn't even understand!
Here's one example of reporters blowing things out of proportion. Back in 1998, I think it was, Djorgovsky at Caltech gave a talk at a meeting about a sky survey he was doing. He had a few objects that had strange spectra and he was unable to classify them. This turned into a front-page story in the New York Times "Astronomers Baffled by Tiny Speck of Light" or something close to that. They published the spectrum even (good for them, and better than 100 other venues). My friends and I at Lawrence Livermore took one look at it, and immediately knew what it was, since we'd already discovered a similar object and emailed Djorgovsky with the redshift. He had to backpeddle (a dozen others had emailed, too), and claimed that an infrared spectrum was required to be sure. He got the Keck directory to take the spectrum, which showed an emission line of hydrogen to be exactly where we told him it would be, and the New York Times published a follow up story two weeks later. The moral of the story, I guess, is that it's a front-page story when someone from Caltech is baffled.
While the experiments involving quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation are interesting and important, they don't mean what you think they mean. Blame the media for blowing things out of proportion. As I understand it, from reading some more technical documents, there is an instantaneous effect, but it will not be possible to use it for FTL communication -- you need to use conventional means to understand any signal. What it will be great and perfect for, is unbreakable encryption. It will not be possible to eavesdrop on such a system.
These experiments are historically important since Einstein used them (in a 1930s paper with Podosky and Rosen as coauthors) to argue against the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics. He described these sorts of experiments in terms of conventional quantum mechanics and "spooky action at a distance" in comparison to a "hidden variables" theory that he preferred. A few decades later, when were able to perform the experiment for real, conventional quantum mechanics provided the correct answer.
The result from special relativity that the energy required to accelerate something to light speed is infinite is well supported by experiment. You can pump all sorts of energy into a particle in accelerators and you only approach the speed of light, never exceed it. Relativity explains this result very well. I'd say that any straightforward way of breaking lightspeed is as likely as dropping a ball and having it fall up. Newtonian gravity isn't perfect, but things still fall quite reliably. Same deal here, even if relativity isn't quite right.
As it is, special relativity breaks down when it comes to describing very mundane things, like a ball flying through the air. We still use Newton's model, frequently, to describe things that can't be described using 'relativity'. At certain scales, it works, at others it doesn't work at all.
In the low-velocity regime where Newtonian physics holds, the equations of special relativity reduce to the EXACT same thing. Again, as long as you're talking inertial frames, otherwise you need general relativity.
There may be a problem on very small scales where quantum mechanics holds sway, but those problems don't affect the issue of faster than light travel. Particles in the quantum regime are regularly accelerated to near light speed and observed. You need relativity to describe their energies properly.
I do teach this stuff at the University level. I may be misunderstanding what you're getting at. I use the simpler Newtonian equations for things like ballistic motion, because I don't need the relativistic equations. That doesn't mean they don't work fine there. It's the Newtonian expressions that break down at high velocity.
The kind of thing you say about Star Trek in the 1960s was even more true in places like the Soviet Union where freedom of speech didn't exist. Someone wanted to comment or criticize was often forced to cover their tracks through the plasuible deniability of science fiction.
I agree with nearly everything you say here. In particular the issues that the Mundanes have decided are "unlikely" and reject, that you criticize, I also fail to understand. I'm a professional astrophysicist and have a pretty good idea about the distances and issues involved -- likely a better idea than anyone involved with the Manifesto -- and I don't reject it. I think they've got some personal prejudices about these things. I'd certainly stand with them in criticizing the fantasization of science fiction, but the restrictions they've proposed are, well, overly restrictive. I like space, and in my books there's interstellar travel without FTL. It can be done a hundred different ways.
Thanks! I always appreciate getting some positive feedback. Writing is a solitary occupation, usually done by somone who loves stories and wants to share one of his own. Reading is also solitary, and sales figures and even reviews don't provide much personal feedback.
Too often on slashdot I'll get a put-down from an Anonymous Coward (probably someone thin-skinned who has taken too personally a post of mine) about the book. It's nice to hear a compliment about something I take so seriously -- I know I have a readership and some people love it.
Writers can only follow their own muse, their own vision, and do the best work they can if they want to publish. If they're popular, it's only because others respond to that vision. I'd probably make more money from writing if I toned down the science, wrote about dragons or vampires or something with more mass appeal, but that's not my vision and not my strength.
The quintissential hard sf story that people have been arguing about for 50 years is "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin. In it, a stowaway on an emergency medical rescue shuttle must step out of an airlock because the "cold equations" of physics demand it. Her extra mass onboard will prevent the shuttle from reaching its destination. The theme of the story concerns how the physical universe doesn't care about love, or what's fair -- it just exists the way it does and if you don't understand its rules, it can kill you.
The soft sf readers/writers approach the story completely differently, and look at the heartless corporation that doesn't put extra fuel onboad the spaceship, for instance, or how it's really the pilot killing the stowaway, not the universe, etc. One of the more engaging updates to the story from this perspective is Think Like a Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly. Both his story and the original are well worth the read, and neither fall into the realm of the Mundane.
Slashdot Mirror
I also wonder how long it takes for an innovation to be regarded as "important?" Something like high temperature superconductors gets noticed right away. Some other equally important technology might not be recognized for a long time. What's the average "lag time" for this list?
I'm also reminded of how people have argued we were going to run out of this, or run out of that, and haven't because other technologies move in in a timely way. It's an important technology if it keeps us from running out of some key element, but if it's just replacing an older technology, it surely gets missed. I'd be interested in seeing a partial list of these innovations to better gauge what's getting included.
And maybe we're not counting some easy stuff (Kurzweil's point about the list being arbitrary is a good one). I mean, a science historian probably doesn't count cup holders in cars or soda can pop-tabs as important innovations, because they're simple and obvious in hindsight, but quality of life is better today because of a lot more things than cell phones.
Drop me a private email (mbrother@uwyo.edu) and I'll give you, or point you at, as much good advice and information as I can. It's hard to break in, but I believe that if you write a good book it will sell. There are pitfalls to avoid, and things that can make the process easier.
Yes, I agree with what you say. It makes sense. I was mainly making the counter-Ellison point, that many science fiction writers are not rabidly anti-file sharing the way he is, because there are good arguments for doing it.
The paperback has been out for over six months, the hardback for closer to two years. The vast majority of books sell the majority of their copies within the first few months of release. That's how the business works.
And a new author who doesn't worry about publicity and advertising is hurting their own career. You'd like to think that a great book will sell on its own merits, but people have to know a book is great in the first place. Star Dragon got great reviews, and was a finalist for the John W. Campbell award for best science fiction novel of the year. It's a good book for its readership...if they know it exists.
I expect the biggest benefits will come when my second novel is released.
You're right, new authors should worry about their craft. Published writers should worry about everything in their power to control, from craft improvements to publicity. It's not like you can't do more than one thing.
Ack, I blew it on Len Wein! L. Neil Smith is the author of THE PROBABILITY BROACH. Len Wein has done some media and comic book work.
Well, I said he was the least well-known of these four in SF circles. Guess I just proved that assertion with a data point.
Ellison has continued to produce good work in recent years, just not things as famous and ground-breaking as he did once upon a time.
And what makes you think Shatner actually writes? His name on some books?
Connie Willis -- Mulitple Hugo award winning sf author. Best known novel is probably DOOMSDAY BOOK. Harlan Ellison -- Multiple Hugo award winning sf author. Best known for short stories like "I have no mouth and I must scream." Also did some TV (e.g., Star Trek, Outer Limits) and movie work. Bruce Sterling -- one of the founders of the cyberpunk movement and still a big tech guru publishing regularly in Wired. He's won some of those Hugos, too, I believe. Try the ground-breaking cyberpunk anthology he edited in the 1980s called MIRRORSHADES. Len Wein -- probably the lesser of these four. Best known for THE PROBABILITY BROACH, which is probably the pinnacle of Libertarian SF featuring an alternative US where there was no constitution.
Ellison also discovered a lot of other writers, too, including Dan Simmons. While most people see his growly, larger-than-himself public persona, he can be an incredibly generous man. He called up one friend of mine who'd reviewed a story of his because Ellison wasn't sure he'd appreciated some of the subtlies of the story -- and then they talked for an hour. A guy I knew in college had written a complaining letter to him about why he was years late on a Star Trek project, and Ellison called him up to bitch back and explain, and then they talked like buddies for an hour. Interesting, talented guy.
At this time in tech history, I think it's to a writer's advantage to give away their work online, and that it actually helps sales of paperbacks and hardbacks. I put my money where my mouth is and my first novel, Star Dragon (Tor 2003), is available for free download from my site under a Creative Commons license. That's a decision that I made and my editor has supported. I hope it helps me generate sales at the milli-Ellison level or better.
But it's against the law to copy stories without permission. Harlan is old school, and as obnoxious as all hell when he wants to be, and that's his right here. Sure, publishers need to change their business model, but they haven't just yet. Respect the artist. If you think he sucks so much, why do you want to read his work anyway?
I wanted to use a story by Geoffrey Landis in my astronomy class last semester. I emailed him up, asked him if I could make 120 copies for my students, and he said absolutely. Even asked if I wanted the story in electronic form. If he'd said no, I wouldn't have done it.
Special relativity only applies in inertial frames (i.e., no acceleration or gravity). General relativity was developed to handle non-inertial frames.
Don't get confused by the twin paradox and spaceships that have to accelerate. The twin paradox cheats on these issues as usually presented.
Ah yikes, I really did goof here! Thank you for the correction. I was misled by the ringworld references -- in Ringworld, the ring is around the sun. That, of course, would be impractical and wicked expensive.
I'd be mollified about the change to the night sky if they'd put some telescopes on the ring, I guess.
I already considered this. The ring, in order to block the sun, will be interior to Earth's orbit. It'll be an issue for the DAYTIME sky, not so much the night sky at all.
It seems to me that any ring designed to intercept solar radiation could also be used to collect power, and this would be a win/win situation.
If you use the standard coordinate system which describes expanding space, then the current receding velocity of a galaxy is proportional to its current distance, with the proportionality constant being the Hubble constant H_0. Plug in a large enough distance, and you'll get a receding velocity larger than the speed of light. There are plenty of galaxies at that distance (about 5000 Mpc).
No, you must use the proper relativistic expression if you want to interpret the redshift as a velocity. The relativistic Doppler formula is:
v/c = [(z+1)^2 - 1]/[(z+1)^2 + 1]
where z is the redshift, delta lambda/lambda.
Starship Troopers is quite pro-military in the sense that you must serve in order to be able to vote. It's setting up military service as the price tag one must pay to be a full citizen, making non-soldiers second-class. Also, in Starship Troopers everything basically works, the armor is kick ass, etc., while in The Forever War, supplies run short, the equipment breaks or has flaws, etc., as was Haldeman's experience in Vietnam.
Actually, there's a relativistic version for Doppler shifts, so despite quasars being observed with z = 6.4 (where 1 + z = (wavelength observed/wavelength emitted)), their recessional velocity inferred would still be less that lightspeed.
Yes, wormholes are theoretically possible in physics. I think it's important to realize that if they exist, then time travel is also possible. Physicists who work in this area look for self-consistent solutions, which in some sense negates the existence of free will.
Pick your poison, but be consistent.
On the other hand, you should realize that getting your science news through any filters at all twists it, and its interpretation, into sometimes unrecognizable drek. I've seen stories about discoveries in my very own field that I couldn't even understand!
Here's one example of reporters blowing things out of proportion. Back in 1998, I think it was, Djorgovsky at Caltech gave a talk at a meeting about a sky survey he was doing. He had a few objects that had strange spectra and he was unable to classify them. This turned into a front-page story in the New York Times "Astronomers Baffled by Tiny Speck of Light" or something close to that. They published the spectrum even (good for them, and better than 100 other venues). My friends and I at Lawrence Livermore took one look at it, and immediately knew what it was, since we'd already discovered a similar object and emailed Djorgovsky with the redshift. He had to backpeddle (a dozen others had emailed, too), and claimed that an infrared spectrum was required to be sure. He got the Keck directory to take the spectrum, which showed an emission line of hydrogen to be exactly where we told him it would be, and the New York Times published a follow up story two weeks later. The moral of the story, I guess, is that it's a front-page story when someone from Caltech is baffled.
While the experiments involving quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation are interesting and important, they don't mean what you think they mean. Blame the media for blowing things out of proportion. As I understand it, from reading some more technical documents, there is an instantaneous effect, but it will not be possible to use it for FTL communication -- you need to use conventional means to understand any signal. What it will be great and perfect for, is unbreakable encryption. It will not be possible to eavesdrop on such a system.
These experiments are historically important since Einstein used them (in a 1930s paper with Podosky and Rosen as coauthors) to argue against the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics. He described these sorts of experiments in terms of conventional quantum mechanics and "spooky action at a distance" in comparison to a "hidden variables" theory that he preferred. A few decades later, when were able to perform the experiment for real, conventional quantum mechanics provided the correct answer.
No problem.
The result from special relativity that the energy required to accelerate something to light speed is infinite is well supported by experiment. You can pump all sorts of energy into a particle in accelerators and you only approach the speed of light, never exceed it. Relativity explains this result very well. I'd say that any straightforward way of breaking lightspeed is as likely as dropping a ball and having it fall up. Newtonian gravity isn't perfect, but things still fall quite reliably. Same deal here, even if relativity isn't quite right.
As it is, special relativity breaks down when it comes to describing very mundane things, like a ball flying through the air. We still use Newton's model, frequently, to describe things that can't be described using 'relativity'. At certain scales, it works, at others it doesn't work at all. In the low-velocity regime where Newtonian physics holds, the equations of special relativity reduce to the EXACT same thing. Again, as long as you're talking inertial frames, otherwise you need general relativity. There may be a problem on very small scales where quantum mechanics holds sway, but those problems don't affect the issue of faster than light travel. Particles in the quantum regime are regularly accelerated to near light speed and observed. You need relativity to describe their energies properly. I do teach this stuff at the University level. I may be misunderstanding what you're getting at. I use the simpler Newtonian equations for things like ballistic motion, because I don't need the relativistic equations. That doesn't mean they don't work fine there. It's the Newtonian expressions that break down at high velocity.
The kind of thing you say about Star Trek in the 1960s was even more true in places like the Soviet Union where freedom of speech didn't exist. Someone wanted to comment or criticize was often forced to cover their tracks through the plasuible deniability of science fiction.
I agree with nearly everything you say here. In particular the issues that the Mundanes have decided are "unlikely" and reject, that you criticize, I also fail to understand. I'm a professional astrophysicist and have a pretty good idea about the distances and issues involved -- likely a better idea than anyone involved with the Manifesto -- and I don't reject it. I think they've got some personal prejudices about these things. I'd certainly stand with them in criticizing the fantasization of science fiction, but the restrictions they've proposed are, well, overly restrictive. I like space, and in my books there's interstellar travel without FTL. It can be done a hundred different ways.
Thanks! I always appreciate getting some positive feedback. Writing is a solitary occupation, usually done by somone who loves stories and wants to share one of his own. Reading is also solitary, and sales figures and even reviews don't provide much personal feedback.
Too often on slashdot I'll get a put-down from an Anonymous Coward (probably someone thin-skinned who has taken too personally a post of mine) about the book. It's nice to hear a compliment about something I take so seriously -- I know I have a readership and some people love it.
Writers can only follow their own muse, their own vision, and do the best work they can if they want to publish. If they're popular, it's only because others respond to that vision. I'd probably make more money from writing if I toned down the science, wrote about dragons or vampires or something with more mass appeal, but that's not my vision and not my strength.
The quintissential hard sf story that people have been arguing about for 50 years is "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin. In it, a stowaway on an emergency medical rescue shuttle must step out of an airlock because the "cold equations" of physics demand it. Her extra mass onboard will prevent the shuttle from reaching its destination. The theme of the story concerns how the physical universe doesn't care about love, or what's fair -- it just exists the way it does and if you don't understand its rules, it can kill you.
The soft sf readers/writers approach the story completely differently, and look at the heartless corporation that doesn't put extra fuel onboad the spaceship, for instance, or how it's really the pilot killing the stowaway, not the universe, etc. One of the more engaging updates to the story from this perspective is Think Like a Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly. Both his story and the original are well worth the read, and neither fall into the realm of the Mundane.