Ken MacLeod's comments.
The title comes from two quotes:
“If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.”—Graydon Saunders
Contact: kenneth dot m dot macleod at gmail dot com Blog-related emails may be quoted unless you ask otherwise.
Emergency Links
British Red Cross
Disasters Emergency Committee
UNICEF
Hurricane Relief
American Friends Service Committee
LINKS
Self-promotion
Buy my books
Buy signed copies!
Follow me on Twitter!
The Human Genre Project
The Human Genre Project
Comrades and friends
Charlie Stross
Martin Wisse
Making Light
Avedon Carol
The Pagan Prattle
Cheryl's Mewsings
Farah Mendlesohn
Bridesmaid
Svein Olav Nyberg's old blog
Svein Olav Nyberg's new blog
Alister Black
Kevin Williamson
Alan Freeman
Kathryn Cramer
MaxSpeak
Jim Henley
John Baker
Nicholas Whyte
The Sharp Side
Barbaric Document
The Woolamaloo Gazette
Kevin Carson
Thomas Knapp
Arthur Silber
Grand Hotel Abyss
Devizes Melting Pot
A Finer World
Austro-Athenian Empire
The Art of the Possible
Cupcake Couture
Brian Micklethwait
Diane Hannover
TJ's Place
Mat Coward
Iain Fraser Grigor
Gail Wendorf
ubiquitous surveillance
Dubious Prospects
Ilorien
Sharon King
Kristine Lowe
Rich Puchalsky
Lamontations
Cory Doctorow
Parallel Futures
Lord Dunderheid
Colleagues
Genomics Forum
Genotype
Forum Tweets
the write reality
Pippa Goldschmidt
My Forum page
Sociology, Genomics and SF
EUSci
The University of Edinburgh
Genomics
What Is Genomics?
What is Synthetic Biology?
SynBioStandards
Genetic Future
Genetic Inference
Action Bioscience
Cardiff sciSCREEN
Genomic Minds
The Fourth Domain
Edinburgh
Guardian Edinburgh blog
The Edinburgh Reporter
City of Literature Trust
Textualities
Writers Bloc
Word Power
Transreal
McShandy's
Forest Publications
The Forest Cafe
Avalanche Records
Scottish Knife Collection
Sea Kist
Joyce Paton
Chris Koujou
Author Portraits
Luath Press
Tychy
Dig-In Bruntsfield
Writers Blog
SF Writers' blogs
Dead by Dawn
Forbidden Planet
Ian McDonald
The Mumpsimus
Dr Ian Hocking
Barbaric Document
Mundane SF
Justina Robson
Neal Asher
Michael Rosen
Warren Ellis
John Scalzi
Sean Williams
Jack Deighton
Rudy Rucker
Glenda Larke
Alan Campbell
Gavin Inglis
Hannu Rajaniemi
Lou Anders
Nick Harkaway
Paul McAuley
Lois McMaster Bujold
LabLit
M. John Harrison
Kelley Swain
Robert J. Sawyer
Will Shetterly
Stefan Pearson
aiko writes: poems
The Lost Book
The Trease Project
Peter Watts
Karla Schmidt
Deborah J Miller
Juliet E McKenna
Mike Cobley
Philip Palmer
Nick Wood
Catherynne M. Valente
Gail Carriger
Liz Williams
Morag Edward
Adam Roberts
Jo Walton
Nicola Griffith
Alastair Reynolds
Kari Sperring
Alan Bissett
My Writing Life
Helen Jackson
Caroline von Schmalensee
N. K. Jemisin
Cici James
Joan Slonczewski
Gwyneth Jones
Michael Rosen
Ryan Van Winkle
C.J. Cherryh
Russell Jones
Georgina Bruce
Katrina Leno
Claire Askew
Steven Brust
Mary Robinette Kowal
Regi Claire
Ron Butlin
Ruth Sabath Rosenthal
Jaine Fenn
Nnedi Okorafor
Editor Blogs
John Jarrold
Publisher Blogs
Tim Holman
Brother Blogs
MacLeod Cartoons
Skiffy
Ansible
Redstone SF
Futurismic
SciFiDimensions
io9
Tor.com
Pyr
Orbit
PS Publishing
Feminist SF
World SF News
Biology in SF
Raritania
Steampunk Fashion
Torque Control
Post-Weird Thoughts
Ivor W. Hartmann
StarShipSofa
Star Wars Modern
The Outer Alliance
Eve's Alexandria
Beyond Victoriana
Strange Horizons
Salon Futura
Afrocyberpunk
pornokitsch
SciFi Ideas
Three, If By Robots
Brits Blog
The Sharpener
The Register
Velvet Glove, Iron Fist
Blood and Treasure
The Gaping Silence
The Yorkshire Ranter
Excuse Me Whilst I Step Outside
' ... a treeless, flowerless land, formed out of the refuse of the Universe, and inhabited by the very bastards of Creation'
Socialism First!
Red Paper
Aye We Can!
Bella Caledonia
Scottish Roundup
Scottish Politics
SSP
Solidarity
Scottish Left Review
Democratic Left Scotland
Between the Hammer and the Anvil
SNP Tactical Voting
A Place to Stand
Freedom and Whisky
Independence
Gerry Hassan
Better Nation
Bright Green Scotland
Caledonian Mercury
Lallands Peat Worrier
Lesley Riddoch
Clyde Space
Spaceport Scotland
Land Matters
Scottish Review
Scottish Review of Books
The Firm
STV Local
Frontiers
Whitehall 1212
Ian Smart
Notes from North Britain
Amazing Things
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Hubble Telescope
Fragile Oasis
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Dictionary of the History of Ideas
Internet SF DataBase
Arts and Letters Daily
3 Quarks
1911 Britannica
Wikipedia
BBC
Daily Mash
Fortean Times
BoingBoing
Three-Toed Sloth
James P. Hogan
MemeMachineGo!
small WORLD
Derelict London
Good News
Strange Maps
The Simulation Argument
Better Living Through Chemistry
Poems on the Book of Life
The Periodic Table of Science Fiction
RAW Illumination
The Realist Archive
The New Atlantis
Faith
Flat Earth
Fixed Earth
Geocentricity
6 ky Earth
10 ky Earth
4.5 Gy Earth
Creation Wiki
Sacred Texts
The Brick Testament
The LOLcat Bible
Reason
New Humanist
Edinburgh University Humanist Society
WTA
IEET
Cyborg Democracy
Nick Bostrom
Bad Astronomy
WorldChanging
Cosmic Variance
Sean Carrol
Bruce Schneier
i-studies
The Eternal Golden Braid
The Secular Web
NSS
Richard Carrier
Russell Blackford
Conscious Entities
David Chalmers
the Edge
Naturalism.Org
Talk Reason
Stephen Law
Science after sunclipse
The Threat to Reason
Atheists of Silicon Valley
Blag Hag
Rationally Speaking
Bad Science
Enemies of Reason
Tabloid Watch
Daily Mail Watch
Perpetual Motion
Skepticblog
This is What a Scientist Looks Like
Freethought Blogs
Crooked Timber
Kenan Malik
Atheism: Proving the Negative
Stoicism Today
Sense about Science
Evolution
Why Evolution is True
The Panda's Thumb
Pharyngula (SciB)
Pharyngula (FtB)
RichardDawkins.net
The Voyage of HMS Beagle
Evolving Thoughts
The Lancelet
Pleiotropy
The Digital Cuttlefish
Glenn Morton's Pages
Talk.Origins
Creation Science and Earth History
Creation 'Science' Debunked
ASA
The GeoChristian
NCSE
BCSE
Oolon Colluphid's Guide to Creation
Recovering YECs
Beyond the Firmament
Highly Allochthonous
Caught in a Bad Project
Playing Chess with Pigeons
Shit You Didn't Know About Biology
War and Revolution
Antiwar.com
Lenin's Tomb
Empire Burlesque
CounterPunch
World Socialist Web Site
British Army Rumour Service
Circling the Lion's Den
International Crisis Group
Baghdad Burning (Riverbend)
Iraq Today
Left I on the News
Informed Comment
Informed Comment Global
Tom Dispatch
It's No Accident
Empire Notes
the eXile
The Exiled
Inanities
Matt Carr's Infernal Machine
MidEast Shuffle
The Duck of Minerva
In the Mind Field
Mutualist Militants
Free Market Anti-Capitalism
Larry Gambone
Red Lion Press
crispin sartwell
In the Libertarian Labyrinth
Liberty Alone
Rad Geek People's Daily
Propaganda Lalaland
Markets Not Capitalism
Democratic Socialists
Scottish Labour
Tom Harris MP
Bob Piper
LabourList
Socialist Party, USA
Socialist Webzine
Chartist
Appeal to Reason
Labour and Capital
Left Futures
grimmerupnorth
The Bickerstaffe Record
The Socialist International
Labour Lords
Scarlet Standard
Shifting Grounds
Renewal
Impossibilists and Ilk
SLP
SPGB
Socialist Studies
Socialism or Your Money Back
Inveresk Street Ingrate
Vaux Populi
Mission
Timid Maximalist
Class Warfare
Reasons to be Impossible
Mailstrom
Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
Wobbly Times
Viva La Quarta
International Viewpoint
In Defence of Marxism
SWP
Socialist Worker (UK)
Socialist Worker (US)
International Socialism
Socialist Action (US)
CWI
AWL
Anti-SEP-tic
Socialist Action
Communist Parties
CP of Britain
CP of Ireland
CPUSA
CPI(M)
Iraqi CP
CP of Israel
SACP
ML Today
SolidNet
21centurymanifesto
Revolting Europe
L'Humanite in English
Other revolutionaries
CPGB
Worker-communist Party of Iran
the commune
Radical Resources
Housmans Bookshop
Morning Star
Critiques of Libertarianism
Hitler was a Capitalist
Labournet UK
China Labour Review
Marxists Internet Archive
From Marx to Mao
Leninist.biz
Autodidact
Amiel & Melburn Trust
The New Reasoner
Lawrence & Wishart
hegemonics
Marxsite
Marxmail
Marx Myths
Revolutionary History
Monthly Review
What Next?
William Blum
Grover Furr
Bertell Ollman
What's Left
Reality
Paul Cockshott
Critique
The Socialism Web Site
Spectrezine
21st C. Socialism
SolidarityEcon
Left Atomics
Socialist Economic Bulletin
naked capitalism
Thoughts on Economics
Debunking Economics
Research on Money and Finance
Southall Black Sisters
Ancient Communism
Key Trends in Globalisation
Readable Reds
Splintered Sunrise
Soviet Goon Boy
Renegade Eye
Dave's Part
Cedar Lounge
Unrepentant Marxist
Though Cowards Flinch
Mark Steel
Critical Montages
The Curmudgeon
A few words before we go
Stephen Gowans
Liam Mac Uaid
Socialist Unity
Southpaw Punch
Harpy Marx
Madame Miaow
Reading the Maps
Stroppy Blog
A Very Public Sociologist
Tendance Coatsey
Boffy's Blog
Penny Red
Show Biz Red
Stalin's Moustache
Lipstick Socialist
For the sake of the argument
Norman Geras
Sean Gabb
Libertarian Alliance (Official)
Libertarian Alliance (Provisional)
Libertarian Party UK
Spiked Online
Poumista
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
Decades
Within a couple of years, of course, Nixon went to China and Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
In 1979, the war with Eurasia had just turned hot in a cold place. My new girlfriend, Carol, rather aptly impressed my family by winning a game of Risk, though that wasn't why they took her to their hearts.
My recollections of late 1989 include watching the BBC news from Romania in the cafteria of a shopping centre with Carol and our children, just before or just after Christmas. I quit smoking on Christmas day, had one cigarette at Hogmanay, and then none for a couple of months. Some time in February or March I took our daughter on a Woodcraft Folk weekend. Woodcraft Folk kids tend to be free range. By the time the adults had some time on their own on the first evening I was cadging roll-ups.
In 1999 we all went into Edinburgh for the big century rollover. I had flu and was a bit feverish, but it still felt joyful. We'd made it out of the twentieth century alive! Firework residue and drops of sprayed beer fell on happy upturned faces. I had an elated hope that the new century might develop unencumbered by the ideologies that had dominated the old. Hah!
Here in the last day of 2009, I have absolutely no idea what the world will be like in 2019, or what we can expect in the ten years ahead. All I know is that 2019 seems a lot farther in the future than 2009 seemed in 1999.
What I did in 2009
I've had a really good year as a Writer in Residence for the Genomics Forum: generous facilities, total creative freedom, friendly and helpful colleagues. Blog posts about my activities, and/or relevant (however tangentially) to the Forum's concerns, are grouped here. Although my half-time employment has come to an end, my residency (and Pippa's) hasn't, for which we're grateful. Until further notice we're free to use the office, and we'll continue to develop (and expand into other media- watch this space!) the Human Genre Project, and to promote and participate in events, such as Base Pairs and Couplets, the third of our Social Sessions - this one, on Jan 13, is on science and poetry, and we're privileged to have a very fine line-up indeed: Ron Butlin, Brian McCabe, Tracey S. Rosenberg, Kelley Swain and Ryan Van Winkle.
Finished one novel, The Restoration Game, due out March 2010. Well ahead of the curve of writing science fiction set in the nearer and nearer future, this novel is set in 2008 AD. Except for the flashbacks. From another viewpoint, though, it's set in AUC 2248, which makes it science fiction. (Classicists will notice that the Year of the City 2248 is not the equivalent of the Year of Our Lord 2008.)
Wrote three short stories: 'Death Knocks', for Geoff Ryman's anthology When It Changed: Science Into Fiction, 'Sidewinders', for Ian Watson and Ian Whates' anthology The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories, and 'A Tulip for Lucretius' (dissected here), for Subterranean. One flash fiction, 'Reflective Surfaces" for New Scientist's Sci-Fi Special.
I've just started writing my next novel, provisionally titled Sin Bio. Drawing heavily on the good old English traditions of the cosy catastrophe and the Aga saga, it's set in the near future and has a genomics theme.
Labels: coming attractions, genomics, local, self-promotion, writing
Season's Greetings
Labels: local
Working in the spaceship yards, for real
On Tuesday I gave a talk at Strathclyde University's Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory's seminar series. Professor Colin McInnes (who I'd met at Satellite 2, and whose talk there was recently summarised in an article in The Herald) and Dr Malcolm Macdonald had invited me, and they showed me around the labs and took me out for a few drinks, a meal and a very stimulating conversation afterwards - for all of which, much thanks.
You can see the seminar here - there's an opening sample on the page, and buttons for streaming or downloading if you want to see and hear the whole talk and discussion. Here's the (slightly tongue in cheek) abstract:
"The Imaginary Engine: notes for a research proposal on the 1990sThough my delivery, as usual, gives the impression that I am painfully dredging words from the vast shallows of my mind, and the camera and mic are unforgiving of my tics (fiddling with my glasses, clicking my pen, pushing up my sleeves), I had the benefit of an involved and SF-savvy audience whose questions and comments contributed a great deal.private spacespace opera boom in science fiction".
Abstract: The relationship between scientific-technological advance and science fiction has often been assumed and celebrated but seldom rigorously examined. A possible theoretical framework for doing this has emerged in the discipline of Science and Technology Studies (STS): 'the political economy of promise'. Usually applied in the context of biotechnology, this framework looks at the ways in which the 'promise' of new technologies or scientific breakthroughs is used to mobilise resources – of labour, capital, research grants, political credibility, public acceptance – in the real world. Imaginary representations of promising developments play an integral part in this process, acting as (almost literally) 'fictitious capital' in the boom phase of an economic cycle.
It is suggested that science fiction, by treating future possibilities as actualities, may function as an even more literal fictitious capital. In the second half of the 1990s, rapid technological development in, and the ever-widening application of, information technology and the consequent dot-com boom was accompanied by a surge of technological optimism – albeit combined, often, with social pessimism – in science fiction. One such area of optimism concerned the near prospect of large-scale private space exploration and settlement. Records of this period exist in the archives of numerous newsgroups and semi-public mailing lists such as alt.space, sci.space, and the Extropians email list. A mapping of discussion on these lists with influential works of written SF of that period and with speculative investment in a number of fields is outlined and further research proposed.
I was well impressed by the scale and scope of the engineering department, by the enthusiasm of the staff and the research students I met, and by the work of the Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory, which is collaborating with local space industry and other partners in numerous fields, including the exciting field of microspacecraft.
They're building spaceships on the Clyde! Who knew? As one of the builders points out, there are a lot of young people in Scotland who really need to know, and he's doing something about it.
Labels: climate, genomics, local, Scottish politics, self-promotion, skiffy, writing
Canadian SF writer beaten, arrested, and charged with assault by US border police
Canadian SF writer Peter Watts is in serious legal trouble, after making the mistake, on his way back to the free world, of asking US border guards why they were searching his car. His friends and colleagues are rallying round, and so can you, via the PayPal button on this page and of course by spreading the word.
How knowing about our DNA changes our sense of who we are
New fiction on the Human Genre Project
First, on the Y chromosome, we have a Speciation: the Day REDE OS Forked by Tasmanian sculptor Meika Loofs Samorzewski. Second, on chromosome 4, we're proud to have a brief extract from The Embalmer's Book of Recipes, by well-known science-and-fiction writer-and-speaker Ann Lingard.
Why Kepler's Somnium is (or isn't) hard SF, and other more interesting questions
Last month BBC producer Louise Yeoman invited me to the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh to contribute to a 20-minute BBC radio programme about Kepler's Somnium, which also featured Andrew Brown, the observatory's Professor Avery Meiksin, and science historian James Connor.You can now hear it on the BBC iPlayer, and it's worth a listen. Prof Meiksin is a joy to listen to. As for me, well ... I sound a lot more coherent and fluent than I sounded to myself at the time. (Good editing, probably.) Whatever argument I may (or may not) have made to justify the fine distinction I drew between Kepler's speculation and hard SF (some ramble about Gernsback, I suspect) is lost to my memory as much as to the recording, if it was ever there in the first place. Also, I got Hal Clement's name slightly wrong - from nervousness rather than ignorance.
Andrew Brown evidently enjoyed his visit, particularly to the library:
So there I was on Tuesday, touching the vellum of a 13th century manuscript of Alhazen, another of Aristotle, and then a first edition of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus and one of Kepler's Nova Astronomia. In the shelves on the wall were Galileo's works.'Oh monks, monks, monks,' I heard him murmur, looking at a volume of hundreds of pages of minute invariant uncial script, 'that this labour of yours should be used as a cheap analogy for DNA replication!'
We were meant to be making a radio programme – an interval talk for Radio 3 – but the producer and I and our guest Ken MacLeod just frolicked round that room of priceless books like salmon woken by a spate. Serious work was impossible for a while. There was nothing to say that was adequate in the face of so much beauty and so much history; for anyone who writes, the feel of a physical object which has been read for 800 years is a quite extraordinary thrill.
Labels: genomics, history, local, self-promotion, writing
Human Genre Project updates
Three new poems at the Human Genre Project: Dave Lordan's Surviving the recession is a fine rant, but not at first glance obviously about genetics. Dave explains: 'It hasn't got to do with a specific gene, but with the overall idea of socio-environmental adaptation.' It scores. John Morris's Crazy Quilt makes a point about DNA, and Inchoate Origins by Karen Booth speculates on a possible ancestor of us all.