We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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How do scientists work? Do they spend a lot of their time holed up in big buildings with lots of fancy equipment, work in large teams or mostly alone, with rumpled air and just a blackboard and lump of chalk trying to figure out the laws of physics? What sort of social lives do they lead and how do they handle the political, business and personal demands that come their way? How do they deal with hostility from jealous colleagues, skeptical review boards and college principals worried about expanding their budgets?
If you ever wanted to know some of the answers to these questions as well as have a rattling good yarn told, then this book, an old classic by Gregory Benford, fits the bill. I have been engrossed in it for the last few days and I won’t spoil for any would-be readers by giving the ending or basic plot away. Let’s just say that this book actually gave me the feeling of actually working and living in a science lab, of hanging around scientists in the early 60s and later, in a sort of crumbling, environmentally troubled 1990s. Strongly recommended.
It would be fair to say that when I heard that 70’s space opera ‘Battlestar Galactica’ was going to be remade, I was dubious: face it, the original made Star Trek seem like Shakespeare. Moreover when I later discovered that a leading character in the original series called ‘Starbuck’ (well before the term became synonymous with coffee) was going to be ‘re-imagined’ as a woman, I became downright contemptuous: “Oh gawd, another sickeningly politically correct bit of drivel spewing forth from Hollyweird”. Moreover womanising hard drinking cigar smoking Starbuck was one of the few engaging characters from the original series.
In a sense I acquired the DVD of the mini-series more as something to blog about, so I could actually say I had seen a piece of science fiction that was worse than that hymn for a limp-wristed California vision of ‘inclusive transnational socialism’ (well, maybe not all that inclusive), called Star Trek, a series which hit its nadir with the execrable Enterprise. So yes, I fired up this disc with extremely low expectations.
The show starts slowly, setting the scene in some detail, such as the fact we foolish humans were the ones who actually created the Cylons, the show’s homicidal robotic bad guys, and that Battlestar Galactica itself (more or less an aircraft carrier in space) was an obsolescent relic of a pervious war against the Cylons some 50 years earlier and was due to be retired from service after many years of peace. We see the back story of Gauis Baltar, who in the original series was a comical pantomime style ‘villain’ and arch-traitor, and who is this time ‘re-imagined’ as a deeply flawed genius (sort of a cross between Albert Einstein and Bill Gates, brilliantly acted by James Callis) who is psychopathically self-centered and thus tricked by an all too human looking ‘female’ Cylon into unwittingly dooming humanity. All better acted, better directed and far better written than I expected but only Baltar was particularly engaging initially.
But then the Cylons make their move…
Wow. A show which truly, truly, truly does not pull any punches and proffers a middle finger to the sugar coating of so much of Hollywood’s offerings that are aimed at the mainstream. We see nothing less that genocide: the steady nuclear annihilation of the human race. We see men women and children (yes, children) killed pitilessly in one of the darkest bits of sci-fi TV drama I have ever seen: the Götterdämmerung on 12 planets. Moreover we see the handful of dazed and traumatised survivors on the Galactica and the refugee fleet which forms around this last remnant of the human military, act like, well, people who have just seen their entire civilisation and 99.9% of their species exterminated by an implacable enemy.
In many ways this is a story that owes much to the dramas set in World War II that were made in the 40’s and 50’s and posit that there is a great deal more to being in command than saying “Make it so”. Even the look of the Galactica itself is a million miles away from the antiseptic interiors of Star Trek’s spaceships: it has manually opened pressure doors, old fashioned wire cable intercoms and chinagraph pencil plotting tables that would not have looked out of place on USS Yorktown during the Battle of Midway. As in that earlier genre of movies from a less timid era, heart rending decisions are forced on characters, and not just the military commanders (who I am pleased to say actually act like real military commanders in Battlestar Galactica) but also the new president of the colonial government (very well played by Mary McDonnell), who is faced with desperate no-win life and death choices. The biggest surprise for me however was the character of Starbuck, who I was simply determined to hate. Actress Katee Sackhoff plays Starbuck as a hard drinking cigar smoking tomboy and does so with an almost feral gusto and real panache. Her hard bitten mocking grin, snappy dialogue and the almost maniacal gleam in her eyes had me won me over within about 15 minutes.
I have no idea if the series following the mini-series will live up to its potential but damn, it is nice to see such a refreshing bit of drama in the science fiction genre.
Arthur C Clarke has stated via Jose Cordeiro, roving ambassador for the World Transhumanist Organisation, that he is safe and well. Here is his brief message on the catastrophe, including websites for providing aid in Sri Lanka.
I am enormously relieved that my family and household have escaped the ravages of the sea that suddenly invaded most parts of coastal Sri Lanka, leaving a trail of destruction.
But many others were not so fortunate. For over two million Sri Lankans and a large number of foreign tourists holidaying here, the day after Christmas turned out to be a living nightmare reminiscent of The Day After Tomorrow. My heart-felt sympathy goes out to all those who lost family members or friends.
Among those who directly experienced the waves were my staff based at our diving station in Hikkaduwa, and my holiday bungalows in Kahawa and Thiranagama all beachfront properties located in southern areas that were badly hit. Our staff members are all safe, even though some are badly shaken and relate harrowing first hand accounts of what happened. Most of our diving equipment and boats at Hikkaduwa were washed away. We still don’t know the full extent of damage — it will take a while for us to take stock as accessing these areas is still difficult.
This is indeed a disaster of unprecedented magnitude for Sri Lanka, which lacks the resources and capacity to cope with the aftermath. We are encouraging concerned friends to contribute to the relief efforts launched by various national and international organisations. If you wish to join these efforts, I can recommend two options.
– Contribute to a Sri Lanka disaster relief fund launched by an internationally operating humanitarian charity, such as Care or Oxfam.
– Alternatively, considering supporting Sarvodaya, the largest development charity in Sri Lanka, which has a 45-year track record in reaching out and helping the poorest of the poor. Sarvodaya has mounted a well organised, countrywide relief effort using their countrywide network of offices and volunteers who work in all parts of the country, well above ethnic and other divisions. Their website, www.sarvodaya.lk, provides bank account details for financial donations. They also welcome contributions in kind — a list of urgently needed items is found at: http://www.sarvodaya.lk/Inside_Page/urgently%20needed.htm
There is much to be done in both short and long terms for Sri Lanka to raise its head from this blow from the seas. Among other things, the country needs to improve its technical and communications facilities so that effective early warnings can help minimise losses in future disasters.
Curiously enough, in my first book on Sri Lanka, I had written about another tidal wave reaching the Galle harbour (see Chapter 8 in The Reefs of Taprobane, 1957). That happened in August 1883, following the eruption of Krakatoa in roughly the same part of the Indian Ocean.
Arthur Clarke
29 December 2004
I must say I am quite a sucker for the recent spate of films based on comic strips. I liked the Spiderman films, the Hulk, and even quite enjoyed the Batman films (the one with Michael Keaton, anyway). Well, another one off the conveyor belt is Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
It has been panned by the critics, which is usually a promising sign given the nature of most snarky film reviewers these days, and I hugely enjoyed it. It has numerous fine qualities: WW2 fighter planes which can go underwater; futuristic aircraft carriers in the sky with great big Union Jacks on them; spiffy uniforms with Angelina Jolie wearing them; hot female journalists in classic 1930s garb with rakish hats and wavy hair (Gwyneth Paltrow), and big, biiiiiiig metal robots that do not talk but stomp menacingly around New York.
The film has no great ‘message’, I suppose, apart from showing how in the middle of the 20th century mankind, or at least the western bits of it, dreamed of a mechanised, high-tech future. The vision appears a bit comical to us now, but perhaps our age, with our interests in the Web and so on, will appear no less bizarre to generations hence.
But never mind all that highfalutin’ stuff. Go and see the film and have a feast of art deco kitsch with two of the most ravishing actresses now working. What’s not to like?
This is without a doubt the movie I have most anticipated seeing since spotting a certain trophy in the background of a few frames at the end of Predator 2 back in 1990.
Oh yeah. I mean, OH YEAH!
The BBC are broadcasting a series of documentaries purporting to show crises that could affect Britain over the next two to three decades. It is already clear from the subjects tackled: the dangers of gated communities, the bankruptcy of pension systems, the rise of obesity and the superiority of women, that they were written from a left-wing viewpoint that hypes up the modish problems of the would be regulators. The striking omission is the nightmares conjured up by the Greens but they will no doubt form the subjects of a second series.
If you do catch these, then try to spot the technological innovations that spice up the world of the future.
As part of this conversation, the BBC asks for views of the world in 2020 and I thought that it would be rude not to oblige.
By 2020, we will no longer have to pay the licence fee to watch substandard populist rot that masquerades as quality TV, notably, the series of poor documentaries called If.
If Iran or Al Qaeda obtain weapons of mass destruction, then we can expect them to unleash a second Holocaust, in order to remove Israel from the Middle East. Half of Europe will revile this, half will be relieved.
One or more countries will withdraw from the European Union due to its institutional inflexibility and inability to compete with the United States or the Far East.
There will be further wars in the Middle East involving the West (without a UN mandate) due to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in oil producing areas.
It was an antidote to some nauseating missives extolling peace in our time and a World Union (based on the European Union). One would have thought the barbarities of twencen would have extinguished this Fabian and Wellsian nonsense.
The naming of planets is a difficult matter. Sedna may have strong references for the Inuit, but it means nothing at all to most of us. You could argue that Sedna is more thrilling than the planetoid’s original designation, 2003 VB12, but it doesn’t conjure up a fitting title for inclusion in Holst’s The Planets.
However, the sinister appearance of a red planet (and possible moon) reminds me of Dr. Who’s deadly enemies, cursed to wonder the frigid spaceways, enshrined in their tombs. Is this not the tenth planet, home of the Cybermen? And surely there can be no more fitting name than Mondas.
Prepare for child-like logic, silver suits and a puzzling vulnerability to gold.
…which is seldom a bad thing.
Spiked-online is generally an interesting site, with challenging articles which often hit the nail (more or less) on the head. And sometimes not. In The geek shall inherit the Earth, I think that it would be best to say ‘your meta-context is showing’. I have met Sandy Star, and so can attest the author is a bright agreeable person, but I find myself questioning the thrust of this article even though agreeing with many of the specific points.
In essence Sandy is saying that the ‘mainstreaming’ of SciFi and Fantasy films suggests a retreat from reality and the stagnation of society, though he does not actually blame the science fiction/fantasy genres for causing this.
I would say some aspects of civil society are not just stagnating but are actually decaying in many ways, and it seems to me that one need look no further than the growth of regulatory statism to see the reason why this has happened. However it strikes me that Sandy’s characterisation of fans of the science fiction/fantasy genre too broad as obsessives can be found in all walks of life and as most of the people I know seem to like SciFi/fantasy, and none seem to exhibit the desire to retreat into fantasy obsessed atomised isolation, I do not think it is a reasonable generalisation. But I would suggest maybe it is actually a sign of an entirely countervailing current to the one represented by ‘real world’ politisization/desocialisation.
The prevailing democratic statist meta-context takes as an un-stated axiom that the political process is there to alter the form and incidence of as much personal interaction as possible, replacing them with politically derived formulae of behaviour, be it the way you can act towards then people you work with way you can interact with your children, what your house must look like, etc. etc.
But perhaps the fact so many folks want to read and watch stories of people (or werewolves/elves/vampires/daleks) operating within utterly different context and sometimes even meta-context quite removed from the one they see around them, indicates not stagnation or a rejection of reality, but rather a resistance to the intellectual stasis of the mind that modern political structures are trying to impose on civil society. It is nothing less than a willingness to think in other terms, based upon other axioms. Science fiction/fantasy authors often inform how we see the real world and it is no accident that Heinlein is so popular with libertarians and libertarian oriented conservatives. And I never found enthusing over Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light got in the way of me doing likewise about Karl Popper’s Open society and it’s enemies.
And as for the internet making us less social, that is quite incorrect. I have found that the contrary is true. The internet (and particularly the blogosphere) is about establishing networks that have huge implications in the real world… and these bring people together, in the real world. That is what brought me to a blogger bash in the Hollywood Hills a few months ago and will hopefully lead to me meeting up with a Czech blogger in Prague in a few weeks. It is what lead me to meet, face to face, all manner of people I have never met before and most likely never would have.
Oh and Sandy, if the science fiction/fantasy genres lead to ‘individuation‘, how is that a bad thing? Why is differentiating yourself from society undesirable? If so, as you are a fellow science fiction/fantasy geek like myself, I take it you think the Borg in Star Trek are the good guys then? Must be a flashback caused by that dormant Marxist nano-virus in the air-conditioning in the Spiked offices. Whilst I am rather partial to Seven of Nine, I do not think many people would agree with you.
I have mentioned before that I am a great fan of the movie Resident Evil… well the sequel of which I spoke is going to hit the cinemas soon and a tantalising teaser can be found here!
Natalie Solent has some striking gun-control analysis from Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, Here’s a bit of the bit she quotes:
There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that. Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate.
Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers – say, three per citizen.
Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing’ and it was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. …
Natalie concludes her comments thus:
I suppose Pratchett might say that Vimes’ opinons are not his own, but, even so, Vimes is not just a one-off hero but a much loved character who stars in several books: this shows at the very least that Britain’s best selling living novelist sees where we’re coming from.
I guess it’s a case of read the whole thing.
In these times of EU corruption, Blair government corruption, and generally just Prodeus Romanus, the ancient latin God of Corruption, having a whale of a time all over the place, I thought today I might have a day off from being Disgusted, of Henley-on-Thames. After all, it is Friday. That, and I’m on holiday next week, though only, I may hasten to add, stripping off bathroom wallpaper, organising children’s birthday parties, and wandering down to Henley library to re-invigorate my audio book collection. (Hey, I’ve paid the poll tax. I may as well get my money’s worth!) And just to lighten my mood even further, and to set the stall out on what is going to be a great weekend ahead, I saw this headline this morning in the Daily Torygraph:
Doctor Who ready to come out of the Tardis for Saturday TV series
Fantastic news! After having spent one of the most memorable moments of my childhood cowering in total abject fear literally half-behind the sofa at the sight of that Sea Devil, as it strode out from the surf, it’s about time too.
Doctor Who will be back in 2005, and I for one can’t wait. Let’s just hope the new scriptwriters can find room for Tom Baker to play some senior Time Lord, or other, maybe even a portly grey-haired version of The Master? Though I must warn these scriptwriters, in advance: if the first series isn’t about the Daleks, or the Cybermen, or some kind of evil giant arachnid, then there’ll be trouble. And not the kind of trouble you have when the plumbing goes wrong, but serious Davros-style trouble. Indeed, the fate of the Universe may hang on it.
Photo: D. Amon, all rights reserved
Like much of the rest of the blogosphere, many of the Samizdatistas have been waiting for months, weeks, even years for Neal Stephenson to finish writing Quicksilver, his prequel of sorts to Cryptonomicon. We were promised a romp through scientific and other society of the early 18th century, meeting Newton, Leibnitz, Benjamin Franklin, and other luminaries of the time, in a doorstop length tome full of other characters curiously connected to the 20th century characters of the earlier novel. And we waited, waited, and waited some more, as the publication date kept getting put back. It was getting almost as bad as waiting for Godot Vernor Vinge.
But now, hallelujah. The book is here. Eugene and Glenn are happy. We can all get down to some serious reading, and perhaps find out what is in Enoch Root’s cigar case. (I think it is actually fairly obvious, although perhaps it is less so to readers of the American editions of the Harry Potter books).
And that’s the problem. <expletive> American editions. The American edition of Quicksilver has been out since Tuesday. The British edition is not out until October 2. We have to wait another whole week.
Well, if we are desperate, actually we don’t. The Murder One specialist bookshop in Charing Cross Road had a few copies of the American edition for £20 when I was there this afternoon. However, they were going fast. And to tell the truth I don’t have time to read the book now, and the 27 hour plane trip to Australia I will be subjecting myself to in just over a month will likely be a perfect opportunity (plus, somehow, sitting on a 747-400 at 38000 feet while flying in and out of Tokyo seems a somehow approriate place for reading a Stephenson novel. Not quite as good as sitting reading Snow Crash for the first time in 1994 in an emergency hut on a mountain in Hokkaido while waiting out a tremendous rainstorm with lots of Japanese people with much higher tech looking trekking gear than I did but who were somehow just as wet, but still good).
For now I need to be doing other minor things like finding a job. (If anyone feels the need to employ a telecommunications/technology or possibly even media analyst who is also capable of doing just about any quantitative financial job if need be, plus many quantitative jobs in other fields, please let me know. I am presently in London but would be also interesting in working in the US if anyone was willing to sponsor a visa for me).
In any event, I can also save a few pounds by waiting for the British edition: Amazon is selling that for £11.89, which means, as a true overcaffeinated Virginia Postrel devotee, I can have The Substance of Style as well. Or, I could wait and buy a copy at Neal Stephenson’s signing at Forbidden Planet on October 21. (On the other hand, maybe not. I have met Stephenson on previous book tours, and in person he is exactly the classic introvert he says he is. Which means he is great to listen to at a reading, lecture, or Q&A session, but he is rather withdrawn if you try to talk to him one on one. But this is okay. He writes wonderful pooks. However, the signing in London is just a signing).
Or I could just go back to Murder One, buy the book, and then sit down and enjoy Stephenson’s wonderfully unique take on the Baroque period, and his lengthy and fascinating digressions, and his absurdly complicated puns, and his exquisitely nerdy in jokes.
I…….Must……Resist…….
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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