On Saturday the information flow rate intensified exponentially. It is the major day of the Con. Where before (e.g. Thursday) there was a smattering of people apparently lost in a great convention hall, today there are thousands of multicoloured, multishaped, multicostumed examples of homo sciencefictionus wandering the halls and corridors preprogrammed to head off to a room to listen to the latest analyses on Manga, satire in literature, why Firefly should be resurrected/concluded, or how thoroughly the Klingon language database has been developed. There is something for everyone here!
We, in Clan Lampen, have developed more prosaic concerns, threatening the academic enjoyment of the day's information flux. After the previous night we find we have no money! Moreover, our cards have been rejected by four separate and independent ATMs and we see no immediate solution to the problem before our presence is required at the next presentation at 1100 hours. This threatens to make David & Linda very cross indeed (and is not helped by the fact that David has a very minor but noticeable hangover). So, in the same vein as yesterday:
1100: Wiring the Brain. This one Gary picked out and it turned out to be one of best presentations of the day. A guy called Ramez Namm presented a slideshow to demonstrate the research he did for his book, Nexus, which is about wiring the brain for communication and mind control (in fact, his whole talk was a plug for his book but I'm so sold already I don't care). He started off with the familiar: cochlear implants for artificial hearing. Then, low resolution optical implants for a test subject who lost both eyes, one after the other, in separate accidents. Inserting chips into the hippocampi of two rats to improve memory has now led, and this is where it really gets interesting, to wirelessly connecting them over miles of distance so that the experience of one is transmitted and retained by the other. The sci-fi kicks in when you realise you can do this with humans. Think telepathy, mind control, brain hacking. My god! Why doesn't everyone read this stuff?
1200: Planning a Starship. Greg again, still pumping away at his starship project or, as David Brin said: "Enabling the enabling technology that will enable us to enable the technology to build a starship". They don't see a problem with that. In fact, Greg's optimism is based on the statement by President Truman a few eons ago to the effect that Americans, colonising the new continent westwards, would "reach the Pacific" in a thousand years. In fact, because of the railroad, a technology they already had, he was out my an order of magnitude. All Greg needs is a starship version of a railroad.
1400: What Does SF Tell Us about Dealing with China in the Future? Had to miss the talk on AI conciousness to go outside and get some money (finally had some limited success) and just made this panel. Greg again, plus some sci-fi writers who have worked in China plus a couple of Chinese girls who write and translate Chinese SF. It made for some interesting perspectives but the need for translation made an active discourse difficult. What was interesting is the fact that most of the political leaders of China are also the top scoring engineers from the Chinese education system. Unlike American politicians, notes Greg, who are either lawyers or illiterate!
1500. Consensual Reality: Your Relationship to the World. There is little to add to the introduction blurb so, for the sake of my own record, I'll just copy that: "Google Glasses, augmented reality, kinetic gaming, tactile transmission systems. These and other new technologies are on the horizon to transmogrify sense and sensation. Google glasses are the first step to putting an overlay on the reality we see. This opens the door to hiding the ugly and changing what we see. When we do this socially it leads to possible consensual reality as in the works of Vinge, Schroeder and others. What will such capability mean in reality? Has science fiction explored the societal consequences?"
1600.Reclaiming the Solar System. Four heavy-hitters in SF: Greg Benford (again? Is he cloning himself or something?); Alastair Reynolds; Joe Haldeman; Kim Stanley Robinson; happily discussing their favourite vacation spots -- virtually or otherwise -- in the solar system. All these guys have been around for a while so once they get going it's very difficult to shut them up. Very entertaining. Must try zero G rock climbing on Miranda sometime. (Memo to self: KSR, or Stan, as he's called, is an incredibly intelligent and articulate writer; must get his Mars terraforming trilogy sometime.)
1600: The New Era of Commercial Space. Now this was something I was looking forward to and was a bit disappointed. With all the recent success of visionary Elon Musk's SpaceX company in progressing private launch capability in America (not to mention our own Richard B) I was expecting a panel with a bit more charisma; some razamatazz, even. There were two older, and no doubt wiser, advocates of reusable launch vehicles and one representative of an extremely unpopular NASA. In fact, I get the feeling that most people at the Con see private spaceflight as the way forward and NASA as the evil government watchdog. Especially since they don't actually do anything except pay Russia billions to launch their spy satellites. The data was there but the entertainment definitely wasn't.
And that was it, really. We had planned another two hours of "Astrobiology and the Problem of the Fermi Paradox" and "Nanotechnology to Mine Asteroids". If anyone has managed to read this far they'll be glad to know that, simultaneously, Linda complained that her backside ached and my back was killing me. We surrendered in the time-honoured tradition and made our way to the hotel bar.
Sunday, 1 September 2013
Worldcon Day 2
Nothing planned until 1100 hrs so we're getting some culture in. In any case, I think it is a criminal offence in Texas for visitors not to pay homage to the Alamo. An hour and a half later, we're still standing outside what's left of the old mission front. Our Alamo-descended guide, one Troyce Wilson, walked us around the outside mentally reconstructing the shape of the Alamo as was and pointing out where and how all the famous characters probably died. Being a history major (as well as a survivor-descendant), he was eager to debunk the old John Wayne movie. Unfortunately, we had to leave before we actually got into the Alamo in order to get back to our planned first panel on time. And on that note: back to the Con. This will probably mean nothing to anyone with preconceptions that sci-fi is "all about Star Trek"'; this record of each of the hour-long panels is for our failing memories.
1100: The British Invasion: Mods, Gods, and Miracleman. Three American graphic novel (okay, comic) researchers and publishers debate the influence of the UK comic writers on mainstream American publishers such as Marvel and DC. In particular, there was much hero worship of the likes of Alan Moore (Watchmen) and Neil Gaiman. I'm a fan too ("and so is my wife") so a lot of their viewpoints were spot-on; apart from the one that posits that the novel/film V For Vendetta was purely a reaction to Thatcherite oppression. I felt Linda stiffen in right-wing outrage but held her back before she could stand up and comment to the panel. Comics are a province of the left wing Righteous, after all.
1300: The Year in Physics and Astronomy. We had time for a quick brunch 'n beer (wienerschnitzel and German potato salad and corned beef on rye and sauerkraut 'n pickle) at our favourite Texan-German restaurant before attending a packed-out room for this one. Ended up sitting on the floor in the front. This was probably the best panel of the day: a bunch of Phd's and sci-fi writers merrily discussing the events of the year and why we, the human race, are more confused than ever. Amongst the topics they glided through were: the long running experiment on the space station to detect dark matter collisions; why dark energy is still inexplicable (apart from the fact it must exist to explain the runaway expansion of the galaxies); the detection of quantum tunnelling effects in electron transfer between biological cells; Chinese claims that they have discovered the reactionless drive first mooted in 1950's pulp sci-fi (yeah, right -- and cold fusion is still real!); discovery of the Higgs Boson (much more about that later); a long debate about the vacuum model of spacetime and how zero point energy could be obtained for free and why black holes evaporate due to the splitting of virtual particles created in the quantum foam; and, finally, why Hawking believes that the whole universe might be a hologram based on the 2D information matrix contained on the event horizon of a black hole. Phew! Now this is why we attend these things!
1400: The Future of the Future. Notable luminaries in the field such as Greg Benford, Norman Spinrad and Joe Haldeman debate the dearth of imaginative, visionary science fiction and where the human race is going. As far as the former is concerned, everyone blames greedy publishers and movie producers. Everyone wants book 'n movie sequels that guarantee a fan base and, of course, money. The first casualty is the old fashioned story that has a beginning, middle and end that really ends (instead of the current run of "join us next week, same time, same channel"). As far as how sci-fi reflects where the human race is going, the panel was split between the pessimistic (e.g. post-apocyliptic zombie rubbish) and the optimistic (e.g. space exploration to earthlike exoplanets). But, basically, we all felt that a constant diet of miserable news pretty much wipes out all the "sensawunda" of the fiction of earlier decades.
1500: Starship Century. Greg Benford again. This time giving a PowerPoint demo of his latest project to build a starship over the next 100 years. He's mapping out the available technology, the most likely emergent technology, the most likely target exoplantes, the best propulsion mechanism (lased microwave beams, apparently), the best source of free money, and whether we should send people first or an AI probe and a programmable 3D printer.
1600: Higgs Bosons, Neutrinos, B-Mesons, Oh My! Ah, now this one was a brain destroyer. A rather attractive, enthusiastic Phd in particle physics had an hour to explain to a bunch of morons (well, actually me, Linda and Gary -- many of the people in the audience had Phd's of their own) why the discovery of the Higg's boson at CERN this year proved that other particles had mass. First she took us through the constituents of an atom, then to the constituents of leptons, then to the various colours, spins and charges of quarks, then to the emergent flavour properties of neutrinos, then to time-directional properties of Feynman diagrams, to meson decay, W-particle creation, and, finally, the force transferred by the Higg's particle. The three of us met outside afterwards (Gary had sneaked in at the back while we weren't looking) with cheesy grins on our faces. We totally understood all that. Really!
We were supposed to attend another panel on "what's under the ice at Europa" but realised that we'd already taken in as much as we could handle. Instead, we found Sarah, who'd had a much more sensible day visiting markets, and then set off out for a drink. Sarah had sussed out some bars in Southtown so we went on a bit of a walk of discovery down Alamo St. A few Shiner Bocks later (the local beer -- looks like a bitter but is in fact a lager) we realise that Linda, who had been on unintentional double Bacardis, was not quite feeling herself. We dragged the giggling idiot home and left her to find her own way up the hotel lift to bed while the rest of us had just one more for the road in the hotel bar. Three hours and $100 later I joined her. Don't think she noticed . . .
1100: The British Invasion: Mods, Gods, and Miracleman. Three American graphic novel (okay, comic) researchers and publishers debate the influence of the UK comic writers on mainstream American publishers such as Marvel and DC. In particular, there was much hero worship of the likes of Alan Moore (Watchmen) and Neil Gaiman. I'm a fan too ("and so is my wife") so a lot of their viewpoints were spot-on; apart from the one that posits that the novel/film V For Vendetta was purely a reaction to Thatcherite oppression. I felt Linda stiffen in right-wing outrage but held her back before she could stand up and comment to the panel. Comics are a province of the left wing Righteous, after all.
1300: The Year in Physics and Astronomy. We had time for a quick brunch 'n beer (wienerschnitzel and German potato salad and corned beef on rye and sauerkraut 'n pickle) at our favourite Texan-German restaurant before attending a packed-out room for this one. Ended up sitting on the floor in the front. This was probably the best panel of the day: a bunch of Phd's and sci-fi writers merrily discussing the events of the year and why we, the human race, are more confused than ever. Amongst the topics they glided through were: the long running experiment on the space station to detect dark matter collisions; why dark energy is still inexplicable (apart from the fact it must exist to explain the runaway expansion of the galaxies); the detection of quantum tunnelling effects in electron transfer between biological cells; Chinese claims that they have discovered the reactionless drive first mooted in 1950's pulp sci-fi (yeah, right -- and cold fusion is still real!); discovery of the Higgs Boson (much more about that later); a long debate about the vacuum model of spacetime and how zero point energy could be obtained for free and why black holes evaporate due to the splitting of virtual particles created in the quantum foam; and, finally, why Hawking believes that the whole universe might be a hologram based on the 2D information matrix contained on the event horizon of a black hole. Phew! Now this is why we attend these things!
1400: The Future of the Future. Notable luminaries in the field such as Greg Benford, Norman Spinrad and Joe Haldeman debate the dearth of imaginative, visionary science fiction and where the human race is going. As far as the former is concerned, everyone blames greedy publishers and movie producers. Everyone wants book 'n movie sequels that guarantee a fan base and, of course, money. The first casualty is the old fashioned story that has a beginning, middle and end that really ends (instead of the current run of "join us next week, same time, same channel"). As far as how sci-fi reflects where the human race is going, the panel was split between the pessimistic (e.g. post-apocyliptic zombie rubbish) and the optimistic (e.g. space exploration to earthlike exoplanets). But, basically, we all felt that a constant diet of miserable news pretty much wipes out all the "sensawunda" of the fiction of earlier decades.
1500: Starship Century. Greg Benford again. This time giving a PowerPoint demo of his latest project to build a starship over the next 100 years. He's mapping out the available technology, the most likely emergent technology, the most likely target exoplantes, the best propulsion mechanism (lased microwave beams, apparently), the best source of free money, and whether we should send people first or an AI probe and a programmable 3D printer.
1600: Higgs Bosons, Neutrinos, B-Mesons, Oh My! Ah, now this one was a brain destroyer. A rather attractive, enthusiastic Phd in particle physics had an hour to explain to a bunch of morons (well, actually me, Linda and Gary -- many of the people in the audience had Phd's of their own) why the discovery of the Higg's boson at CERN this year proved that other particles had mass. First she took us through the constituents of an atom, then to the constituents of leptons, then to the various colours, spins and charges of quarks, then to the emergent flavour properties of neutrinos, then to time-directional properties of Feynman diagrams, to meson decay, W-particle creation, and, finally, the force transferred by the Higg's particle. The three of us met outside afterwards (Gary had sneaked in at the back while we weren't looking) with cheesy grins on our faces. We totally understood all that. Really!
We were supposed to attend another panel on "what's under the ice at Europa" but realised that we'd already taken in as much as we could handle. Instead, we found Sarah, who'd had a much more sensible day visiting markets, and then set off out for a drink. Sarah had sussed out some bars in Southtown so we went on a bit of a walk of discovery down Alamo St. A few Shiner Bocks later (the local beer -- looks like a bitter but is in fact a lager) we realise that Linda, who had been on unintentional double Bacardis, was not quite feeling herself. We dragged the giggling idiot home and left her to find her own way up the hotel lift to bed while the rest of us had just one more for the road in the hotel bar. Three hours and $100 later I joined her. Don't think she noticed . . .
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