The Early Days of a Better Nation

Wednesday, October 26, 2011



Battle of Ideas 2011

This Saturday I'm taking part in a discussion on 'Sci-fi and the future' at Battle of Ideas 2011. Having been at this annual event a few times already, I'm expecting a hard-hitting and focussed discussion, and a lot of other interesting debates over the weekend. It's one of the few conference or festival-type events I've been to where almost every discussion you overhear or or join in the corridors and bars is about ideas.

On Thursday evening I'm hoping to meet some SF fans for a few drinks in a pub in the Covent Garden area. If you'd like to join us, please email (address at left) or DM me on Twitter today.

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Tuesday, October 11, 2011



Lenin on the BBC

Unless you have a phobia about dodgy plumbers or timeshare scams, The One Show isn't the sort of programme you watch to be scared. It's a cosy after-dinner easy-watching chat-show. In tonight's episode [update: now available here for a week], Justin Rowlatt interviewed an economics commenter (whose name I didn't catch) who gave what Rowlatt called 'an extreme view' of what's at stake in the euro crisis. She said that 'if the euro goes down' Britain is in for 'a long, dark recession' which could lead to massive civil unrest and ... wars. Since the UK is already involved in three wars against in underdeveloped countries, I think she meant wars between advanced countries. You know, proper wars, like those your parents or grandparents fought in and didn't talk about much.

Jeremy Paxman, also interviewed tonight, looked withdrawn and thoughtful during the brief studio discussion that followed. He didn't look scornful or sceptical. But then, he was there to talk about his new book, on the British Empire.

Now, until I know who the economist was, I have no way of judging her credibility. [Update: Louise Cooper, who seems a well-qualified financial analyst as well as 'popular pundit'.] Leaving that aside, though, it's the first time I've heard this idea - that a crisis of capitalism can lead to revolutionary situations and/or inter-imperialist wars - even mooted in the mainstream media. Is a non-apocalyptic WW3 even possible? It's hard to imagine something between, say, the break-up of Yugoslavia and the cataclysmic Cold War visions of the final war (though I've tried). That strikes me as a good reason why we might be well advised to consider other possible responses to the crisis. Devising a feasible socialism is demonstrably not beyond human capacity, though finding a party advancing or even discussing anything of the sort is beyond mine.

But, as usual, the programme didn't leave us to wallow in gloom. Our spirits were lifted by a cheery little item about the proud welders and engineers and electricians of Barrow-on-Furness, building Britain's latest nuclear submarine.

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Sunday, October 02, 2011



The near future arrives this week


A few months ago I was asked to contribute a story to a special science fiction issue of MIT's Technology Review. The idea was that each story would reflect one of the site's regular channels: business, computing, biomedicine, etc. I chose 'Materials' because I had a small and now distant background in the subject. After some hasty thumbing through The New Science of Strong Materials and other battered Pelicans on my shelf I thought of and discarded several ideas, and only came up with one when I turned to the site itself and came across a recent development in light-bending metamaterials. Aha! I brainstormed some ideas with Pippa (who like like myself remains affiliated with the Forum and sometimes hotdesks in its offices) and came up with 'The Surface of Last Scattering' - which, I'm happy to say, seems to me one of my more satisfactory stories, one that works as a short story as well as as SF.

That story was accepted, and is now out in very respectable company. Copies of the anthology are available for pre-order, and hit the newstands on Tuesday 4 October, with digital editions soon to follow. (Via.)

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